CHS Video and Radio Ads

Project Brief

As part of my studies in a class called “Advertising and Marketing Communications”, our major project was to develop a year-long marketing strategy for a local business. We were placed into four-person groups, and set loose to find a company. While it was not a requirement to actually work with the company, simply have an interview to gain a greater understanding of their industry and business specific goals and challenges, we were able to work with CHS Superior Landscaping because one of our group members knew the owner.

The owner was looking for advertising focusing on winter services advertising, since the timeline of our project was starting in the fall and would end just before Christmas.

But, as we all know, not every project goes to plan. And, knowing that CHS was looking for winter services advertising, the videos and radio ad may seem incongruous.

The biggest issue with focusing on winter services advertising was the fact that we didn’t have any videos or testimonials for CHS’ winter services, and only one photo of CHS’ truck outfitted for snowplowing. Initially, I as the designated video creator, wasn’t too concerned. We were in Duluth, Minnesota – the previous year, we had snow well before Halloween. We figured we had ample time to film some shots of the truck in action. In the meantime, I could assemble the rest of the video and radio ads as long as we could record other pieces of the video, like testimonials.

We had discussed different approaches to marketing, and we had decided that due to the nature of the work and what the owner of CHS seemed to be imagining that “informative” was the best approach – show what CHS could do with a plow, have a few customers back it up, and associate CHS’ growing brand with service and quality. Our plan was to use the videos as a commercial, both on local TV and gas station TVs, and then a radio ad as well.

Our first issue was the snowfall. The graph to the left is accurate – we didn’t get any snowfall until the beginning of November, and none of plowing significance until the middle of November. Which would have been fine, if not for a lack of communication.

We, as a group, trusted that the group member who personally knew the owner, would be a good liason between us and the owner, as outlined by the requirements of the project. We ran into a number of issues in both getting questions and requests (including requests to film and later requests for recordings) to the owner and getting responses back, through the group member. We should have done our due diligence and established alternate modes of communication… But we didn’t.

These two issues resulted in deadlines being missed and some things I wanted for this video not coming to fruition.

The result, unsurprisingly, was not exactly what I had envisioned. But they still came out nice. The videos ended up using testimonial videos from customers, a recorded clip of the owner talking about his company, why someone should use CHS, and the company mission, and before and after images from CHS’ past summer and spring projects. Additionally, one of the other group members had created a new logo for CHS, which I put into the videos, and I recorded a couple sound clips to make it clear these were advertisements, for the (at least to loyal customers) new and improved CHS Superior Landscaping.

“TV Commercial” Ad