My old boss swore by late night TV spots. He was wrong.

Back in 2015, my first agency boss told me cable TV buys were the only way to reach our demo. I pushed for a small YouTube pre-roll test with just $500 and it got triple the engagement of the TV ads. Has anyone else had a mentor push old media that just didn't hold up anymore?

3 comments

3 Comments

carter.laura23d ago

Did your boss ever actually look at the data from the TV spots, or was it more of a gut feeling thing? I'm always curious if old-school marketers ever face the numbers head on when they're proven wrong. Seems like that $500 test must have been a tough conversation to bring up in the first place.

christopherwilson12d ago

Read a study a while back that said something like 70% of marketing managers still rely on gut instinct over data when they've already made a decision. It's like their brains just lock in and numbers don't matter anymore. That $500 test thing is tricky too because you're basically telling your boss their whole strategy might be wrong. Most people just don't handle that well no matter how nicely you put it.

benclark23d ago

Gosh, it sounds like that boss was stuck in his ways. It reminds me of a situation my buddy had at a car dealership years ago. They ran radio ads for months based on the owner's gut feeling that morning drive time was best. So he did a small test, shifted the same ad to late evening for two weeks, and the calls from people coming in actually went up. He showed the owner the numbers, but the guy just shrugged and said "morning has more listeners, so that's what we do." Practical data never seemed to matter once someone's made up their mind about how things should work.