Re: Wedding Videographer Television Commercials?

Repetition alone is not the only way to build brand identity. That's lazy, IMO. Pure repetition with a message that's never refreshed gets tuned out.

You could instead sponsor related events, contests, charity fundraisers and themed remotes like fashion shows, battles of the cover bands, humorous cake-decorating and-carrying relay races, karaoke contests, best/funniest wedding toast contest, etc. The idea is if it is wedding-related even in just a tangential way, you want to attach your name to it by association. Like motorcar-related manufacturers sponsor race cars, trucks, etc. You could make something like the "best toast" or "best wedding joke", or "How I knew she was the one" audio essays, sponsored and BRANDED with your name... a daily 2-minute feature on the morning radio show, and have people schedule their listening to hear your sponsored event, instead of passively absorbing "conventional" spots.

A truly hungry and creative sales director for the station should be very anxious to try some of these for you, as they also raise the station's own profile.

Moreover, while these are radio remotes or promos, something like the cake races would also net you legitimate press coverage in print and TV, for free. Show me a local TV news director who WOULDN'T run funny video of ladies trying not to drop a huge, fragile, high-stacked wedding cake as they run, then falling into a pile of cake and frosting, with shrieking crowds cheering them on. You KNOW they would run that as a closing thirty seconds, and probably three minute packages on slow weekends. With your sponsoring name prominent in the shots. Heck, you may volunteer to shoot it yourselves and send it out as a VNR to more than one market!:-)

And don't forget youtube! Have you SEEN the number of hits for clips where the wedding party's first dance suddenly breaks into choreographed mass-dance scenes like "Thriller"? That seems to be a huge trend lately, kind of "Bollywoodizing" the reception. Thousands of hits. check it out yourself. Some of the above-mentioned events would be very clip-worthy. I am NOT saying you should throw away elegance and class and just do a lot of wacky-tacky promotions. But look over the ideas, generate some of your own, to find and tweak the ones that promote your image while still getting attention from your key demographics. What about a set of interview spots, called "One Year After", where you hear a couple sound bites from a first anniversary couple? Then you hit them with the fact the video captured it all and brings those memories back time after time, one year or twenty years from now. See? Classy, romantic. Cheap to do. Sells you without making you sound like anything else the station sells, from funeral homes to used cars.

"Call to action" spots work better for heavily-repeatable bulk commodity purchases than your kind of unique, only-doing-it-once kind of service anyway.

Let's be frank: nobody is going to change or set their wedding date based on YOUR schedule as the videographer, right? No, the key factor in setting a date is the availability of the church and the preferred reception hall. Everything else flows from that, backwards and forwards. The secondary influencer is weather, for travel, general guest comfort, and the honeymoon, which is a strong reason June is the real popular month.

So a radio spot saying you have a special deal going on NOW, even if it is just to encourage a deposit to reserve you for advance bookings six months off, is not IMO going to move a lot of booking decisions except for the brides that already have a date that coincides with the deal.

I think it just makes you sound desperate for bookings, whereas the sponsored events can also take you thru a year's worth of coverage, but never make you seem like you're dying for bookings, rather, that you're just intimately associated with wedding-like stuff in your town at all times. Puts you top of mind in a completely different way than pure repetition. I would argue, a more useful way.