Most radio stations foolishly try to use billboards or busboards to directly influence people’s behavior:
– Try our Best Music Mix!
– Listen to our talk show hosts. They’re less boring than the competition’s!
– Go to our website, join our Loyal Listener Club, tune in Thursday morning at 7:20 and if we announce your name, text six of your friends and tell them to answer their phones with “Radio X plays the best music and has the best contests” and if we call one of them and….
This ad for 93.1 JACK FM doesn’t attempt to get new listeners to sample the station.
Instead, the busboard is a shout out to the station’s fans. It reinforces the community feeling shared by its loyal listeners: irreverent, smart, mildly sarcastic.
93.1 JACK FM listeners see the busboard and think, “Yeah, that’s just like them. That ad on that bus has the same attitude as the radio station itself.”
And it reminds them why they like that radio station…which just happens to be a button push away on their automobile console.
Here’s the copy. What do you think? Doesn’t really tell you anything, and I can’t find a website for “The Event.”
Hey Mom and Dad! Do your kids love the Disney Channel? How about movies like “The Last Song” staring Miley Cyrus or the Twilight saga’s “Breaking Dawn?” Well how would your kids like to BE in a smash hit movie like “The Last Song”or “Breaking Dawn”or how would your kids like to BE on the Disney channel!!!? If its your kids dream to be in a movie or on the Disney channel then listen up!! This weekend a world famous agent will be in your area looking for kids just like yours ages 6-17 for TV commercials, TV shows and even Movies. Can you imagine your kids being on TV?!!! How amazing would that be?! If your kids love the Disney channel or movies like “Breaking Dawn” then this could be their shot!! Check it out if your kids want to be on the Disney Channel, or in a blockbuster like “The Last Song” or “Breaking Dawn” be one of the first 200 callers right now. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity and Space is limited so call right now(emphasis) !! Call 888-999-XXXX, That’s 888-999-XXXX, 888-999-XXX once more guys 888-999-XXX good luck. Brought to you by the New Event Inc
Dan Replies:
As always, I am not offering legal advice.
But my nonprofessional, layman’s understanding is that:
1. If there’s no such company as “New Event Inc.,” then you’ll violate FCC regulations by airing the commercial.
2. Every entity named in that commercial could and should sue for trademark infringement.
It would be interesting for you to ask the agency that made the buy:
* To provide you with information confirming the existence and full identity of the advertiser
* To indemnify your radio station against any trademark infringement claims.
The inane litany of life’s disappointments to which 50% of this advertisement is devoted has absolutely nothing to do with actual sales message.
In fact, the geniuses who created this spot don’t even attempt to connect the two.
Apparently the listener is expected to think, “Okay, let’s see….All those disappointments. So the message is this Southern California Lexus Dealers’ ‘sales event’ won’t be disappointing? Is that it??”
Strange — With all this talk of the “bad economy,” you’d think businesses wouldn’t want to throw their money away on money-losing advertising.
“We’re airing this thing on our station. It just kinda rubs me wrong — essentially we’re airing a commercial bashing the main stream of revenue for our radio station: commercials.
“Are we so desperate for ad dollars that we’re now allowing advertisers to bash our product on our own airwaves?”
The Commercial
That is an exceptionally stupid commercial.
Not because it ridicules radio, but because it makes no sense.
The story is about watching TV without advertisements…until suddenly, bizarrely, it swerves and becomes about the fact that commercial radio has ads.
Huh?
And radio stations that actually agree to run this spot?
Even more exceptionally dumb.
The ad attempts (and miserably fails) to promote the Dish Network by ridiculing the programming (yes, the programming, which it implies is ruined by advertising) on the radio station playing the commercial.
While the spot is a dud in terms of making sales for the advertiser, listeners do hear the “this radio station is filled with annoying commercials” implication.
I was about to board a Virgin America flight from Boston to Los Angeles, and pop music streamed through speakers at the gate.
As I passed by them, one airline employee said to another, “Who picked that music??”
The colleague replied, “Pandora did.”
So much for certain corporate radio executives who insist on saying, “Pandora never can compete with *local radio, because it doesn’t have the personality of a real local station.”
Really?
Name the closest big commercial music station. Let’s call it KIIS-FM (not to single out that station, but to use a name for which there are numerous permutations).
When’s the last time someone asked “Who picked out that music?” and was told, “KIIS-FM did”?
Pandora is radio.
To its millions of fans, it is live.
And to those fans, it is local…if we define “local” as “relevant to the listener’s life.”
*Sometimes they’ll say “live radio,” sometimes “live local radio,” and probably what they mean is “simulated live radio in a simulated local setting.”
