At RAB 2009, Broadcast-Future!’s Peter Fuermetz pointed a video camera at me and asked for my honest evaluation of where radio is and where it’s headed.
I’m not sure my response will make me popular. But I’m kind of accustomed to that.
Note: For this clip, Peter faded out the 10-minute interview after just a few minutes. Please do not adjust your set.
October 1994 (continued): Ten days later I had several of my busiest days of the year…here in Los Angeles, where the NAB Radio Show was held. On the day before the convention began, Anne Chaabane arranged for me speak to a group of mostly Swedish broadcasters about promotions and production.
We met at the Westin Bonaventure Hotel, which was the main convention hotel. As you might know, Customer Service is a passion of mine; I conduct seminars on that topic for broadcasters and for retailers.
The Bonaventure that week was a textbook case of how not to handle a Customer Service crisis. In fact, if the hotel had been wise enough to seek out my counsel, I could have saved them more than $100,000 and minimized the devastating amount of damage the hotel’s reputation suffered.
The problem? The hotel’s computer system crashed…and stayed crashed for a couple of days. This meant the 1,100 arriving guests were not able to go to their rooms upon check-in. In fact, they couldn’t even check in at all; after standing in line for hours, they were told to try again later.
How did the hotel deal with this? They sent an employee up and down the line of angry customers, offering cups of fruit punch!
After several days of negotiating with the NAB, the hotel deducted one night’s room charge from each guest’s bill. By then, however, everyone had spent the week bitterly complaining about the Westin.
What should they have done?
Easy. While the guests were waiting in line, employees should have approached each guest, explained the situation, and said:
“On behalf of the Westin Bonaventure, I apologize. This is a terrible thing to happen to you, and we feel awful about it. I realize this can’t even begin to make it up to you, but after traveling here and standing in line all this time, you’re probably tired and hungry. May I buy you lunch in our coffee shop?”
What would this have cost – $10 per person? A total of $11,000. And instead of condemning the hotel, its customers would have said, “Yeah, it sure was a pain. But at least they bought me lunch.”
Instead, the Westin Bonaventure hemmed and hawed for days, lost ten times as much money, and still had every guest leave angry.
On April 9 I announced a contest.
The challenge: Write a six-word commercial for Harlan Hogan’s upcoming teleseminar class, STARTING YOUR VOICEOVER BUSINESS: Everything You Need To Know To Turn Your Dream Or Your Sideline Into A Business.
Honorable Mention — John Watts
“Don’t hope…Plan! Voice your dreams!”
A good distillation of the full sales letter. But not really a commercial.
Honorable Mention — Cory
“Your voice? A Career? Here’s how…”
Compact, economical language. But a bit too passive.
Honorable Mention — RJ Khurafati Amit
“Defy recession get paid for voiceover!”
Very strong. Weakness: Primary motivation for pursuing a voiceover career isn’t the recession; it’s the desire to have a voiceover career.
Honorable Mention — Nancy Tyler
“Learn to live your voiceover dreams.”
Nice, but mostly restates the title. Also — this will sound like a small point, but it’s important — the goal of someone who takes the class isn’t to “learn”; it’s to have a voiceover business. (“Learning” is a means to that end.)
Honorable Mention — Don May
“Voiceover: Your dream as your business”
Very good, except that it simply restates the title of the class. Otherwise, this might have been the winner.
Honorable Mention — Gary Burgess
“Your voice. His experience. Your future.”
Economical use of language. But it recaps the sales page rather than serving as a standalone commercial.
Honorable Mention — Derek Knight
“Channel Harlan’s anger; find your voice.”
Funny. Obviously Derek read the background. But although Harlan’s anger is part of his motivation for teaching the class, it doesn’t motivate a prospective student to take the class.
Honorable Mention — Synthman
“What’s Harlan Hogan’s darkest VO secret?”
Good way to get people to read the ad. But not a commercial itself.
And The Winner Is…
Terry (Stevens) Spialek:
“You CAN get paid to talk!”
Succinct, positive, encouraging, confident.
Thanks to everyone who entered. And congrats, Terry. The two prizes you selected — The Ultimate Non-Lawyer’s Guide to Copyright Infringement in Radio Commercials…and How to Avoid It
and
Dan O’Day’s Guaranteed 5-Step System for Creating 30 Second Radio Commercials That Get Results
— are winging their ways to you now.
According to an article on AppleInsider.com, Needham & Co.’s Charlie Wolf recently wrote that in its attempts to compete with the smashing success of the iPhone, “The smartphone industry is betting that it can meet this challenge and continue to lure feature phone users through more powerful hardware.”
“More specifically,” says AppleInsider.com, “Wolf believes the ‘misguided’ obsession with differentiation through hardware features will leave many smartphone makers treading water because ‘hardware is essentially a commodity.’
“That is, no manufacturer can achieve a sustainable advantage through hardware because the components in most smartphones are simultaneously available to all competitors.”
And Then There’s Radio.
“HD radio, that will save us.”
“Passing a law requiring all new automobiles to be equipped with HD Radio, that will save us.”
Radio is losing ground not because of inferior hardware. Radio is suffering because for decades it had a virtual monopoly on its core content (primarily music, followed by local voices).
Then came Consolidation, complete with “Economies of Scale” — which, unfortunately, the Corporate Geniuses That Be applied not just to the delivery of the product but to the product itself. They reduced Content to a commodity.
Almost immediately afterward, along came the Internet.
Having chosen to peddle an increasingly available product (homogenous music presented without a meaningful context) and having abandoned the last vestiges of “community service” and “civic responsibility,” American radio was shocked at how disloyal its previously captive audience turned out to be.
“But HD Radio Means Multiple Channels, Which Means More Choice!”
Uh-huh. Just as Consolidation meant more choice for listeners. (Hey, some of the richest, least competent radio CEO’s still publicly proclaim that without the slightest hint of irony.)
Multiple channels consisting of slivers of pre-packaged formats will not lure back the listeners Radio held in such low regard for so long.
Yes, I know glassy eyed HD proponents also promise more programming “diversity.” Just as Consolidation presented listeners with “greater choice.”
Let’s see if you can force your mind not to wander during the following 30 seconds:
“May I have another, sir?”
“Why, certainly. Enjoy.”
You see, most people don’t know what HD radio is, so they tie it into something everyone is familiar with: the salp. The salp??
Here’s what a salp looks like. Now do you want to rush out and get an HD radio?
