CMO Perspectives: Robert Barrows Of RM Barrows Advertising and Public Relations On Where to Assign Your Marketing Budget and Why
An Interview With Kieran Powell
Start developing the potential copy that you think will work best to sell your product.
In an age where marketing landscapes are rapidly evolving and consumer behaviors are constantly shifting, Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs) play a pivotal role in steering their organizations’ marketing strategies towards success. With a plethora of channels, platforms, and techniques at their disposal, the decision on where to allocate the marketing budget is more critical than ever. We’re seeking to explore questions like: What factors influence their decisions? How do they balance between digital and traditional marketing channels? What role does data play in their decision-making process? And importantly, why they choose to invest in certain areas over others? As part of this series, we had the pleasure of interviewing Robert Barrows.
Robert Barrows is the President of R.M. Barrows Advertising & Public Relations in San Mateo, California. In addition to doing advertising and public relations, he is also an author, songwriter, sculptor and an inventor.
His invention is a video tombstone called the Video Enhanced Gravemarker (U.S. Patent #7,089,495).
One of the books he has written is called “Cemetery of Lies.” Cemetery of Lies is a collection of intimate secret confessions, as told from beyond the grave, through video tombstones.
Thank you so much for your time! I know that you are a very busy person. Our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your ‘backstory’ and how you got started?
I studied Radio, Television and Film at Northwestern, and after I graduated, I went to Hollywood to seek my fame and fortune. My first job was a s a Production Assistant on The Steve Allen Show, and after that I worked at several other jobs in similar capacities in and around Hollywood. Later, I moved back to New York and wound up working at CBS as a Sales Assistant. A couple of years later, I was promoted to an Account Executive job at KCBS-FM in San Francisco. After that, I went to work for an advertising agency, and a couple of years later, I opened up my own advertising and public relations agency in 1980.
It has been said that our mistakes can be our greatest teachers. Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
I am a savvy enough PR man not to discuss my mistakes in any public forums.
Are you working on any exciting new projects now? How do you think that will help people? I have developed several proposals for some new and unique projects and promotions that could help generate tremendous new revenues for media companies and book publishing companies.
Thank you for that. Let’s now shift to the central focus of our discussion. Can you share an experience where a unique or unconventional budget allocation led to unexpected success in your marketing campaign?
I was handling an advertising campaign for a new client and we ran a one week test of the first television ad we did and the results were very successful. The client asked me what if they spent ten times that much, how much money could they make? I said that’s easy, and I showed them some very effective advertising math I developed that could help predict the potentials of their advertising if we ran a similar schedule against similar audiences. The math I developed was very successful, and the client’s advertising budget went from just $1,500 for the first month to $3,000, then $5,000, then $15,000, then $50,000 and to $100,000 per month after just six months of advertising.
How do you balance investing in emerging marketing trends versus traditional, proven strategies in your budget decisions? Can you give us an example?
Take a small portion of the budget and analyze and test the results with the marketing math I developed. The math is called “The Barrows Popularity Factor.” You can read all about the math and download a book called “The Barrows Popularity Factor” for $4.95 on a book publishing website called Authorhouse.
The math will give you more of the information you need to make key marketing decisions with far less risk, and businesses of all kinds can use the math to help them increase their sales, increase their profit and decrease their risk.
In what ways has data-driven decision-making influenced your approach to allocating marketing budgets, and can you provide an example of this in action?
When we were expanding the advertising campaign for that client to different cities, we could pre-determine the best cities to target based on the predictions of the math I developed. If the cost per thousand for similar media in one city was much higher than in other cities, we could recommend which cities would produce the highest sales and profit and we would target the advertising to the appropriate media in those cities.
The same math was used to do tests in various print publications. And since the math in “The Barrows Popularity Factor” is “Universal and Effective,” we were able to help generate tremendous profits for our client using a variety of media.
How do you evaluate the ROI of different marketing channels and decide where to invest more or cut back?
Here again, the math I developed will give you very objective answers on which advertising is producing the best results. In doing some, the math will help you take a lot of the guesswork out of your advertising.
Based on your experience and success, what are the “5 Things To Keep in Mind When Deciding Where to Assign Your Marketing Budget, and Why?”
1 . First…work backwards! Address the questions of Who buys your product, and where, when, and how is the best way to reach them with your advertising budget?
2 . And the next questions will be…Why do they buy your product and what are the “magic words” that will compel them to buy and buy now? Once you address those kinds of questions, now you are ready to start taking a look at the initial testing.
3 . Start developing the potential copy that you think will work best to sell your product.
4 . Analyze the media possibilities that you can consider with your potential budget.
5 . Start testing your advertising and analyze it with the math I developed called “The Barrows Popularity Factor.”
Could you discuss a challenging budget decision you faced, how you navigated it, and the impact it had on your overall marketing strategy?
Take it slowly. Let’s see how the tests work and then start doing your projections for expanding the advertising. Then, test it again and see how well the numbers look. Then…test it again and see how well the numbers are holding up wand see which ads and which media are producing the best results. Then, continue to expand it slowly and slowly, and do your planning with the client to expand it even further.
You are a person of great influence. If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂
If I were indeed a person of great influence, or even minor influence, I would take a look at ways to help solve the problem of homelessness. The way I see it…Homelessness is a money problem…and money problems can be solved with money! So, I would suggest that the first way to help solve the homelessness problem is to allocate monies that would pay for housing and food for people that need it, and then i would suggest that government agencies work with local businesses to help find jobs for the people that need it.
How can our readers further follow your work online?
People can see more about my work on my company website for R.M. Barrows, Inc. Advertising and Public Relations at www.barrows.com. And, they can also pick up the phone and give me a call at 650–344–4405 (9am-6pm PST).
This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for joining us!
About The Interviewer: Kieran Powell is the EVP of Channel V Media a New York City Public Relations agency with a global network of agency partners in over 30 countries. Kieran has advised more than 150 companies in the Technology, B2B, Retail and Financial sectors. Prior to taking over business operations at Channel V Media, Kieran held roles at Merrill Lynch, PwC and Ernst & Young. Get in touch with Kieran to discuss how marketing and public relations can be leveraged to achieve concrete business goals.
CMO Perspectives: Robert Barrows Of RM Barrows Advertising and Public Relations On Where to Assign… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.