An easy way to spot a poor radio commercial copywriter: Look for inane phrases such as…
- It’s… (It’s Blauman’s once-in-a-lifetime annual sale)
- It’s the… (It’s the once-in-a-lifetime annual sale at Blauman’s)
- It’s happening at…
- (Season) is here!
- Going on now
- Happening now
- Right now at…
Here’s a quick montage of snippets taken from a few hours’ programming on an L.A. radio station.
And you wonder why so many people say, “I tried radio, and it didn’t work”?
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and just think, lame is the standard not the rule……
Recently, I dug out some 20 yr old 5 1/4 floppies of the first station I worked for, the creative director gave me these things years ago, but only recently had the time to configure a windows 98 machine with a 5 1/4″ floppy drive to run the software (a old dos program) to view them.
I had a friend, who I met at the station, over to view his 17 yr old writing..and play around with it…we even decide to recreate the spot, as I also have the production library LPs…..
The conclusion? radio spots at the station level really hasn’t changed much in 20 years……cliche’s still abound and likely will for sometime yet.
whoops, that should be lame is the standard not the exception.
…you left out “for all your (fill in the blank) needs.”
…or maybe you did that on purpose. if so, forgive me for bringing it up!
rg
(recovering copywriter and voice talent)
Thanks for pointing out the obvious. How about some advice on creating a better spot?
Just don’t use those phrases and it’ll be better!
i know it’s the smackdown, but you missed the perfect opportunity to plug your creative copy-writing materials with a few freebie suggestions from \Commercial Cliches 1 and 2.. How’s it gonna get any better if \The Master\ doesn’t educate the untrained author? BTW – I already have your free seminar on creative copy-writing and your 5 step system to creative commercials.
Tom