Seriously, now, as you listen this radio commercial notice at what point you become interested in what the guy is saying….
At what point did he attract your interest? (Remember, when a radio commercial begins very few listeners stop to give it their full attention. The commercial has to attract their attention by stimulating their interest.)
Bonus Question: Now that you’ve listened to that radio commercial once, what is the most interesting thing you remember about it?
With Randy Michaels quite visibly in the news this past week, here’s a rare video clip of Randy on the radio, at an “Earl Pitts For President” rally.
Contrary to what I’ve read in countless press accounts, to my knowledge Randy never was a “shock jock.” Although at one point he was a disc jockey, he never became notorious…or even well-known.
He became known to the radio industry for his remarkable programming successes and aggressive, combative, competitive nature.
At the time of this video, he was Program Director of WLW/Cincinnati.
One other point: He’s being humorous. It’s an impression of loud, bombastic talk show hosts.
I’m just sayin’….
Legendary KFWB Los Angeles program director Chuck Blore is confronted with charges of accepting payola. Shocking revelation!
October, 1996 (continued):
Late in the month I found myself in Warsaw, Poland, to speak at that country’s annual Radio Conference.
I was housed at the Hotel Jan III Sobieski, a very modern and comfortable hotel. (Sobieski was the Polish king who, in 1683, defeated the Turks in Vienna.)
I had been scheduled to speak on both days of the conference. After the first day, I returned to the hotel at 5:00 exhausted (naturally) and hungry (naturally).
The restaurant would not be open until 7:00, so I went for a walk — trying to convince myself that 30 minutes of fresh air and exercise somehow would help offset a lifestyle that recently had become woefully sedentary.
The Sobieski, alas, was not located in an especially interesting part of Warsaw.
The streets were crowded with slow-moving traffic, which seemed to be the norm for Warsaw. The electric trolleys and the buses were crowded, sometimes packed full. Virtually all of the cars were very small — tiny by American standards.
(How small? My Toyota Tercel would have looked like a luxury car there. Well, perhaps if I washed it.)
People seemed to park wherever they found space — including the sidewalks and curbs. As I crossed the street, I passed two men cheerfully (and easily) pushing their stalled automobile onto the sidewalk…where it came to rest next to another disabled vehicle.
One of the first establishments I walked past was the Alamo Steak House. I was unable to find anyone in Poland who knew what the Alamo was, but probably they have good steaks.
Next to it was Bambola Pizzeria, with its pink walls covered with graffiti.
A few steps more brought me to Komputery; its sign advertising Apple computers drew me toward the store. I wandered into Komputery both to look at their Macintosh hardware and software and in the hopes of finding someone who knew the solution to my problem of connecting to Compuserve from the Hotel Sobieski. (Remember, this was back in the days of dial-up.)
The store’s inventory was up-to-date (including the then-new Jaz removable hard drive, which I had just purchased in the States the previous month), but I didn’t see anyone who looked enough like a computer geek to strike up a conversation about Compuserve and/or the Internet.
A word about the Polish service attitude:
In my limited experience, store employees are not expected to “reach out” to the customer. When you enter a store, they don’t look at you, smile, and ask if they can help. (They certainly don’t always do that in America, either….But it does happen often enough in the U.S.)
It’s not that Poles are unfriendly. They just don’t tend to offer smiles to strangers.
The hotel’s restaurant regularly featured different themes for its nightly dinner buffet. Two weeks earlier (according to the posted calendar), it had been a Bavarian Buffet. The week following my stay, the buffet would feature a variety of venison dishes. During my stay, the theme was: ”
“Potato Revel — Wide Choice of Potato Dishes.”
Frankly, a wide choice of potato dishes sounded like a temptation I could resist, but I decided to check it out. Accompanying the diners was a Polish folk music group; the music was terrific.
And the “Potato Revel” looked pretty appetizing, too. It included the following potato-related dishes:
* Potato Noodles with Onions and Bacon
* Marinated Potatoes in Chili Sauce with Chicken Filets
* Hot Pierogi Russian Style with Onions
* Potato Swedish Style
* Beef Tenderloin and Potato Shashlik with Tarragon & Pepper
* Gratinated Potatoes with Vegetables
* Gratinated Norwegian Salmon with Garlic Potato Puree
* Roasted Pork Ham with Hot Potato Puree
* Potato Soup Old Polish Style with Vegetables & Bacon
….and a wonderful non-potato dish: Boletus Mushrooms in Sour Cream.
Oh, and there was a bunch of desserts, too. But none of them was chocolate or ice cream, so there’s really no point in mentioning them.
Like many European countries, Polish television featured numerous American TV shows (“The Bold and the Beautiful,” “Chicago Hope”) dubbed into the native language — in this case, Polish.
But I don’t think I’d ever before seen dialogue dubbed this way. The original English dialogue still could be heard, while a man’s voice (louder) translated everything into Polish. Just one guy, translating the words of all the characters.
Nine years ago, my office manager began a campaign to convince me to get TiVo. This, of course, was before DVRs were standard features of cable TV and satellite dish providers.
Back then, almost everyone used videotape to record television programs. TiVo, on the other hand, digitally records television programs onto a hard drive.
For two years, she tried in vain to convert me to TiVo (of which she was an early adopter).
“It will record any program for you,” she enthused.
“My VCR does that,” I replied.
“Yes, but then you can watch whatever it’s recorded, whenever you want,” she said.
“Same with my VCR.”
“You don’t understand!” she wailed. “It completely changes your television viewing experience!”
And that’s exactly why I wasn’t interested in Tivo: I had no desire to change my television viewing experience. My television viewing experience was not a problem to me.
One day I had lunch with a friend. He’d just gotten Tivo.
“So,” I ventured, “what’s it like?”
“Oh, it’s great!” he said. “It completely changes your television viewing experience!”
Here we go again.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean I never have to channel surf any more.”
That surprised me. My friend has a pretty busy career, and I didn’t think he had time to sit on the sofa, flipping through channels.
“So you used to just sit there with the remote control, trying to stumble upon something to watch?” I asked.
“No,” he replied. “What I mean is that now whenever I turn on the TV, there’s always something I want to watch.”
Hmmm. Have you ever had the problem of feeling like watching TV but not finding anything worth viewing?
A week later I went to Best Buy and bought TiVo. Which I still use.
1. Identify a desire that will be fulfilled or a problem that will be solved by your client’s product or service.
2. Show the consumer how you can fulfill his desire or solve her problem.
3. Deliver your message in a way that involves the listener.
4. Make sure your message is absolutely clear…which, among other things, means not allowing anything in the commercial that distracts from that single clear message.
5. Drive home that message again and again again, using one of radio’s great strengths: Frequency. (When I say “frequency,” am not referring to your dial position.)
