Here is yet another bad radio commercial that won a $5,000 Radio Mercury Award because it entertained the judges.
But that’s not why I’m sharing it with you.
I’m sharing this spot with you because I love his explanation of why that was incorrect grammar:
“This isn’t France.”
Lousy commercial, but that’s funny.
The latest issue of my Radio Advertising Letter explores the principle of Specificity and features my critique of a radio commercial designed to attract more advertisers to that radio station.
This post is for my subscribers to use to add their own comments, thoughts, objections, examples, etc.
I have stayed in thousands of hotel rooms in 36 countries. But I’ve never stayed at a hotel where Housekeeping is even sloppier and more incompetent than I am at making a bed.
Until a couple of months ago, when I spent a week at Spangdahlem Lodging (Germany).
It was so bad that I turned to the U.S. Army for help.
February, 1995 (continued):
A week after speaking to a public radio group in Nashville, I flew to Tulsa for a couple of days, where I conducted both HOW TO CREATE MAXIMUM IMPACT RADIO ADVERTISING and AIR PERSONALITY PLUS+ for Carl Smith and the Oklahoma Association of Broadcasters.
As you might know, I conduct Customer Service seminars for retailers as well as broadcasters. Here’s a minor incident that illustrates an important Customer Service point:
The seminars were held at the Doubletree Inn. For years the Doubletree chain had cultivated a unique “benchmark” image by making it a point to deliver a couple of freshly baked (still warm!) chocolate chip cookies to the guest’s room shortly after check-in. You might consider this true “value-added.”
Like any value-added item, the first time the guest experiences it, it is a delightful surprise. On subsequent visits, the guest expects it (and, presumably, still enjoys it).
But when I checked into this Doubletree, the desk clerk completed my registration and wordlessly handed me both a key and a box containing two cold chocolate chip cookies.
Did I think, “Oh, great! Cookies”?
No. I thought, “Hey, these are cold. And usually they bring them to my room. And the desk clerk’s determined lack of human touch has reduced this ritual from a warm, personal contact with the hotel to something he simply is required to give me.”
In my seminars, I refer to every contact a business has with a customer as a “profit point” — a chance to enhance or strengthen the relationship with the customer. By transforming freshly baked cookies into just another part of the system, however, the Doubletree brand lost the profit point…systemwide.
