Testimonials & Endorsements

Testimonials & Endorsements

An essential tool of business or a potential disaster?

Most businesses do not set out to trick or deceive potential customers. However the inappropriate use of testimonials and endorsements can easily come across as such.

Testimonials from satisfied customers are often hard to come by or sound just not quite right. The urge to make your own or edit the ones you already have to be a little more favourable, can often be to tempting to resist.

Many businesses have fallen into a habit of using logos from prestigious customers as an implied endorsement, in place of a formal testimonial.

The former can lead to accusations of false and misleading advertising. The later is!

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All testimonials must be freely given, be able to be substantiated and relate to your current business.

You are required to hold documentary evidence that a testimonial or endorsement used in marketing communications is genuine and hold contact details for the person who, or the organization that, gives it (UK. Code of Advertising Practice rule 3.45). 

·     You must have documented permission to use that testimonial/endorsement publically. 

·     That it is relevant to that business, service or product. 

·     That the review has not been incentivized (paid for in anyway).

·     Testimonials or endorsements must also be recent and up to date.

·     You cannot use former employers or previous businesses clients or testimonials as your own.

Once you have been accused of trying to trick or mislead your reputation will be very hard to recover.

Have you testimonials made professionally by a competent advertising agency and all this can be taken care of for you. It can be easier for customers to talk freely to an independent third party. Than to the person or business that they have been asked to review.

All reviews do not have to be good. The odd neutral or poor review can often help validate the good reviews. Nobody is perfect all the time!

Gavin Bryan-Tansley - Vid-FX+ Advertising

Is communication an illusion?

To paraphrase George Bernard Shaw. 

"The biggest single problem in social media marketing is the illusion that communication has actually taken place."

How do you judge the success of your communications? 

Clicks, hits, views, likes, etc. Do not indicate that communication has taken place. The whole purpose of social media is to build a dialogue. For that dialogue to happen there must be someone there to respond to enquiries and most importantly make the sale.

Too often I see ad's vlog's blog's or even hear a podcast that piques my interest, I need to know more. I make further enquiries to find a website that is down and no one to answer my enquiries. By then I am talking to someone else who can answer my questions and convinces me that I really do need what they are offering and can negotiate a good deal. 

So, your advertising and marketing has worked, congratulations. Yet without someone there who can take the calls, field the enquiries, to make the sales. You have just given business away to your competitors.

Before embarking on an advertising or marketing campaign you MUST ensure that you have the infrastructure in place to handle the enquiries and sales that it will generate. If you don't someone else will.

Without effective communication, you have no sales. Without sales, you don't have a business.

Gavin Bryan-Tansley

VidFX+ Advertising.

To swear or not to swear, that is the question.

Over the last few months, I have seen many articles advocating the use of swearing in advertising. While swearing, can be a powerful tool. It is not something that I would advocate using without seeking professional advice. Particularly if the general public could access the advert.

Where guidelines on this issue can be rather vague, established precedent is more specific. You cannot swear where children, vulnerable and impressionable adults, can see it. Nor in a context that may cause alarm or offence. 

Should you choose to use swearing, make sure that you have considered the context in which it's used. The product or service it is in relation to. As well as the chosen medium, its reach and the audience who will viewing it. Then estimate what the potential damage to your business could be. As well as the possible public reactions.

Even though some humorous use of swearing has used before. Other attempts have fallen foul of the regulators. For instance. French Connection used 'FCUK' as a high profile brand identity in the 1990’s. While they also used FCHK and FCUS, it was the FCUK logo that gained worldwide popularity. Yet, this popularity did not extend into the 21st century. While swearing maybe used as bit of a joke. Advertising for the ‘UNT mug’ fell flat on its face. (Google images for the ‘UNT mug’ to see why.)

“But it's only on my social media." 

"It's only for limited circulation."

"Who’s going to notice?”

These are some of the excuses I have heard.  None of these justify poor and inappropriate choices of words in your advertising.

If you are convinced that this is the route for you. There are some items to consider.

1. The UK Code of Advertising Practice, covers web-based media. This including websites, social media and online video. 

You are just as liable for an obscure web ad on your site, as for a national TV advertising campaign.

2. You are still liable, even if someone else shares your material. 

If you get your advert right, people will want to share it. Will your advert be compliant with the obscenity laws of other English speaking countries? Could it cause offence to other races or cultures? 

3. It takes only one complaint to have an advert taken down. 

That's right, just one single complaint. You had better be sure of your audience.

Importantly:

Why are you making an advert if no one is going to notice? The whole point of advertising is to attract attention, to get noticed. Hiding an advert where only a select few can see it is a waste of time, money and resources. 

Would I recommend that a client uses swearing in an advert?

