I concepted and scripted television and radio advertising for a chain of TV and appliance stores called Handy Andy.
I’ll be sharing several of these commercials and their genesis over several posts.
The client’s basic promise and tagline, which I could not persuade them to rethink or reword, was “Nobody but nobody sells for less.”
In such situations, rising to the occasion means not just living with such a requirement, but breathing life into it.
So I retired to my concept couch to explore how the fact that ‘nobody sells for less’ could play out over several engaging and persuasive ads.
One way it could play would be that you’d have to be insane to buy from anyone else.
Another thought bubbled up. There must be somebody who could sell these TVs and appliances for less…
Or, somebody could be so rich that the claim is meaningless…
Or one could be too dumb to care…
And just when I began to get self satisfied with all these directions, I shifted 180 degrees on my couch and realized I could have someone care too much.
Anything but:
“Gee, your store really is the best store to go to.”
“Yup.”
“Thanks, Handy Andy!”
Each of these areas yielded more than one commercial.
And as these ads clustered around these creative directions, they seemed to form little campaigns within the larger campaign.
In the end, the dumb tagline became my friend by allowing me to have a few flavors of fun persuasion and still round all these radio and television commercials into a unified message.
As often happens, confinement became freedom.
This point about confinement seems particularly appropriate for this first mini-sub-radio campaign:
“Bureau of Bewildered Persons”
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“National Bureau of Bewildered Persons Revisited“
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Stay tuned for further spots covering who could sell for less, who doesn’t care, who’s too dumb to care, and cares too much.
And, as always, let me know what you think.
