From Extras
September, 1997 (continued):
In our last exciting installment, I was in Norrköping, Sweden…
In the morning, I felt normal (and not hungry, even though I hadn’t eaten in 16 hours).
My guess: I had some sort of allergic reaction to something I ate for lunch the previous day. (Not food poisoning, because my intestines seemed normal and there was no vomiting.)
This day’s lunch consisted of curried scampi, followed by a desert of ice cream with cloudberries, a delicacy from the Swedish north.
Looking around for the first time, I discovered that my room had a private balcony overlooking a beautiful lake. Incredibly peaceful. While I was sleeping, the maid must’ve come in. The curtains in my room were closed; I had left them open before collapsing on the bed.
I got up and went to the restaurant when they opened at 7:30 for breakfast. I helped myself to the buffet and took my food outside to the patio, where I sat and watched the lake. It was a bit chilly; everyone else ate inside…but it was great.
That morning I conducted How To Create Maximum Impact Radio Advertising for nearly 100 of NRJ’s salespeople, producers, jocks, and administrative staff. Amazing how much better I felt once the seminar began.
At the end of the seminar, NRJ’s Jacob Laurin presented me with two gifts to mark the occasion: A beautiful porcelain dolphin (apparently there are dolphins in the adjacent animal park)…and a bottle of ketchup.
The latter was to commemorate my status as an American in Sweden; Americans are famous throughout Europe for putting ketchup on their food, wanting ice for their Coke, and expecting air conditioning in their automobiles.
The seminar was followed by lunch, after which I went to my room and made the mistake of logging onto the Internet. I say “mistake” because, as usual, I ended up spending over an hour there. I then took a stroll outdoors through a lightly wooded area adjacent to the hotel.
When I returned less than an hour later, my strength once again had disappeared. I had been invited to join the NRJ crew in an afternoon of swimming with sharks and go-cart racing, but instead I spent the rest of the day & evening in my room, alternately reading, writing, sleeping and staring dumbly at the TV.
Once again dinner time arrived but my appetite was nowhere in sight. (That is quite unusual for me.) I had last eaten at around 12:30PM, and when I went to bed I still felt no hunger.
But, again, when I woke up at 5 o’clock I felt absolutely fine. I pulled down my e-mail messages, replied to some, showered, dressed, and wandered over to the restaurant a little before 7:30.
I was the only person there; I suspect the NRJ people had been up late again having a wild time.
I took a cup of hot chocolate and a roll outside to the patio and sat, watching the sun slowly rise over the water. Even for the countryside, this place was remarkably quiet. One hears a few birds singing, but just a few solos rather than a full chorus.
Vildmarkshotellet
The water on the lake was so smooth that one might have mistaken it for ice. The very slight ripples looked more like creases in snow. The entire effect was so peaceful that I just sat there and watched for half an hour….not reading (as I usually do); just sitting and looking and listening to the silence.
The ride back to Stockholm was much less stressful than the ride to Norrköping had been. The countryside was lushly green, the sun shining, the skies clear. The cloud patterns were unlike any I’ve ever seen: dozens and dozens of small clouds that looked as though they had been painted onto the blue sky with water colors.
For my last two days in Stockholm, I stayed at the Scandic Hotel Slussen. This immediately became my favorite hotel in Stockholm, especially because of its great location…just a five-minute walk from Gamla Stan. Very modern and comfortable.
I suspect I was upgraded into a better room then I was supposed to get. When I arrived, at about 2:30 in the afternoon, they told me my room wasn’t yet ready. I protested that I had only 30 minutes to unwind before beginning a seminar there, and they found another room for me.
The rooms were both modern and modernistic, without being impersonal. Large sunken tub, terrific balcony view overlooking the Riddarfjärden inlet of Lake Mälaren.
After the seminar, Daniel Åkerman and I dined in the hotel restaurant, both of us choosing the “hunter’s buffet.” (The restaurant’s dinner buffet theme changes each month.) Daniel was delighted that the buffet included reindeer meat. I tasted some — this wasn’t my first time — and confirmed that its flavor is not for me.
Here’s a simple idea for having fun with an on-air caller.
You don’t want them to be able to find the answer online, so you’ll need to ask them the contest question “live” (either live on-air or live on-tape).
To give you a couple of examples, I’ve selected two sets of two real hybrids and added a third bogus one to each.
The listener’s challenge? Spot the fake.
Hybrid Dogs
Cockerdoodle: A cross between a Cocker Spaniel and a Poodle. Highly intelligent, calmer than a poodle but more aggressive than a spaniel.
Labradoodle: Hybrid of a Labrador Retriever and a Poodle. Combines the guide dog ability of the Retriever with the non-shed coats of the Poodle — which is making the Labradoodle increasingly popular with families who are allergic to dog hair.
Goldendoodle: Combination of Poodle and Golden Retriever. Kind of like a Labradoodle, but with a calmer temperament. On the other hand, their coats require more care than those of a Goldendoodle.
