DAN O’DAY TALKS ABOUT RADIO

A Loyal Reader Writes:

“Recently you discussed treating contest winners like customers. What would you do if a contest winner came to the station, said they didn’t want the prize they won, and asked for something else?

“Our station policy has been that the winner gets what they were told on-the-air they won, with no substitutions. With your suggestions of keeping listeners happy, we probably should give them another prize.

“I lean toward the ‘they won what they won’ theory, but I’d appreciate your opinion.”

If you’re not talking about a compensated promotion that requires you to give a specific prize for a specific contest….

If you can easily provide them with a prize that they will appreciate more….

If it won’t cost the station more…

If it won’t violate the rules of the contest…

And if it won’t somehow harm the provider of either prize….

Why not give it to them?

I mean, if essentially they’re getting something from your “prize closet,” and it really makes no difference to the station whether it’s a day-glow frisbee or a morning show yo-yo, you’re both getting what you want:

The winner gets a prize, and you get to clear out that much space in your prize closet.

At one of my morning show seminars, someone asked:

“When my partner and are engaged in what we think is a fascinating on-air conversation, how can we know whether or audience is interested, too?”

The answer boils down to two elements:

1.  Skill

2.  Awareness

By “skill,” I mean the ability to talk about whatever interests you in a way that engages your audience — whether that audience consists of thousands of radio listeners or just your co-worker at the water cooler.

Here’s the secret of the world’s greatest storytellers:

They don’t tell great stories. They tell stories really, really well. It’s their telling that makes the stories great.

Great radio personalities have the ability to share their interests in a manner that also interests the listener.

Mediocre jocks, on the other hand, don’t enter the studio with any thoughts, musings or experiences to share. As a result, they’re always wondering, “What should I talk about?”

In fact, here’s a key distinction between a personality and a DJ/announcer:

The DJ/announcer enters the studio each day wondering, “What can I talk about today?”

That person desperately searches for the day’s magical list of online “hot topics.” That person always is asking, “Heard any great bits lately? Any good jokes? Any good phone-in topics?”

Meanwhile, the personality enters the studio each day with pages & pages of notes of ideas that sprang from his/her own life, mind, experience and imagination…and wonders, “How can I possibly fit all of this into just four hours??”

“Awareness,” on the other hand, is simply the ability to notice that the population of your market is somewhat larger than the number of people you deal with inside your radio station.

Good conversationalists are aware of their audiences. All too many “DJs” are so focused on themselves that they haven’t a clue what matters to their listeners.

Returning to the original question:  Assuming that you and your partner have the ability to talk about something in a way that includes rather than excludes the listener — avoiding inside jokes, staying focused rather than aimlessly rambling — then here is the test of whether the topic itself is likely to interest your audience:

Ask yourself, “If I were at a dinner party, could I imagine talking about this with one of the other guests?” If the answer is yes, then you probably don’t need to worry.

Just what we need: The small market radio cliche of making the story of a commercial the story of the making of the commercial has reached large advertisers….

What is that commercial about? It’s about a guy who doesn’t have enough time to say all the things he needs to say.

Beginning the radio commercial with, “Okay, I have 60 seconds to tell you why now is the best time every to switch to Verizon FiOs, which is really hard because there are so many reasons and 60 seconds goes by really fast. See, it’s already been oh, 10 seconds, and I still haven’t mentioned that now is your last chance to get…”

— is like being a patient in a hospital’s emergency room and having the ER doctor greet you by saying, “Wow, I’m supposed to take care of all these patients and they’re all emergencies and some of them might even die if they don’t get help fast but they’ve really cut back on staffing here. They warned me about this in medical school, but first there was all that studying and now these crazy hours and how am I supposed to find time to treat you?”

That story would be about the ER physician, just as this commercial is about the announcer.

The only picture that spot paints is of the guy trying to beat the clock. You didn’t picture the results of whatever the heck it is they’re supposed to be selling. In fact, a high percentage of listeners wouldn’t even have been able to identify the product. Verizon….Files??

(For the record, it’s Verizon FiOS.)

But golly, whoever produced this probably thinks it’s cute.

And whoever paid for it with Verizon’s money…Well, they achieved their primary goal. They spent their budget.

I’m guessing opinion will be divided on this new commercial for the Audi A1.

You’ll hear my analysis following the actual commercial below.

To really test the spot, please do mute your speakers when the commercial itself begins. (First you’ll hear me talk a little.)

Nope, there’s no Call To Action.

It’s not a direct response advertisement. It’s a real-life example of an all too often misused term: “Branding.”

At this stage, they’re still introducing the brand.

Assuming they have a lot of money to put into this campaign and assuming that once people are familiar with the A1, Audi will switch to a well crafted campaign designed to get consumers to act (e.g., test drive the Audi A1 this weekend), this appears to be a rare instance of true branding.