DAN O’DAY TALKS ABOUT RADIO

A Loyal Reader Writes:

“I have a question regarding how to create a sense of urgency and/or a deadline for businesses who are not doing a specific limited time offer commercial.

“To be more specific: A gasoline company. They want people to use their facility. They’re cheaper but will not allow us to advertise that fact; we’ve been round and round about it. Small town, they don’t want to start a price war.

“They’re open 24 hours. In addition to the half-dozen credit cards they accept, they also offer a gas card as part of a national network. With the gas card, you can purchase gas 24 hours a day at locations throughout the U.S. These card systems are popular in rural areas.

“This is an especially difficult client to write commercials for; just when I think I know what he’s after and we agree upon it, he changes his whole approach.”

A client who keeps changing his mind about his advertising strategy is:

1. Not unusual.

2. A client who needs educating by the account exec.

You’ve just inherited a gas station, and you need to start making it more productive immediately. It’s all your responsibility, and there is no one available to advise you.

Quick! What’s the first thing you should do?

Review your supplier contracts?

No.

Look at your payroll expenses?

No.

Check your street signage?

Fact is, there is no reason to expect you to know how to run a gas station. You’ve had no training or education for it.

And very few of your clients — be they gas station owners or bank presidents — should be expected to know anything about advertising.

So you’ve got to teach them.

Among other things, you must teach them the importance of:

• A single “core message”

• A message that shows the targeted consumer how this particular product will add to that person’s life

• Frequency of message delivery: The listener has to hear the message enough to notice it, to understand it, to be convinced by it, to remember it, and to act upon it.

• Talking not about the advertiser but rather to the consumer about the consumer’s life

And for a local retail business:

• The importance of giving the listener a genuine reason to act on the sales message NOW

You can’t create a sense of urgency unless there is a genuine deadline, which they can create by making a special offer: Free six-pack of Coke with six fill-ups if you use your card (which they can co-op with Coca Cola).

Or you can set up a three-way deal with a pizza parlor: Coupon good for free pizza with six fill-ups…if they use the gas card. (The pizza parlor gets the free mentions in the commercials plus the increased in-store traffic when people redeem the coupons.)

If they genuinely are the cheapest in town but refuse to advertise that, they need something to set themselves apart:

Open longer hours….

More pumps (which means you never have to wait)….

Frequent buyers’ club….

Cheap hotdogs in their mini-mart….In fact, that could be their big Unique Selling Proposition: Free hot dog with every fill-up. Or 25-cent hot dog with every fill-up.

But if their only true pitch is, “We’re a gas station, just like 100,000 other gas stations,” then I don’t know why they’re advertising at all.

They need to create something of real value to customers to differentiate themselves from their competitors.

Without such a differentiation, they’ll continue to get whatever drive-by traffic happens to come their way, and no more.

A Loyal Reader Writes:

“I just arrived as the new PD at a station that airs an All Request Show. I’ve noticed that when the staff here answers the phone, they tell listeners making requests, ‘Nope, gotta call back near the All Request Show.’

“Now, I’m never going to let our jocks just start playing random requests, but I cannot ever remember telling a listener flat out ‘NO’ (other than for songs totally out of format).

“I’m used to answers like, ‘I’ll see what I can do,’ or “Maybe if I get time,’ or ‘Nope, just played it so maybe later; what else would you like?’ etc.

“It seems to me that telling a listener ‘no,’ only to expect them to try again 2 to 15 hours later, makes our station less accessible to them.

“Can you offer any input on this?”

1. If the listener is requesting a song on your playlist, only a fool would reply, “No, you’ll have to call back during the All Request Show.” Only a fool would deliberately and needlessly insult a customer.

2. I recommend avoiding replies like “I’ll see what I can do” or “Maybe if I get time,” because it sets the listener up for a disappointment and — assuming you’re not able to play it during your shift — it sets you up as someone who didn’t follow through on a promise.

Although many readers will prefer other responses, the one I recommend is an honest, “Hey, thanks very much for your request. We’ll get it on as soon as we can!”

From the perspective of the jock, “as soon we can” means “as soon as it comes up in rotation.”

But what if the caller follows up with, “When will that be?”

Then the jock honestly replies, “That’s difficult to say, but we’ll get it on as soon as we can. Thanks for calling” — and ends the call.

Why is that an honest reply? Because if the PD is smart, s/he has forbidden the jocks from telling the caller exactly when the song is scheduled to play next. It’s “difficult to say” because to do so would be violate the boss’ instructions!

Ric Gonzalez submitted this commercial for the Critique-A-Spot-A-Thon at this year’s International Radio Creative & Production Summit.

Obviously, the client insisted that Ric include 10 tons of stuff…including the availability of “baked potatoes” Monday through Friday.

(Hmm. Unless “baked potatoes” is some sort of code that only patrons of “gentlemen’s clubs” would understand….)

My big problem with this spot is the story: It’s not the story of someone patronizing this “gentlemen’s club”; it’s the story of some idiot who calls 911 Emergency because he can’t find a good strip club.

And the only pictures we see are of the idiot caller and the 911 Operator — who just happens to sound like a radio announcer.

We could’ve moved from the intro to the real story much more quickly. To illustrate, I did a quick edit…

(By the way, in real conversations, people interrupt each other.)

Lou Grant’s three words are the television equivalent of BUTCH CASSIDY & THE SUNDANCE KID’s “the fall alone will kill us!” line.