Art Taft of KRTV writes:
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Hi Dan. Every year or so I send you this message about the heading of your newsletter that I very much look forward to and enjoy reading:
Here is your copy of THE DAN O’DAY RADIO ADVERTISING LETTER #117. I hope you find it worth reading!
Please consider changing “I hope you find it worth reading” to “information to help you become the consummate professional.”
Hope is not a game plan. Hope is wanting something to happen that you did not work towards or for. Hope is the desire for a miracle. I hope I win the Lottery. I hope the ad campaign works. I hope I get to see the decision maker. I hope I meet a wealthy woman.
Your newsletter is worthy. Your newsletter is educational. Your newsletter is your personal contribution to helping to change messages from lackluster to brilliant.
Dan, you work too hard to hope that someone will find it worth reading. Your headline should always be that they are lucky you kept them on the mailing list.
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Dan Replies:
First, thanks very much for the flattering review of my newsletter.
I don’t think your definition of “hope” would conflict with my using the word in relation to events or actions I cannot control.
To me, the ultimate test of an “expert” is whether that person is able accurately to predict results in his/her alleged area of expertise. (Obviously, that test disqualifies economists and virtually all the talking heads you see on TV.)
When I write a campaign for a client, I don’t hope it works. If I’ve done my homework and they’ve given me enough accurate information, I know it will work — unless they decide to “tweak” the script themselves, in which case all bets are off.
Example: The “Dentist” commercial we syndicate always produces immediate results. So I was puzzled when one dentist called me to report that while the campaign was generating some response, the volume was disappointing. Turns out he took the 30-second spot — the one that always works — and added another 30 seconds to it, offering a free weekend vacation certificate to anyone responding to the commercial.
So I don’t “hope” my radio campaigns work. But I do hope my clients get their money’s worth by trusting me as the expert who predicts that if they run what I give them, they’ll get results.
In one of my Radio Advertising Letters, I can share a technique or principle that I know is valuable, that works. But whether any individual subscriber thinks that principle or that particular issue is worth reading? I can’t predict.
But I hope they do.
Comments on this entry are closed.
I understand your feelings Dan. So often when we create a radio commercial for one of our clients, it will come back “fixed”. I mean that in the same way that you would say you had your dog “fixed”. We now have something that looks almost the same, but it can’t produce anything! – Jimmy Harris, Harris Communications, Inc.
Art, tell me that comment was tongue in cheek. You are asking THE Dan O’Day to change a seven syllable emotive byline into a seventeen syllable grammatically correct statement of fact? You’ve got to be joking, surely?
We have a series of billboards here in New Zealand advertising ‘Tui’ beer. They have a well known lie on left side – e.g. the cheque’s in the mail – and YEAH RIGHT! on the right side. Surely your comment deserves to go on a Tuis billboard.
Meet the most pro-programming sales person ever! Me. I so totally get it. If the station sound sucks, then listeners leave us, if listeners leave us, advertisers leave us…That doesn’t get any of us a raise.