Longtime radio friend Ed Brown — a former O’LINERS subscriber and owner of THIS BUSINESS OF RADIO PROGRAMMING in its original printing — shared this with me a while ago.
“A local agency that is really a glorified buying service was soliciting our help to pitch an area spa.
“After reviewing their creative (which was anything but), where the copy referred to the listener in the third person, I offered a brief critique.
“I said that besides not connecting with the listener at all, the copy offered no benefit for the listener, no reason to patronize that spa. Give that soccer mom a reason why she should take time out of her busy day, and money out of her bank account, to have some laser process or cellulite reduction done.
“The agency’s response was, ‘Let’s not assume the listeners are idiots. They can figure out why they should come to this spa.’ “
Well, of course.
I guess it’s the consumers’ job to figure out why they should patronize a particular business.
And the commercial exists to…um…I dunno, act as an auditory brochure.
1) Spa
2) Agency
3) Radio station
4) Audience
Which one of those four qualifies as (to use the agency’s term) the “idiot”?
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All too many times you can put the word “pompous” in front of “idiot” when describing someone like that.
The last one to know that this agency is not really helping the listener and the spa realize they need each other.
Not surprised. I work with people like that all the time.
“Oh no, but I know my client, he doesn’t want anything fancy or clever, he just wants to get straight to the point.”
Oh, my shattered nerves and my developing drinking problem.
The first time I encountered Dan O’Day, he was conducting a presentation at NAB…he proclaimed (and I’m paraphrasing), “I can walk into any radio station in America and immediately identify the Production Director…he’s the one that’s always pissed off”.
This ‘agency’ is a reason why.
@Randy: After all this time you can’t be expected to remember that at that session I prefaced that statement by saying I was quoting Bobby Ocean. (I don’t want to claim credit that doesn’t belong to me.)
But I’m glad the universal truth of that observation resonated with you.