On the fence

[son-of-sam]

Well I have been looking into some of my problems and I found a few answers. My marketer said my marketing package included all the local wendys carries my coupons and has advertising posters in there also. They would also be in the gamestops with posters and cardboard displays and also the circle ks. Also we would equally split the radio advertisements [there are eight haunted houses so its four on one ad and four on the other. NONE of the gamestops or circle k gas stations have any of the advertising or coupons that are five to ten miles of my haunt. Also I have only heard my ad three times the whole month and I have heard the other ad over ten to fifteen times. The only plus is the wendys have the coupons and the westword ad is on the second page. That is still not what I paid for and I owe him some of the money for they advertising and I am not sure he deserves the money when he really only did two out of the five things I paid for. I just want to know what you guys think is fair. All the people around me say do not pay for something you did not get but they know nothing about the biz so I want to hear from the gurus. THANX

[monsterwax]

If they did some of it but not all of it, renegotiate a new price that you both can live with. But do not stiff them. An honest person doesn't expect something for nothing, and they can certainly hurt your credit rating if you unilaterally try to take advantage of the situation.

[Greg Chrise]

Part of the conversation should be how can he get things happening in the last week? Like now it is time for the other ad to get 15 times play and distribute things that have been lax in previous weeks. You'd love to pay him and not have to negotiate anything less than what was agreed upon but, this is directly related to the quota that is how you make money. Making money to pay him.

Plus the final week of exposure and more saturation of material is better. The public has their senses more tuned for the final week and the urgency to do things as the season will be here and gone right now this week.

There should be a push for how to remedy this coverage and what can be done from now to November 1st.

[son-of-sam]

You nailed the hammer on the head. I really do want to pay him but the marketing is all related to revenue and what he has done has hurt us both and is good for no one. I will sit down with him and see if we can rectify the situation. I am not sure if we can get all this advertisement material to these locations in time but I will try. For the record he did not get totally stiffed I put money down and planned on giving him more but I think 2/5 of what I owe is fair but I am going to try Gregs approach but I feel he will not want to fix the radio ads. I think he will blame it on the radio station as he told me he ''told them'' to give equal air time and its no fault of his. Is there any way the radio station would have records of when they played it and do you think they would be honest and not get a good costumers back.

[Greg Chrise]

It feels to me that the radio station doesn't even know there are two different files. They probably think there is ust an extra copy for back up. So it requires a call to make sure that isn't what is happening.

[sean]

Many many years ago, I worked for RJ Reynolds Tobacco as a retail sales representative....very cut throat industry. We had people that handled independant stores, or, like myself, handled both independant and chains. The contract decisions for the chains were made at a corporate level. Trying to get the information to the other stores was incredibly difficult. All the stores had to do was display the product, a certain way and carry a certain amount of product, some more than others. Miscommunication on the part of corporate to the chains, was the problem. RJR paid big money for the displays, and I ended up deleting payment, almost monthly to some of the stores. In the end, One decision, as with Circle K, made by a boss, didn't get communicated to all of the stores. If it did, it was communicated to a store manager, who in turn failed to communicate to the employees.