RADIO COMMERCIAL SMACKDOWN: USC Mumble Comprehensive Cancer Center

First let’s listen to the radio commercial….

Here’s a List of Everything This Radio Advertiser Did Right.

Here’s a Partial List of What This Advertiser Did Wrong.

1.  They begin with the name of the advertiser..thereby signaling to the listener, “This message isn’t about you. It’s about us.” So the listener stops listening.

2.  The advertiser appears to suffer from the “Everybody Already Knows Who We Are And What We Do” Syndrome. Why else would they pay for a commercial where the advertiser’s name is indecipherable to the average listener?

I’ve lived in Los Angeles for a long time, so I can guess that “USC” = “University of Southern California.”

I also understood the words “Medical Center.”

But the word wedged between “USC” and “Medical Center”?

What do you think the guy is saying?

I listened to the spot repeatedly, and I could make only two guesses.

It sounded most like “Norse.”

Has USC partnered with Scandinavia? Seems unlikely.

My second guess was “North” — “USC North.”

Does USC have another campus, somewhere to the north of the main campus? Perhaps they have a satellite location in Bakersfield? If the word was “North,” you’d expect them to give us a clue where that other location is.

After listening to the spot half a dozen times, I gave up.

I went to Google, started to enter “USC Norse”…and Google’s Autocomplete function suggested “USC Norris.”

The mystery of who the advertiser is was solved.

The mystery of why the advertiser requires listeners to do an online search to determine their identity was not solved.

Why Was the Advertiser’s Name Unintelligible in this Radio Commercial?

This commercial was allowed to air because they know who they are. They had no trouble recognizing their own name when they heard it.

As for the rest of us…Well, USC Norse can’t be expected to pander to the uneducated, ignorant masses, can they?

3. I’m guessing “someone in the office” wrote this radio ad, because the writing is so terrible.

After mumbling their own name, the next words are:

“Transformations are happening.”

Please let that have been written by someone who isn’t paid to write advertising copy.

It’s a meaningless statement, delivered limply in passive language (“are happening”).

4.  After the terrible opening line, the announcer has to pick up his pace to cram in more words per second:

“World-class clinicians and researchers are replacing the fear of cancer wi’ hope.” (The announcer isn’t all that “into” enunciating.)

5.  The copy continues: “As blah blah blah blah USC blah blah blah national leader blah blah blah ranked among the top 25 cancer hospitals in the United States…”

The top 25??

If you had the terrible misfortune of having been diagnosed with cancer, would you be looking for the 25th best cancer hospital in the U.S.?

6.  “Breakthroughs in medical science are creating momentous breakthroughs in healing.” Okay, they’re just putting us on, right? Having a laugh at our expense; “how long will it take people to realize this whole thing is a put-on?”

7.  They refer to a number of forms of cancer, any of one of which is critically important to certain audience members. So important, in fact, that they’re elucidated in the form of a monotonous laundry list.

8.  The terrible copy and mush-mouthed announcing (sorry, VO guy; odds are you could’ve done an excellent job with a little direction) combine with extraordinarily bland music selected and produced so poorly that at times it overpowers the human voice.

Hint: It’s difficult for the spoken human voice to heard over a piano. (In this spot, “bone marrow” sounds more like “low marrow.”)

If you’re going to have the melody (c’mon, there was the hint of a melody there) carried by a piano, you’re going to need some excellent processing by a skilled audio engineer to enable radio listeners to hear what that human voice is saying.

9.  Now that listeners have given up trying to figure out the advertiser’s name, we’re told the advertiser is part of some other entity whose name we can’t understand.

If you happened to notice it toward the end of the commercial (if you were able to focus your attention for that long), what did you think “USC Norse” is “part of”?

My best guess was “Kett.” Google, however, explained to me that the guy apparently was saying “Keck.”

10. They signal the approaching end of this abomination with a slogan that is wholly inappropriate to the target audience: The advertiser’s goal is “to make cancer a disease of the past.”

If you have cancer or if a loved one has cancer, you’re not looking for a place that is trying to make cancer a thing of the past. You’re looking for the place that offers you or your loved one the best chance of surviving cancer.

Using that slogan in that radio spot is downright bizarre.

11. They give two Calls to Action. We’re told to make an appointment either by visiting a Web address that goes by before we even realize a URL is being given or to call a vanity phone number.

A radio commercial should have a single Call to Action.

How do you decide what that single Call to Action should be?

Easy. What action is the one chosen by the largest percentage of people who want the results the Call to Action is promises? (You’ve forgotten, but in this case it’s “to make an appointment.”) That should be your single Call to Action.

Dan, You’re Not Giving the Radio Audience Enough Credit!

“For crying out loud, Dan, the fact that you’re not familiar with USC Norris or with the Keck School of Medicine (thanks again, Google) simply demonstrates the incredible depths of your ignorance. Probably 60% of medical professionals in Southern California know exactly what those two institutions are.”

If Norris and Keck are quite well-known among Los Angeles-area medical circles, then this might not be such a problem if the commercial were aimed at medical professionals.

But the radio advertisement targets members of the general public, not members of the medical profession.

But Dan, this Radio Commercial Does the Most Important Thing of All.

It gives the advertiser’s name four times.

Unintelligibly to everyone but the advertiser, but four times nonetheless.

Lighten Up, Dan. It’s Just a Radio Commercial!

What’s the big deal? I mean, it’s not like they’re trying to cure cancer or anything.