DAN O’DAY TALKS ABOUT RADIO

A Reader Asks:

It’s a constant challenge for us to write copy for car dealers and come up with something new and different. The usual approach these days is for a screaming guy to tell you all the reasons why people with bad credit should shop at a particular place. They all sound the same… and are obnoxious.

We have a client called “Courtesy Ford” that wants a new approach. The ideas that immediately came to mind were playing off the word “Courtesy.” We thought about using the “Politeness Police” going around to other fictitious car dealers and busting them for being rude, and then coming back to Courtesy and saying we couldn’t find any infractions there.

We also got out the thesaurus and came up with a bunch of phrases like agreeable, thoughtful, respectful… maybe offering a “politeness guarantee.” But we’re stuck as to how to proceed.

They’d like an ad with a :15 second donut to talk about specific deals. Any ideas you could throw my way would be much appreciated.

My Reply:

Although I’m sure you could come up with a series of cute commercials centered on “Courtesy,” you wouldn’t be doing the dealership a favor by airing them unless they truly are more courteous than the competition…which I doubt.

In reality, they’re probably no more courteous than other car dealers. So every time a potential customer experiences a less than courteous encounter with this dealer, they will remember this ad campaign and think, “Yeah, right.”

And even if they are more courteous than the competition, I have never heard of a customer who chose one car dealership over another because of the politeness factor. Customers choose car dealerships on the basis of price and trust.

Rather than base an entire campaign around a word in the client’s name, I would go back to the client and ask a series of questions designed to uncover a demonstrable advantage of buying a car from Courtesy Ford… their Unique Selling Proposition.

I’m going to give you a link to a page that contains 5 brief videos of 5 different guest speakers at this year’s PD Grad School.

Click on the link below, indicate the part of the world you’re from (you’ll see what I mean), and you’ll be taken directly to the Web page. Once you’re there, be sure to scroll down to the first video.

1. You’ll see a prominent radio researcher describing the most remarkable comment he’s heard from a radio programmer in his entire career. He’s being charitable; in my opinion, it’s an incredibly foolish comment.

2. The page itself describes PD Grad School 2009: The Complete Audio Record. In other words, it’s a page from which people can order the 10-CD package. I’m telling you this now, so you won’t feel that I “tricked” you.

3. Among the descriptions of the various sessions, there are five different video clips. Feel free to watch the videos without buying the CDs. (But in my completely unbiased opinion, if you’re a radio programmer than you definitely should buy the CDs.)

Oh, yeah, the link: Check out the videos here.

The promotion director of a certain large market radio station sent a memo to the station’s morning host, asking:

“Do you want me to type up a winner sheet for every contest you guys do in the morning, or can we do a generic one? Let me know your thoughts…”

The morning host — a very well-known, very successful, very professional veteran personality — replied as follows:

I need a winner sheet for each separate contest for several reasons.

1) Because of the immediacy of radio, things change quickly and at the last minute. Often sales-oriented contests have last-minute changes. This means that I need an updated form with specifics of each contest the day we start it. NOT TWO WEEKS AHEAD of time.

Since I do not attend the promotion meetings (because the morning host is not invited), I am not privy to the intricacies of each contest. That’s why I would appreciate:

A) An e-mail detailing the contest the day before it starts.

B) A contest sheet as a backup in the Prize Book as we previously discussed (on more than one occasion).

2) I need to know the contest has been approved, signed off on, and otherwise tweaked by you and the program director. Just because I talk to a salesperson does not, repeat, NOT mean that we are doing a contest.

Often I chat with salespeople to give them ideas on what we feasibly could do to help a client, but it is always subject to approval from the Promotions and Program Directors. That’s why I need a separate winner sheet for each contest.

3) Although we have listeners who win more than one contest, most of our winners are not aware of when a CD, movie ticket, concert ticket, etc., will be available — and if it isn’t, when they can pick it up. We have many prizes, and each contest is different.

Also, as far as concert tickets are concerned, we have had a problem in the past with overzealous DJs giving out more tickets than we have or listeners claiming that we have awarded them a prize when, in fact, we haven’t. Therefore, numbered sheets with jocks’ names on them in the case of hard-to-get tickets would be optimal. This is known in most businesses as Inventory Control.

On the other hand, if we have a movie house full of tickets, then I believe you could supply one sheet for the movie and we can make copies to give to the front desk.

4) The necessary items on each winner’s sheet should include (but not be limited to):

– Winner’s information

– A description of the prize

– How many of the prizes we have to give away (assuming it’s a purely morning show prize)

– Whether we need to get an aircheck for the client and/or sales department

– Whether a specific tag is needed for the client

– In the case of tickets, the date of the event

– Any other specifics of the event; e.g., other groups on the concert bill, or for a sporting event, the opposing team

– Whether the tickets/passes include any special type of entertainment: backstage, food, drink, etc.

– Whether you must be a certain age to get into the event (e.g., if liquor is served, you must be of age)

– If transportation is included, and if so, what it will be (limo, train tickets, etc). Also, whether we need to mention the transportation provider.

Now, that said, it shouldn’t be too much for the air personality to ask that the above items be specified in one or two easy-to-read paragraphs so that we can:

(1) Do a solicit with the first one over the beginning of a record

(2) Do the second one in a backsell briefly with the winner

You will need to somehow highlight the information that should be given to the winner but that does not need to be given over the air.

If this reply is too specific, it’s probably because I don’t feel I should be wasting my time with something like winner’s sheets and contest specifics that should be common sense to a promotion director in a market of this size.

Let’s move ahead because we have at least one major promotion a month with the morning show alone that we have to get on track, as well as the various weekend contests and standard giveaways that stations like ours do as a matter of course.

Cordially,

(NAME WITHHELD)

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If you’ve been thinking about joining Harlan for this intensive, “we’re gonna make you take each necessary step” class, please sign up before we close the doors.

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