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Originally Posted by
Kevin Pacey
I see all that. One thing I'm still wondering about is, in a fantasy scenario (as in this present thread), if the CFC ever does get an influx of scads of cash each year, all of a sudden, why is it assumed that e.g. paid TV spot ads for the CFC would automatically fail?
When an advertising spot on national tv costs $40,000 for 30 seconds and the cost of creating a professional commercial is probably into the hundreds of thousands you would have to double or likely triple the size of our membership with one thirty second ad in order to break even IF you could create this monstrously effective ad for free. Though its been a few years now, I took many marketing courses and have continued to read over the years but I am unaware of any ad capable of doing that. The lifestyle ads which you talk about elsewhere might be possible if we had millions of members already and could sustain them but the point is that you pay for views and the vast majority of the views come from people who are not in the market for what we are selling.
There was a book series a few years ago called Guerrilla Marketing by Jay Conrad Levinson. Its for small businesses who don't have a big marketing budget. This is our situation. We don't have hundreds of thousands of dollars to create an effective ad. An effective ad typically has a response rate of 2% of people in your target group. People are not watching as much television. I suspect that people who find time to play tournament chess are watching even less than the average person.
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Back at the dawn of TV advertising, people must have resolved simply to try advertising whatever their product was on TV, and simply hope for the best. Even though nowadays the CFC would have safer alternatives, taking a chance on a one-time TV spot just might pay off, or it might fail (and then the case would be proven).
I don't think TV advertisers ever just advertised anything and everything. The formula for advertising success is simple. Every ad has to pay for itself in increased income not just revenue. If we spend $40,000 on an ad spot we have to get $40,001 back at least.
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Of course, the CFC should not do so if it cannot yet afford to lose the investment. In any case, free community TV spots might be available in some cities still. Still, I also cannot shake the feeling that there might be a certain lack of confidence in the ability of organized chess to sell itself in Canada, in a way that cannot outdo even a kid's cereal (which is a truly optional product, too).
Everything is an optional product on some level.
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Perhaps any unexpected large annual influx of cash for the CFC might be best spent on somehow improving the CFC's infrastructure, such as hiring another staff member (if somehow useful), if I was to look at things as conservatively as I could.
I think we have to streamline what can be streamlined. We don't have the office anymore so we don't really have any place to put staff. If we get money from government or FIDE, there will be conditions attached and it is unlikely in the case of FIDE that paying for staff will be an acceptable use of funds. In the case of the federal government they might look on it differently but I suspect most of the money will have to go into programs and tournaments.
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edit: Incidentally your initial reply to me, that included indicating that the CFC has had some sort of a server deal for a while now, was big news to me. I thought I was seeing things (as I am prone to do now and then), or that I somehow exasperated you to the point that you told a whopper to shake me off. :) I hope the CFC is making that FIDE server tidbit well known (though as I alluded to in other threads, I don't go to the CFC website, the FIDE website or even CT due to my fear of getting my aging laptop somehow infected, even if I'm being irrational about all that at this point in time).
I don't tell whoppers. We went ahead with the deal because you and others wanted a server. We called for volunteers and no one answered the call. It was not possible for me to do it at the time. I was surprised to learn that the server deal is still intact but we still need to promote it and we need some volunteers to administer it though to put it on a list of priorities it is probably not even in the top ten list.