Retailer Talk: My recent lesson in media buying

Johnstown, Pa.--No matter where one lives in the U.S., a snowstorm in spring is never a welcome occurrence, especially after a long, difficult winter.

But a recent whiteout worked to the advantage of Johnstown, Pa. jeweler Dennis Petimezas, owner of Watchmaker’s Diamonds and Jewelry, because it meant that other businesses had to cancel their appointments with media buying consultant Robert Russo.

The local NBC affiliate, WJAC, brought Russo in as a consultant for some of its most loyal advertisers in March after it got bought by a larger media conglomerate. Russo, who also teaches advertising on the college level, conducted one group session followed by individual sessions.

The entire experience lead to what can only be described as statistical epiphany for the jeweler. It changed the way he views, and buys, advertisement spots on cable television, broadcast television and radio.

Like most people, Petimezas just paid attention to the sticker price, so to speak, when buying media, figuring that the best deal was going with the least expensive option.

What he learned from Russo was to dig deeper, to calculate what it was costing his store per viewer or listener to reach the audience he wants to reach; namely, young adults aged 20 to 42, many of whom are part of the generation known as the Millennials or Generation Y.

“The small independent jeweler, we’re all looking for the same thing and that thing is Generation Y. That’s our target market,” he says. “They’re sophisticated, they’re smart and, most likely, they’re immune to traditional marketing. That seems to be the characteristics of this group.”

If retailers don’t reach this group through advertising they miss out on bridal customers, which, Petimezas says, are what drive the entire business. “Bridal is everything. If you get them (as bridal customers) and you make them happy, you have them from here on out.”

After crunching the data he received from Russo, the retailer discovered that broadcast television was best for catching the attention of this young audience. They are plugged into shows such as The Voice and The Blacklist, and the commercial breaks on broadcast networks are shorter, making it more likely viewers will remember the ads.

Because of this, Petimezas says he’s shifting more of his budget toward broadcast television and away from cable and radio.

Cable, while still effective, has to be carefully bought. For the jeweler’s audience,