DAN O’DAY TALKS ABOUT RADIO

Thom Whetson submitted this a while ago. Finally I have time to share it with you:

“Great moments in advertising: A radio local station is running nicely done spots for businesses to ‘use VMware to virtualize their server needs.'”

Radio advertising solves problems.

Very few people in that station’s listening audience awakened this morning thinking, “By golly, I’ve just got to virtualize our company’s server needs!”

Thom kindly explained that “virtualizing your server needs” = “paying only for the computing power you need.”

Oh! I’m sure there are business owners in his market who are thinking, “We need to upgrade to a more powerful computer system, but I just don’t see how we can afford it.”

Too bad the commercial didn’t say anything like that….

P.S. Although I’ve haven’t formally announced it yet, I’ve just opened registration to my annual Radio Copywriting Masters class. Limited to just 12 attendees. Are you (or is your employer) serious enough about producing results from the radio campaigns you create?

Here’s the radio copywriting class video.

Recently I worked with a couple of different European radio stations — a morning show tune-up with one, an AIR PERSONALITY PLUS+ seminar for another.

Like many stations around the world, they love to quote listeners’ text messages on-air.

Why is this often a mistake?

It was Paige Nienaber who first pointed out to me that radio people tend to use new technology to distance themselves from their listeners. Texting (or SMS) is an excellent example.

The most powerful sound you can broadcast is the human voice.

Forget, for the moment, how cool it is to get dozens or hundreds of text messages or e-mails from listeners.

Instead, view them from the listener’s perspective:

Which is more compelling — hearing a listener on-air, or hearing a jock read words written by a listener?

Having a jock read a listener’s written message is lifeless.

It’s dull.

And it’s completely lacking in spontaneity and risk.

When you’ve got a listener on the air, anything can happen.

Even if it’s recorded and edited prior to broadcast, it should sound live and “dangerous” (“dangerous” = “anything can happen”).

But there’s no way to create the feeling that an e-mail or SMS is “live,” let alone “dangerous.” By definition, before it can be read on-air someone had to write it and send it to the jock.

Recommendation:  Use e-mails and SMS for gathering large quantities of listener response— listener polls, rate-a-record, etc.

But for listener comments? Whenever possible, put the human voice on your airwaves.

“Branding” is a word that’s almost always misused.

Usually it’s misused by people who don’t know any better.

Often it’s misused by ad agency folks as to justify the lack of measurable ROI (Return on Investment) of an advertising campaign.

Honey Parker & Blaine Parker, however, know what true branding is… and how to achieve it for the financial success of your small business (or of your client’s business).

They’ll teach you their secrets of “Billion Dollar Branding” in a free teleseminar I’ll be hosting next week.

There’s a catch, though:

In order to attend the free teleseminar, first you need to register here.

This is the third of a 6-part series of Secrets of Radio Advertising.

The More You Tell, The More You Sell.

Here’s how you “tell more” in print advertising:

You give as much information as possible.

You use a “shotgun” approach, attempting to cover as many as bases as possible.

You might throw out 120 different reasons for the consumer to act on the sales message, hoping that one of them hits.

Here’s how you “tell more” in radio advertising:

You spend as much time as possible on your one, single core message.

By core message, I mean the one thing you want your target audience to hear, to understand, and to remember.

One — and only one — core message. Again and again and again and again.