“Here you take it, I’m busy” she says
and hands me the ‘phone. “It’s a magazine,
keeps calling, something about an ad. I don’t want it.
Be nice”, she adds. I tell the caller my name and that
my wife is in a meeting.
“WURL HUR-LO!”, an American sales voice so in
my face greets me that I recoil in shock from the ‘phone.
Before I can say another word The Voice launches into its
spiel at a million miles per hour.
Apparently he wants to sell us an advertisement in some kind
of luxury guide. The deadline is past but there’s just
one page left which he’s saved for us ‘specially
at a million Rp., but which he’ll let us have for Rp.
700K, but we have to decide now.
“But we haven’t seen the publication and don’t
have any information about it”, I volunteer.
There’s an intake of breath and a pause. I can feel
the annoyance. “I came to Sanur and put it through your
door”, he says accusingly
“Well, we didn’t get it“, I say equably.
“I came all the way to Sanur” he said, “twice.
There was nobody there and I put it through the door at your
office and house.”
“How very odd, I say, “we still didn’t get
it”.
“Do you want the ad or not?”, he says.
“Well if you put it like that.....,” but bearing
my wife’s injunction to be nice, I forbear saying “not“
and hanging up, “....we would need to see the publication
or at least have some information about it before deciding”,
I say instead.
“I’m not coming over to Sanur again” he
says, “and the deadline is tomorrow. What are you going
to do?”
“I’m not sure if I’m going to do anything”,
I say a bit cooly by now. “Why don’t you come
over to Nusa Dua and collect it”, he says shortly.
“I don’t think so”, I say neutrally. Then
more obligingly, “couldn’t you send it by messenger
or courier?”
“Look” he says, “I’ve been to Sanur
twice. I’m not coming over again. If you want it you’ll
have to come and collect it”.
By this time the guy is so snitty and hostile that instead
of being unpleasant in turn I’m intrigued by the situation
and actually trying to be helpful to see if he could turn
things around and sell me.
“Well” I say helpfully, “if there’s
no time, perhaps you can get us the information in time for
the next......”
He hangs up on me.
“Cheeky bastard.....”, I say wonderingly and without
heat, as I replace the phone. “Now, now”, says
my wife with that smile of malicious amusement I enjoy so
much.
“He didn’t you know”, she says. “Didn’t
what?”, says I.
“Send it. If he did, he got the wrong place. There’s
always somebody in. The guys full of it.”
The space salesman’s lot is not a happy one. Nor is
it a calling to which all are summoned. Obviously my caller
would be better employed in another profession. Perhaps in
men’s suit’s at Barney’s. But then again,
perhaps not. I’m not sure how he’d take a negative
purchase decision. “Look, I went all the way over to
that rack over there and brought you two suits to try and
now you’re telling me.....”. No Willy Loman this
bloke.
Having been at the business as well as the inky end of publishing
I have a healthy respect for a good space salesman. Without
them it don’t matter squat how immortal the prose, how
beautiful the pictures. If you depend upon advertisers to
make your venture successful, you are going nowhere without
them. That’s why I never begrudged them their big fat
entertainment expenses or affected to look down on them as
engaged in something a bit grubby as some editorial types
tend to do. When it comes down to it, writers are two a penny.
A great space salesman is hard to find.
Of course it helps if you have a decent product to sell. Bosses
are not fools, even if their product managers may be. They
know puffery doesn’t attract readers, they respect a
half decent editorial product with a regular and verifiable
readership. As Lord Lever famously remarked, “I know
half my advertising is wasted, I just don’t know which
half”.
Spare a compassionate thought then, for the foot soldiers
of the space sales game flogging advertising supplements,
directories of varying sorts, one-off consumer and travel
guides with sponsored editorial and so on, until you come
to end of the line with Ball programs. All of which can be
excellent, valuable and necessary publications. However, it
must be said, many are not. How many dreary me-too publications
clog the field, all chasing the same advertising $, many of
them rather pathetic? Rather too many, I’d say.
As an advertiser you want to know your advertisement is going
to reach sufficient numbers of people likely to buy your product
or service to warrant the expense. With print advertising
the traditional, and still by far the best, way to judge this
is by how many people buy the publication. If they pay for
it, there’s a good chance they’ll read it and
thus see your advertisement.
What then of all these controlled circulation publications?
The ones given away at selected venues, sent to “qualified”
lists, distributed at trade shows and fairs, and so on. Caveat
emptor! The oldest trick in the book is to claim a print run
of say 40,000 and print 5,000. “The Tatler” did
it in Hong Kong for decades. Everyone knew it and so their
ratecard was entirely notional, the rate base being subject
to negotiation and value added services. It took them about
3 years of heavy & expensive circulation promotion to
make up the numbers when the market finally compelled them
to seek an industry audit.
That being said controlled circulation can be extremely effective
in particular circumstances, particularly when it comes to
trade journals. Indeed “freebie” newspapers are
a phenomenom. Nearer home the “Bali Advertiser”
and the “Beat” are roaring successes and the YAK,
part controlled part sales, deserves honourable mention. For
most publishers however, such means are a short cut to a marketable
readership because subscription and newsstand sales take too
long and are too expensive to acquire and maintain.
For one thing, you have to invest in a half decent editorial
product instead of the usual glossy puffery. Believe it or
not, readers can tell the difference and will actually buy
a publication if it doesn’t insult their intelligence,
informs and entertains them. In markets like Bali however,
all bets are off. The pot isn’t big enough for the punters
to pay the ante. So what we are left with is, with a few notable
exceptions already mentioned, are lacklustre old nags and
a plethora of fly-by-nights, glossy or otherwise. As a result
advertisers simply need to exercise their intuition and common
sense, since there’s little if any form to go on.
Ultimately we are all of us selling something, whether it’s
our business or socially. Some people are just natural born
salespeople, stellar if they do it with charm and integrity.
Most of us do it as best we can, because in one way or another
it’s required of us.
Some poor souls are trapped into the direct selling of things
that either have little commanding value or they don’t
believe in. Such a one I suspect was my caller. Tragic in
its way if this was his own venture...., if not, perhaps he
would be happier waiting on tables, but not I hope and pray,
ever rising to the exalted heights of Maître D.