Hybrid Vegetables
Toma Bella: Tomato/Bell Pepper hybrid. Tastes like a tomato, crunches like a bell pepper.
Broccolini: Cross between Broccoli and Chinese Kale. Unlike regular broccoli, you eat only the side shoots, not the stems.
Asparaginach: Combination of Asparagus and Spinach. Lots of folic acid plus carotenoids, with a surprisingly spicy flavor.
Answers
The fakes are the Cockerdoodle and the Asparaginach.
Recently I shared some unique ways to apply courtroom cross-examination techniques to radio advertising.
In their book, CROSS-EXAMINATION: SCIENCE AND TECHNIQUES, Larry S. Pozner and Roger J. Dodd describe “the strategy of sequences”:
“It is necessary to perform {the cross-examination} in a persuasive sequence.”
Sequences, they say, should be designed to do three things:
(1) “Heighten Impact.”
Advertising Application
You don’t necessarily open your commercial by announcing your intent. You structure the sequence of the parts of your commercial in a manner intended to maximize its persuasiveness.
Beginning your spot by saying, “XYZ Cleaners is the Tri-Cities’ largest and oldest dry cleaners” might not be the most effective way of building your case.
It’s possible that mentioning how long it’s been serving local customers or how big it is can help build your case…although usually that kind of information is irrelevant to your targeted listener.
But even if it is relevant, beginning your spot with that information probably isn’t the most effective way to deliver your sales message.
(2) “Enlarge the scope of admissibility.”
Advertising Application
“The largest dry cleaner in the Tri-State area” is irrelevant…unless and until you make it relevant:
Having your favorite dress or business suit ruined by an incompetent or inattentive dry cleaner is something most people would like to avoid. That’s probably why more of your neighbors in the Tri-State area trust their good clothes to XYZ Cleaners than to anyone else….
(3) “Control the witness.”
Advertising Application
In a commercial, you want to control the flow of evidence and influence the decision-making process.
Don’t just take the client’s fact sheet or newspaper ad and dump the information into your spot. Structure the sequence of the information to maximize the impact of your sales message.
“Hence, a witness who has already been impeached on an inconsistent answer, the witness who has already been hemmed in by a series of tight, leading questions, and the witness who has tried to evade answering only to be brought up short has learned at every step to be…less willing to challenge the leading question.”
In a commercial, the more you overcome objections convincingly, the less resistance you’ll get to what you say next.
“Cross-examiners strive, above all else, to have an impact in the opening sequence.”
If you start strong, the judge will grant you more leeway as you progress…and the jurors will become conditioned to believe you know what you’re doing.
Advertising Application
If you begin your commercial by intersecting the targeted consumers’ common experiences — by making your very first words relevant to them and to their lives — they become more predisposed to pay attention to the rest of your message.
Occasionally in my seminars I play the opening line of a commercial that was produced by a Los Angeles radio station:
“Mark this date on your calendars!”
How much leeway are you willing to grant that guy? He expects you to take out your calendar and mark a particular date in it…even though you have no idea why he thinks you should do that!
That kind of opening line increases the resistance that listeners already have to the daily bombardment of commercial messages from all media and all directions.
“It is critical that the cross-examiner leave herself with strong material to use to reestablish any control and loss of momentum created by taking on the witness in areas where the witness has a strong chance of prevailing.”
Advertising Application
Think of the commercials you air that require legal disclaimers. Where are they usually placed? At the end of the spot.
But the principles of Primacy and Recency hold that the first and last points made in a commercial are the most likely to be remembered.
Do you really want the legal disclaimer to be the single most likely part of your commercial to be remembered?
How do you avoid this?
1. Minimize making claims that require excessive disclaimers.
2. Weave the disclaimer into the spot itself in a natural manner. If it’s a conversational spot, weave it into the conversation. If it’s comedic, find a way to make it part of the comedy. You bury the disclaimer by breaking it up, rather than putting a spotlight on it.
Every now and then a radio station will bring me in to conduct a “Morning Show Tune-Up.”
That’s where I silently sit in on a morning show, try to keep out of everyone’s way, and take notes on what I observe.
(Unfortunately for me, I’ve found I learn more by being inside the studio than by monitoring the program from the comfort of my hotel room.)
Recently, I came across some notes I made on a previous trip that included three Morning Show Tune-Ups in three different markets.
Voila! Material for three blog posts — one comment from each of the three tune-ups.
Desperate For Phone Calls
The morning host was trying to get people to call in for on-air phoners.
He threw out a few possible topics and then ended with, “Call us and comment on anything you’d like to, really.”
That won’t stimulate calls.
Your listeners’ lives don’t lack for people to make comments to. They don’t turn to your radio program because they’re desperate to “comment” on “anything.”
How do you prompt listener phoners?
By talking about issues and topics they care about.
Have you ever started a conversation at a dinner party?
If so, did you begin by saying, “So, is there anything anyone here wants to talk about?”
Or did you begin by saying something that interested you and saying it in a way that encouraged your dinner companions to voice their own opinions?
