In our past articles we have had some discussions on marketing and advertising which is a very complex subject and needs a lot of attention. When one runs a window film company, with all the expenses and commitment, owners are under pressure to produce enough income to stay in business. These business people spend many sleepless nights dreaming up ways of increasing their sales and producing more revenue to cover ever increasing costs, make profits and be successful.
Advertising is an expensive exercise and one needs to come up with adverts that are going to be noticed by the consumer because of their “wow” factor. The “wow” factor means that it has to be different from the norm and stand out from the crowd of advertising.
Over the last 40 years we have racked our brains to come up with advertising that works and gets a good response from the money spent on any campaign. Many brainstorming sessions throughout the night have taken place with many members of our marketing team to ensure that the best thoughts from good thinkers help to shape the correct messages. As they say “many brains are better than one”.
Numerous experiences have been encountered and will be forthcoming in our various articles on an ongoing basis on our website.
The first one that comes to mind was when we started we had to educate the market on the advantages of putting sun control window film on to vehicle windows to reduce the temperature within the cabin. When we started there was no such thing as window tinting for cars and after a lot of effort and promotions, we managed to get the ball rolling by getting the consumer to realise the advantages of having window film installed on their cars.
Most of the business done in the early years was from retail sales direct to the consumer. Creating a good finish was difficult as the films were not as user friendly as they are today and application was done by trial and error. However, we managed to satisfy the retail market.
When approaching the dealers no interest was shown as the finish was just not up to scratch to enable car salesmen to have confidence in selling window film on cars. Another area that bothered dealers was the fact that back windows had to be done in three pieces and had joins.
Some years later, with the increase in crime in the country, Klingshield launched it’s Smash & Grab window film which was much thicker than the regular window tinting and offered protection from smash & grab attackers as the film held the glass together, creating a safer driving experience.
After much promotion we finally managed to persuade certain dealers that Klingshield safety film on cars is a very important after-market product and slowly but surely smash and grab on cars became a household name and today 80% of cars sold on the South African market have safety film applied throughout the country.
One of our “wow” factor advertising campaigns was designed to look like a parking ticket issued by the local council for parking offences. The colour of the advertising ticket was the same as the original parking ticket and the layout was also identical. However, the copy was cleverly written to promote the use of window film on car windows. On the ticket under “offence” the offence was not having your car windows shatterproofed. The fine was a discount offer. This campaign worked wonders as the advertising tickets were placed under windscreen wipers in shopping centres and in the streets within our vicinity. When consumers approached their car they thought they had a ticket for an offence and ran up to the car to see what law they had broken. Obviously to their surprise they were delighted to see it was an advertising leaflet. The bottom line being “we got their attention” and that is what advertising is about! This campaign gave us an amazing result of 5% and the cars streamed into our tinting centre. Unfortunately after distributing for a couple of months, we were contacted by the local Traffic Department to cease our distribution, as this campaign was creating confusion and certain naive consumers were arriving in the traffic departments wanting to pay the fines for not shatterproofing their windows!
This is what you call a “wow” factor advertising campaign, which creates attention.