Hyperbole is typically gaslighting with words, but in the billboard business it is more commonly done with numbers. In this Billboard Mastery podcast we're going to review methods of presenting numbers to get the desired results
Episode 142: Playing With Numbers Transcript
There's a word in the English language called hyperbole, which means making an impact just through the words that you choose to use. And in the billboard business, there's a similar form of hyperbole which happens with numbers. This is Frank Rolfe, The Billboard Mastery Podcast. We're going to talk all about how to use numbers for maximum effect. Now, let's start off by one of the ones that I learned early on in my career was important, and that was regarding ground rent, making the number sound compelling by making it sound larger. So let me give you an example. When I first started going out there getting billboard agreements with people, in some rural location there wasn't a lot of money to be had because the signs didn't rent for very much. So I'd go around with people and I'd say, "Hey, can I rent some ground space to build a billboard on your property?" Typically a farm. And the farmer would say, "Well, I don't know. How much money would you give me?" And I would say things like, "Well, I'll give you $40 a month." And they'd say, "Nah, that's not enough money for me to even jack with it." And then I realized that 40 a month also equated to roughly 500 a year. So I changed my tactic. I'd go to the same farmers and say, "Hey, can I rent some land on your farm to build a billboard?" And they'd say, "How much would you give me?" And I'd say, "$500 a year." And they'd go, "Oh, yeah, that's not too bad. Yeah, I'll do it for $500 a year."
So what had changed? Well, nothing. Not the amount. That was still the same. But it was the perception because I made, instead of a monthly amount, I described them only in annual amounts. And I started applying that to everything I did. If I was going to pay somebody $400 a month, I would instead say, "I'll pay you $5,000 a year." And suddenly people who weren't interested at all thought, "Oh, that's a lot of money. That will buy me a trip to Hawaii. Yeah, put me down for that." So in ground rent what we're trying to do is always make the number appear larger than it is by simply talking about the annual amount. But sometimes you can go even crazier than that. You could tell someone, "Yeah, I want to build a billboard on your property on a 10-year lease." "Well, how much will you pay me?" Instead of saying $5,000 a year, you'd say, "$50,000 over a 10-year period." Once again they'd say, "Oh, man, that's great. That'll buy me that 1960s Thunderbird classic car I was looking for." So in ground rent, often the key to success is making the numbers sound bigger by talking about them in terms of annual or even larger numbers.
Now, if you're going to do that, one word of caution: you gotta make in your contract, obviously, that you're only paying them by the month and you have the right to terminate it. You would not ever want to enter into an agreement where you're going to pay someone some giant 10-year amount, and you certainly aren't going to be paying them this amount upfront. But it's the general thought to them that, well, the sum of all of this time will equal a pretty significant sum that makes it exciting to them. Now, on the converse, let's look at when you want to pitch an advertiser on renting the billboard. If you said to the advertiser, "Oh, yeah, well, that billboard is $1,000 a month," well, that sounds like a lot of money to somebody. But if you tell them it's only $30 a day, once again, they're like, "Hmm. $30 a day. Let's see. I run the Motel 6. Our nightly charge is $100. So you're saying I'd have to rent only one room every three days to break even on this concept? Well, I think I could probably rent at least one room every day with that big sign out on the freeway. Okay, I'll do it." So we're doing the reverse. Unlike the ground rent where you want the numbers to seem huge, on the advertising side, we want the numbers to seem small. And the best way to do that is to show what the ad cost is per day.
Now, in the private jet industry, which things are just so ridiculously expensive, what they often do is they show what it costs per minute to have this private jet. It'll say, "You can own your own Learjet for only $4 a minute." Well, people think, "Well, let's see, I got a fiver in my pocket, so I guess I could own a private jet." Whenever you see the number divided by tiny, tiny increments, days or even hours, that's the hallmark of someone trying to use the hyperbole of numbers to sell you on something. That's exactly what billboard people do all the time. And then you have traffic count. Now, let's say you're looking at a sign. It's on a two-lane rural road and the traffic count on that sign is maybe about 2,000 people a day. You could then say, "Well, but it's 60,000 a month." Well, I guess that's true. "It's 720,000 a year." Yeah, I guess that's right. Well, when you go to pitch that to the advertiser, again, we're trying to make the numbers sound bigger than they would be under typical presentation. So if you said, "Yes, my billboard will reach 60,000 customers a month," that sounds a lot more exciting than only 2,000 of them a day. So once again, we're flipping the numbers, trying to make the numbers sound big because the more traffic count the billboard has, the more the advertiser is going to want it and the more that they will pay for it.
And then finally, you can use a hyperbole of numbers just in your normal way that you speak about the sign. One of my favorites has been to say that my 50-foot-tall billboard is, instead of a 50-foot-tall billboard, which, it's a sign, so what the heck, is to say that it's a salesman. So I would often say, "Yes, my 50-foot-tall salesman will let every single person on Interstate 20, which is about 100,000 people a month, know that your McDonald's is located at exit number 12." And if you're the McDonald's advertiser, you'd say, "Wow, that's intriguing, man. I can get this 50-foot-tall salesman screaming 'McDonald's exit now' to 60,000 people a month. Oh my gosh, this is the best deal ever." It's been found that most people make decisions based on emotion and then they back them up with reason. All of our brains work in that way. We have a mathematical portion and the more emotional portion. And when you're using the hyperbole of numbers, you're trying to tap into that emotional section, but then you have to back it up with the actual numbers to make sense of it all to the person who is buying. And that's what we're all trying to achieve. Whenever we present numbers, we want to give the factual numbers. We want to tell the truth on what the things are, but we want to present them in a manner that piques the interest of the emotional side of our brain. And you'll find if you use the hyperbole of numbers to your advantage, you will in fact be more successful in getting spots to build billboards, in getting those things rented in every manner. So whenever you're presenting numbers, think through yourself: what am I trying to do with these numbers? How do I want to present these? Do I want them to appear abnormally huge or abnormally small? And then take your actions accordingly. This is Frank Rolfe with The Billboard Mastery Podcast. Hope you enjoyed this. Talk to you again soon.