K Guard is a seasonal gutter system product where advertising schedules must be condensed to when people are out cleaning their gutters and not liking the experience. We have worked with gutter companies for over 15 years, and we have fine tuned the process to know what shows, what time of day and even what days make the most sense to place advertising to produce the most calls into our clients. As recently as last fall, our clients calls increased 200% from the previous year by implementing our TV buy with our creative.

Cory Home Delivery is a trucking company that delivers a product from a retailer to the customer. Best Buy and Rooms to go are some of their biggest accounts. With the reduction of newspaper readership, they have found it more difficult to find qualified drivers. When this happens, they turn to Griffin Media to help with recruiting. Depending on the market, we ascertain what media platform will be the most efficient, and set up a toll free number to help screen the calls. In doing this program, we are able to reduce the cost of help wanted advertising, and also provide screened applicants.

Gel Tech is a chemically based solution that you can apply with a pressure washer to your home. It is a fantastic product in that if your home is threatened by a wildfire, you spray the “fire Ice” solution on your home, and it produces a gel type covering over your home and yard. If a wildfire is approaching, your home is completely protected and will not burn. With Gel Tech, we have to assess where the wild fires are in critical stage, and be able to react very quickly to get schedules on the air within a day or two. In the beginning of the season, we actually identified over 20 DMA’s that might become a wildfire danger zone. We went ahead and pre-negotiated rates and had everything set up in case we needed to be on within a day.

GM worked with several Wendy’s franchises. GM worked closely with corporate Wendy’s International to coordinate advertising schedules between their national campaigns. There were very stringent guidelines for daypart rotation, SQAD CPP goals, and shows that we could not buy. In every quarter, GM’s CPP would come in under their goal range and deliver more GRP’s in their day part rotation. Additionally, for several years we spear headed a charity event in Wendy’s name to raise money for special needs adoption. Adoption was Dave Thomas’s special charity, and the owner of Griffin Media, Margaret Griffin, is also adopted. So Griffin Media took this charity and ran with it. It evolved to an annual event that encompassed a golf tournament with local celebrities and along with NFL and NHL players donating their time being involved in the golf tournament, and donating signed jerseys. We also had a charity dinner where there was an auction. In the final year, we raised over $75,000 for Special Needs adoption. Dave Thomas awarded Margaret Griffin with a plaque for outstanding effort for all the effort and success of Adopting Hope.

Griffin Media has worked with various Ashley stores in different markets. Griffin Media acts as a liaison individual stores and Ashley National to incorporate local media buys around national media buys, so they complement each other. Our qualitative database of Ashley customers is invaluable to look at qualitative adjusted ratings for all the media with Ashley shoppers, and certain income levels. Aggressive CPM’s are a must with Ashley, along with a strong reach and frequency. Posting for Ashley takes place quarterly for diary markets and monthly for LPM markets. Additionally, we look for ways to leverage any buys for added value in the form of promotions, no charge spots, and sponsorships.

Colfax Furniture is located in Greensboro, NC which is near the furniture capital of the world, High Point, NC. Colfax has strong competitors in their market. Our budget could not compete with some of the higher spend competitors. We had to literally stretch their advertising buys like taffy. We negotiated aggressively upfront to include various levels of no charges and sponsorships. We chose various flight dates and had heavy buys so the perception was that Colfax was spending much more in advertising than in reality they were spending. We posted all invoices, and as much as 20% more weight was obtained in no charge spots. Through the qualitative data we subscribed to with Scarborough, we were able to chart Colfax’s market share, and customer profile year after year.

Jason’s Furniture has several locations in New Jersey, which is in the New York DMA – the most expensive in the country. It became our primary focus to have as little waste as possible in our advertising spend. GM studied closely their zip codes where the majority of Jason’s customers were from. From there, we assessed all media available for local ads to determine the best media mix to target their customers without paying expensive advertising costs covering a geographical area that is too large. Through radio, cable and direct mail we developed a media plan that geo targeted as efficiently as possible and used each media against the other to negotiate low rates. For a business that is located in the most expensive market, but covers only a portion of it, we were able to successfully develop a media plan and increase their sales.

Freedom Furniture has locations around the country targeting military. While we look at various DMA’s, the reality is that we are only focusing on the geographic area that has the highest concentration of military families. All media platforms are examined against military zip codes to geo-target as much as possible to military families. Griffin Media has successfully handled 5 grand openings within the past few years.

GM was asked to do a pro bono program bringing awareness to Domestic Violence. Griffin Media then brought together a top player from the Buffalo Sabres – Pat Lafontaine, Buffalo Bills – Kent Hull, Buffalo Blizzard (soccer team) – Rudy Pikazinski and produced different TV spots highlighting each athlete separately with a message about domestic violence. We then had all the TV stations run the commercials no charge as PSA’s. Margaret Griffin, president of Griffin Media, received an outstanding citizen citation from the New York State Assembly for all the work done.

Before Pet Med became the national brand that it is, Griffin Media worked with Pet Med when their budget was much smaller and they wanted to know how they could start to promote the brand. Griffin Media then conducted an analysis for the top 80 DMA’s to look at households that own a pet, and studied index levels for all markets. When we had the list of the highest indexing markets of pet owners, we then studied each market for number of veterinarians, and average distance a HH would travel. We then arrived at 5 markets for Pet Med to advertise in that would best reach HH’s that have a pet, and there is a stronger than average inconvenience level to go to a vet. Pet Med was very pleased with the results, and this program started them on the path of success that they are having today.

Aventis, a large pharmaceutical company, came to us to handle their media for all markets that had a plasma donation center, which at the time was 76 markets. Many of their markets were smaller markets, but the annual budget for each market was a challenging budget. Finding a plasma donor is very precise, so with each market, Griffin Media worked closely local reps and studied any qualitative we could to ascertain the best vehicles to target our potential donors. Whether it was college newspapers, radio, TV – we customized a media plan for each market separately that maximized their media buys to achieve the best results. Aventis then realized an increase in donors for all centers over the course of the following year. For centers that we wanted to perform slightly better, we could customize each market to tweak it to perform better.