Generally no. It mostly fails to achieve its objective. Currently too many are attempting to use this technique inappropriately. Which means the conditions that would make such an advert outstanding; do not exist at this time. Swearing no longer has the impact to gain the notoriety that is required for it to succeed. You will only be seen as copying a trend, not as the trendsetter.

Have I ever used such techniques? Yes. But that was in different time and a different place. When there was no Internet and values were different.

I would suggest that the pundits advocating the use of swearing in advertising. Are not the ones who will suffer the consequences if things go wrong.

Gavin Bryan-Tansley - Vid-FX+ Advertising

Is tourism only for holidays?

While in St Andrews the other week, I noticed the vast number tradesmen vans in the town. All the shops that had been closed a few weeks earlier, were being refurbished. 

This was undoubtedly in response to the Open Golf Championship coming to the town. With retailers and hoteliers wanting to make the most out of this event and the visitors who will be coming to their town in during that period. Some of these tradesmen's vans came from Manchester, some 300 miles away!

Tourism is as much about Business as Holidays.

It struck me, that tourism should become a major concern for many businesses and trades that don't currently don't think that it applies to them. If there were plumbers, from Manchester working in St Andrews. Why was there a plumber in from less than a dozen miles away from the town complaining about a lack of work?

The answer? 

From a quick survey, I found that the Manchester plumber is actively advertising in various trade papers and websites, while the local lad relies solely on word of mouth.

The moral of this story is, “if you are not advertising, you are not in business!”

If this strikes a cord with you, I suggest that you contact me at Vid-FX+Advertising. So that, we can discuss how you can make the most of your advertising opportunities.

Gavin Bryan-Tansley - Vid-FX+ Advertising

What can the original Mad Man teach us today?

Best known for his advertising prowess, Ogilvy was an advertising executive who was widely held as ‘the father of modern advertising.’ In fact Ogilvy started in sales before he went into advertising. His sales advice still holds true today, even in this age of social media and digital sales.

1.      “Find out all you can about your prospects before you call them; their general living conditions, wealth, profession, hobbies, friends, and so on. Every hour spent in this kind of research will help you impress your prospect” – David Ogilvy

We all receive cold calls and unsolicited email from salespeople who know nothing of our businesses or our needs. Why because in todays digital age it is all to easy to build or buy lists of numbers and addresses and fire off calls and emails at random, a conversion of one in a thousand is more then enough to turn a profit with this vast volume of data. It is cheap fast and nasty, it requires no real work or understanding on the part of the sales team.

Yet if you take time to understand your prospects, get to know them get to know their businesses, they will remember you and what you can do for them. After a while they will begin to contact you. 

2.    Foster any attempt to talk about other things; the longer you stay the better you get to know the prospect, and the more you will be trusted. Pretend to be vastly interested in any subject the prospect shows an interest in. – David Ogilvy

Social media and email marketing is a good way to keep in touch with family and friends, but to a business you can rapidly become little more than an annoyance that clutters up peoples inbox, the irritation that stops them doing what they should be doing. Even then are you reaching a decision maker or are you just going strait into the trash via the spam filter. Without feed back you will never know!

This is where your networking comes into play, get out there get your face and your business known, this does not work so well siting behind a computer. You can twitter and tweet all you are worth, it is the salesperson sitting in the office chatting about the weather, football and babies, that gets the sale. They are there you are not.

3.    The More prospects you talk to, the more sales you expose yourself to, the more orders you will get. But never mistake a quantity of calls for quality of salesmanship.” – David Ogilvy

This is where CRM software call and email lists break down. It has never been about volume, never about numbers, it is all about the quality of the information you collect. It is easy to dismiss a prospect, to shun someone as beneath your interest, that they will never buy from you. Yet their brother, sister neighbour maybe just the prospect that you are looking for. What will they say when asked “Oh have you ever met…?”

Get to know the people who you are dealing with, know and care about them. They are your customers they pay your wages, treat them with the respect that they deserve. The old adage that 'people buy from people' may not be true anymore in this digital age. Rephrase that to read that 'people buy from people whom they trust' would be more true to day. Earn peoples trust, give them reasons to buy from you.

4.     “Selling does not materially differ from military campaigning, and we may analyse it under two main headings, ATTACK and DEFENCE.“ – David Ogilvy

Ogilvy recommended a combination of attacks (delivery of content) and defences (responses to objections). He stressed the importance of always being on the attack while swiftly countering objections. 

Your advertising and marketing campaigns come in to play here. They should have laid the ground work, have built up the reputation of your business and brand. Half you work is already done when a potential customer responds to your advertising and calls you. All you have to do then is close the sale. 

Advertising is such a key element of the sales process that David Ogilvy himself went on to become the original Mad Man of madison ave.

So talk to your Local advertising agency. We are there to help you get the most out of your advertising and marketing budgets. Call us today and see how we can help you get the processes in place, to maximise your sales potential.

Gavin Bryan-Tansley - Owner Vid-FX+ advertising