Closed Captioning for Advertising - An Overlooked Essential

Go pick up your T.V. remote. Hit the menu button. Chances are your T.V. supports closed captioning. Every television over 13" sold since July 1993 supports closed captioning by law. More and more people are watching TV with the closed captioning on, and it's not just the hearing impaired. If you aren't adding closed captioning to your commercials you are wasting money and losing customers.

A quick look at the numbers

About 4% of the general population and 30% of those 65 and over have some sort of hearing impairment, making it difficult for them to understand conversations. While not everyone who is hearing impaired will use closed captioning, many do. But it's not just the hearing impaired who watch closed captioning. My whole family regularly watches TV with the closed captioning on so my father and grandfather can understand. It's also used in noisy public places such as bars and airports.

What happens when you don't caption

Imagine you are watching your favorite TV show when the commercials come on. The advertisement is for a hotel. All of a sudden the sound cuts out. A dry voice comes over the speakers and says "We do not provide sound for you because we don't think you are important enough to advertise to. We don't want your business".

When you don't take the time to caption a commercial, you send a clear message to the viewer that your product is not meant for them. This is exactly the wrong message you want for your advertising dollars. But it gets worse than that. When there are no new closed captions the last caption stays on the screen for quite a while. So the last caption from the commercial or show displays on top of your commercial. If you were advertising luxury cars you might not want a message from an incontinence product or a competing automaker running on top of your ad.

Captioning commercials is cheap, make sure to do it right

There are several closed caption production companies out there who will caption your commercial for a small fee. Captioning a thirty-second commercial runs only about $200-$400. Experienced firms can make sure the captioning is done right.

Specifically you need to convey the right amount of information. To get the right emotional impact you may need to caption the sounds and emotion, not just the words. Using captioning the right way can help bring home the humor of a funny commercial or the emotion of a touching one.

If you advertise a phone number for people to call, make sure you use the close captioning to display an alternate number for deaf callers. The deaf use a device called a TDD, which allows them to type and read instead of talk and listen. Experienced call center staff can help you set this up.

Return on investment too high to ignore

Given that 4% percent of the population is hearing impaired, it's a reasonable assumption that at least 2% of the nation watches closed captioning on a regular basis. If an inexpensive commercial costs $25,000 to produce and air, and adding closed captioning costs $300, you can reach an extra 2% of the population for only a 1.2% increase in price. That's an instant 67% return on investment. These are numbers that spell out P-R-O-F-I-T at the bottom of the screen.