In-Your-” Face Marketing Prior to the launching of the Mikey ads in 1998, Regency had tried to market Magden’s image as spokesman through direct mail and inserts. Today, Regency still uses print as well as TV, but TV put the company on the map. “We’re in their face,” says Harley Magden, vice president of marketing, and one of two sons working at Regency.
Of course, Mikey’s not the only message the ads deliver. According to Harley, of the 50 to 60 new commercials Regency will run in a year, roughly a third feature company installers. On camera, installers talk about certification and installation, promising to “do it right the first time.”
“They’re not actors, they’re average joes,” Harley says. The installer ads, he says, give Regency yet another way to stand out, since “most companies don’t talk about the installation.”
Regency once had a formal referral reward program. The program got scrapped a few years ago, when managing it became too complicated. (“People were filing for the reward three months after the job was completed,” Harley says. “Or “ five people would claim they’d referred the same job.”) The company still rewards those who bring in new business, on an informal basis. And referrals — which Harley says account for 40% of volume — continue to be the No. 1 lead source.
But television, everyone agrees, is what changed Regency Windows. Working with a local TV producer, and with Mike Magden writing 90% of the scripts (“A salesman’s a salesman. I wanted to do it my way.”), the company bombards Cleveland, Youngstown, and Akron with — love him or hate him — the face and voice of Mikey.
Prior to Regency’s TV campaign, Harley claims, there were “a few” home improvement companies in Cleveland “spending a few grand a week” on television. “But we spent much more than that,” he says. Regency’s investment paid off later, when the decline of telemarketing forced larger specialty contractors into what was already an oversaturated media market. When the company started buying TV time, its marketing expenses shot from 10% to 14% of sales. That’s come down — to 11% — as Regency learned to leverage its buying power and “choose better shows at better rates.”
Apart from price — and that’s no small consideration — the thrust of the message is that Regency is a “quality company, with quality products and services. That this is a team effort, and that’s what this is about,” Harley says.
