Former radio guy, MTV pioneer and E! Entertainment CEO Lee Masters loves “agent jokes.” Here’s one:
An agent is on the phone with a producer, pitching one of his clients. A minute or two into the conversation the producer interrupts and says, “Hey, wait a minute. You’re lying to me!”
The agent says, “Yeah, I know. But hear me out…”
When you begin a commercial with an obvious lie, you lose the entire battle:
No, you don‘t work at the pharmacy counter. You’re a voice actor. And everyone listening knows you don’t work at the pharmacy. They know that you are lying to them.
“It packs the power of Advil with a strong decongestant.”
Yep, that’s exactly how my pharmacist speaks. How about yours?
Oh, and I guess the music that comes in at :10 is being piped into the pharmacy?
October 1994 (continued): On Thursday night, I flew to Seattle. As I reached my seat while boarding the plane, my shoulder engaged in one of its amusing occasional pastimes: It popped out of the socket.
Disclocated Shoulder
This is an incredibly painful but usually short-lived experience. When it happens, my arm is twisted all out of shape. All I can do is try to manipulate the shoulder with my opposite hand until, somehow, it pops back into place. Sometime this takes only a minute or two; sometimes it takes longer.
This time it took longer.
Needing the space in which to stagger around like a wounded animal and not particularly wanting to provide a sideshow for the other passengers, I made my way to the rear of the plane and frantically tried to repair my shoulder.
Nothing I did succeeded.
I didn’t know if I could even be belted into my airplane seat in that condition. And I certainly did not want to spend the next couple of hours like that.
It had never taken more than five minutes or so to get my shoulder back in place. This time, five minutes passed without any success. Then ten. Then 15. After 25 minutes — literally seconds before the announcement was made to buckle up for take-off — my shoulder popped back in.
At least I had gotten that trip’s bad luck out of the way early. Or so I thought….
I belong to two groups. One is the Automobile Club. The other is a top secret group of People Who Think They’re More Important Than They Are. We meet twice a year and share “Best Practices” (i.e., lie to each other about how much we really accomplish).
At our most recent meeting, last month, I found myself making a number of notes and thinking, “I should share this with my blog readers.” So here we are. The first of several random thoughts and observations.
Mary Ellen Tribby
Mary Ellen Tribby is Publisher/CEO of Early To Rise. In addition to taking a merciless drubbing from a few of us over dinner the last night, Mary Ellen shared some of the practices that have made her company so successful.
Two questions they always ask before they embark on any project:
1. “Is it good for our customers?”
(For a radio station, “customers” = “listeners.” And “customers” = “advertisers.”
2. “Is it good for our company?”
(Please substitute “radio station” for “company.”)
She also included one declaration that needs no rewriting for radio:
“Everyone in the company is a marketer.”
Your radio station’s every employee, volunteer and/or intern is part of your Marketing Department. Every touch any of them makes with anyone outside the station is an opportunity to win a new friend — or strengthen an existing friendship — for the station.
