DAN O’DAY TALKS ABOUT RADIO

Illustration © 2008, 2010 by Bobby Ocean

If you attended today’s free “Dan Saves Radio People” teleseminar — either live or on the playback….

I promised you’d learn valuable stuff about online video marketing and social media that you didn’t already know.

Without revealing any of the “secrets” we discussed during the call…Did I keep my promise?

The release of Mike’s first video has stirred up a lot of response.

Much of it has been along the lines of, “Hmm. Sounds interesting…Let’s see where this goes.”

A few people have emailed me (or posted on our Facebook group) to express deep skepticism.

With all the questions coming in, I’ve decided to conduct the first free teleseminar — an open-ended Q&A, so you can ask your questions directly — sooner than I’d planned:

Tuesday afternoon, 2PM Eastern (11AM Pacific). Everyone who has joined the “Dan Saves Radio” mailing list will receive the call-in details soon after I publish this blog piece.

In the meantime, here’s a sampling of the more skeptical queries I’ve received, along with my replies.

Tell me this isn’t a MLM initiative.

Absolutely, 100% not.

Never, no way, no how. (“MLM” = “Multi-Level Marketing.” Also referred to by many as “pyramid schemes.”)

Am I supposed to be seeing something real cheese-and-spammy when I click the link above? Cause that’s what I’m getting. WTF, DanO?

I have no problem with people being skeptical about it, at first. Actually, before I became a customer (I use another of their services) I was very skeptical. That was before I used the service, though, and before I happened to become friends with Mike.

I don’t know what you mean by “spammy.” It’s a Web page with a brief video.

The subsequent videos will be quite eye-opening; I kinda wish the introductory video was less tease and more meat. There is, however, a reason for that:

When Mike’s company launched the service I’ve been using (last year), they did it with a series of videos that were crammed with so much info that viewers took pages of notes. But those videos were something like 40 minutes long. This time around, Mike made a deliberate effort to keep each one to no longer than 15 minutes.

Even so, just watching the videos will provide a crash course in how Social Media really can be deployed.

It stinks of late night informerical product pitches. Especially when you read the fine print which left me with a “result not typical” impression.

I might throw my email address through for the hell of it, but I almost expect billy mays to… come back from the dead to do the remaining videos.

Yes, i’m skeptical, jaded and often too honest and god knows what else…and have every right to be. There are too many messages out there looking for your $$$ using the centuries old PT Barnum approach.

The Federal Trade Commission requires such a disclaimer. All they’re doing is obeying the law.

P.T. Barnum’s approach was to create a ruckus to gather a crowd, then (figuratively) pick their pockets. If you decide to watch the three additional videos, you won’t see or hear anything that in any way remotely is misleading or dishonest.

I’ve long said that “selling is educating.” I think it’s a mistake to confuse good salesmanship with dishonesty.

The videos & teleseminars to come: If you already joined the “Dan Saves Radio” mailing list, I’ll let you know when each new video is uploaded and when each new teleseminar is scheduled. During the teleseminars, I’ll be showing you “proof” that…Well, it’ll astound you.

All Voiceover Folks: I hope you’ll be able to make tomorrow’s teleseminar (check your email, if you’re on the list) for a pretty impressive example…

Recently in this space a very successful voice over artist complained about the currently common practice of removing virtually every breath from a radio commercial, in order to squeeze in more words.

Here’s an example. As an experiment, after you hit the “play” button look away from your computer monitor and listen to this spot…just once.

Okay, how many selling points can you recall?

I’d try to help you out by listing them all for you, but they went by so fast that it would take 10 minutes of stopping and resuming for me to compile that list.

Why Is It Stupid To Remove All The Breaths From A Commercial?

For however many thousands of years that human beings have communicated via speech, they’ve also…

…breathed.

For the entire history of humankind, speech has included pauses for breath. Not vocalizing for half a second while inhaling is not “dead air.” It is an integral part of speech itself.

So Why Is This Stupid Practice So Common?

A commercial such as this one requires that every breath be removed to make room for the far too many words that inhabit the copy. In other words:

Bad copywriting.

Yes, I will be the first to point out that often the Incompetent Account Executive insists that the copywriter include Far Too Many details, which requires Far Too Many words.

The radio salesperson, in turn, would like to blame the client:

“The client insisted!”

Sorry, in this case the buck stops with the account exec. It’s the account exec’s job to educate the client. The account exec supposedly is the radio advertising expert.

In reality, of course, most account execs have been taught how to sell radio advertising but know virtually nothing about the fundamentals of good radio copywriting. That includes, alas, the legions of account execs who are required to write their own copy…even though they don’t know how.

“But the customer is always right!”

No, of course not. Often the customer is wrong, and professionals don’t let clients throw their money away because they’re too frightened of the clients to educate them.

This particular commercial probably is the result of an account exec who doesn’t know enough to be able to educate the client and of a poor copywriter. (They might, in fact, be the same person.)

You need listen only four seconds into the spot to recognize bad copywriting: They give a call to action (going to their website) before they give listeners a reason for taking that action.

Pretty basic, huh? Obvious, even?

But apparently beyond the professional education of the person who wrote the copy and of the management that allowed such a mess to go on the air.