This morning, I ran into Toby, the graphic artist who designed the ads for my neighborhood’s home tour booklet. The home tour is our big fundraiser. People will pay money to go into other peoples’ houses. I think the main reason they do it is to see what sort of housekeepers other women are. Or men, in the case of the gay couples.
For two years – 2002 and 2003, I was in charge of ad sales for the booklet. The first year, my revenues were the same as the previous year, which was actually pretty good, as one-third of our previous advertisers didn’t renew and I had to find new advertisers.
When I tried to sell an ad to the owner of the Vietnamese grocery near my house (which looks nothing like this photo but I liked this photo), she looked at me as if I were nuts. “People pay money?” she asked suspiciously, “to walk through other peoples’ houses?” Those crazy Communists do many a madcap thing, but sponsoring home tours is not one of them.Source: http://www.kathyloperevents.com/angkorwat/images/vietnam.jpg
The second year, I had time to plan. My goal was to increase ad revenues 30% over the previous year. Ha. I got 34% more ($11,340 total revenue if I remember correctly) than the previous year and sold about 30 new ads. The ad revenue pretty much saved the home tour, as attendance was down because other neighborhoods have started offering home tours as well and the novelty is gone.
But it was a really time-consuming project that could not be done after business hours (because the advertisers were businesses), so I had to do everything while I was at work, which made me very uncomfortable. I told the committee I would not do ads again the next year, which was the 2004 home tour.
They found a new person to do ads – someone who had not been involved at all before because that is the only way you can sucker – I mean, convince – someone into volunteering for something of this magnitude.
I had put together a great spreadsheet of every single business in our neighborhood and businesses that might be interested in advertising because of what they offered – interior design, furniture, etc – stuff that people who pay to look at other houses might be interested in more than the average person.
I had collected demographic information of the people who had attended the home tour – it was my idea to get the zip code of every attendee. The demographics were good – attendees from high-income neighborhoods – what advertisers want.
I had a binder with all the prospect letters I had written, my correspondence with every advertiser, copies of every ad. Everything. It was perfect. I had started with nothing but a copy of the previous year’s booklet.
I gave all of this stuff to the new ad guy. He is a VP of marketing for a big company, so I figured he should know what he was doing. And, in his defense, he probably does – but as I said, this is a hugely time-consuming project if done properly.
I know he had no idea what he was getting himself into, because I had no idea when I agreed to do it the first year and I committed to the second year only a month into the first year when it still seemed easy and fun. That was before I tried to collect payment from the late payers, including one company whose owner was later found guilty of federal charges of making and selling false identification cards.
Well. Toby told me that not only had the ad revenues dropped for 2004 but that the ad guy had not sold one single new ad.
I know I should not be pleased at this news. I know that. I know it makes me mean and petty and selfish to be happy that the great success in ad sales was just because of ME, ME, ME.
Oh well. So be it.
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