Who Needs Ad Agencies?

Posted November 07, 2017

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Max Lanman's girlfriend had a problem.

She had an old 1996 Honda Accord, with 141,095 miles on it that she wanted to sell. She was asking $499.

Now, in the olden days, if you wanted to sell a used car, you would take an ad in the local paper, describe the car in a few lines and wait for a phone call. Maybe you would include a photo.

As the Internet evolved you might post it on Craigslist, or maybe you would just contact Cars.com to see what you could get.

But Max Lanman had a more interesting idea.

He made a commercial and posted it on eBay.

A video commercial.

And here it is:

We always like to say that video has power.

And apparently it does.

The last bid on the $499 car was $100,000

And how much do you think a professional ad agency would have charged you for this?

If it works for a 1996 Honda, imagine what it would do for the house you want to sell... or a dating site?  

We are living in an era of disruption, and now it seems that advertising agencies may be the next to go. And why not? An ad agency would probably charge several million dollars to produce the Used Honda Accord Spot that Mr. Lanman turned out on his own.

Of course, no ad agency was ever going to take on Mr. Lanman's girlfriend and her 1996 $499 car. 

That would have been crazy.

But you see the POWER of video online.

It's beyond impressive.

It's astonishing.

The $100,000 bidding is not reflective of the value of the car, it is entirely reflective of the entertainment value of the video that Mr. Lanman has crafted.

Now, what is interesting here is that YOU can do this.

If you have an iPhone or a smartphone, you have all the tools you need to create the same kind of - shall we call it 'value added' that video can bring.

And it's so simple to do.

(Mr. Lanman also had a drone).

If you are like the typical American, you have been watching 5 hours of TV a day for the past 30 years or so, which means you have seen more than 836,000 television commercials.

So you know how to do this.

So do it.

Get out that iPhone now!