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A Loyal Reader Writes:
“I have been asked to put together a series of spots to promote, on air, why advertisers should advertise on our radio station. We are a small AM stand alone station that super serves the city we are in. When handed the project a million ideas when through my mind. That got me thinking, ‘What is the best promotional sales ad I have ever heard on a station?’
“My answer….none. They all seem ultra focused on ratings, which we don’t have, or were completely negative putting down tv and newspaper advertising as insanely expensive!
“So I ask you Dan O’Day what is the best sales promotional ad you have ever heard? Wrote? Used? Copied?”
— Bob Cain/WKAL
The reason most “advertise with us” commercials are terrible is the same reason that most other radio ads are terrible:
They focus on the advertiser, not on the prospect whom they can help.
They make unsubstantiated claims that no one believes.
They talk about themselves, rather than to and about their target audience.
Creating an effective spot to attract advertisers to your radio station is easy:
Use testimonials from clients for whom you’ve produced profitable results.
Here’s an adaptation of one I offered in O’DAY ON RADIO ADVERTISING.
(CLIENT) I’m Ed Schmidt of Schmidt’s Department Store. When Radio X agreed to advertise our big summer clothing sale, they didn’t tell me that our radio commercials would attract so many customers that our entire staff would have to skip meal breaks and rest breaks in order to serve everyone.
As a result, all of us at Schmidt’s went without food, beverage or rest from the time we opened our doors in the morning until we closed them in the afternoon. While it was wonderful to have had our most successful summer clothing sale ever, some of our more delicate staff members mentioned to me that it would have been nice if they had had time at least to use the toilet facilities once or twice.
(ANNOUNCER) The staff and management of Radio X sincerely apologize to the employees at Schmidt’s Department Store. If you’re a business owner who would like us to help you attract more customers than your employees can comfortably handle, please call Sally Sikorski, Sales Manager at Radio X. Her phone number is (555) 555-5555.
Prelude
I’m about to share with you a story about the same Los Angeles radio general manager who once explained in a newspaper interview that he had fired the station’s morning show host because the jock just didn’t have the talent necessary to succeed:
“I’ve taught him everything I know about radio, and his ratings haven’t improved at all.”
But That’s Not the Radio Management Moment. This Is.
Years ago, the general manager of that large Los Angeles radio station spoke up at a broadcast convention session devoted to ratings research.
“Arbitron ratings are worthless. They’re completely inaccurate.
“And I can prove it:
“According to Arbitron, my radio station has had lower ratings for 12 consecutive quarters. How can that be? We haven’t changed a single thing on the station during that entire time!”
A Loyal Reader submits a radio commercial for a critique.
“Like to get your thoughts on this one. I’m working from a fact sheet. It’s ‘live’ but actually not, if you catch my drift.”
— Jim Walsh, KLXX/Bismarck
I like the way you geographically place the advertiser: “On the south side of Bismarck, right across from the mall” — that’s exactly the way to do it.
In this spot, you give the location at the beginning and at the end.
But there’s no point in telling people where the advertiser is until after you’ve made the audience want what the advertiser is selling. So delete the first description of the location.
When you say, “Some new menu items to talk about,” you’re telling people:
1. You’re talking about something because you’re supposed to talk about it, not because you find it interesting.
2. The topic in no way is about the audience; it’s about the “things” the advertiser wants you to talk about.
The disconnect from listeners continues when you say, “Let’s talk about the burnt ends…a really big thing happening at Big Dave’s.”
Don’t “talk about the burnt ends.” Talk about the diner’s experience when eating the burnt ends at Famous Dave’s.
Which do you think is more personal and one-to-one:
1) “It’s available as an appetizer or in a sandwich”
or
2) “You can get it as an appetizer or in a sandwich.”
Because you don’t identify the restaurant’s “director of operations” by name, why bother to give the person’s title? It would be more conversational and real if you said, “They like to call it ‘meat candy.'”
I did, however, like your little laugh on that phrase, recognizing the silliness of the nickname.
A radio commercial — including a spot for a restaurant —should have a single Core Message. That’s the one thing you want the targeted listener to hear, to understand, and to remember.
This advertisement could have been all about the burnt ends.
But it also talks about catfish, the new brisket burgers, cedar plank salmon (about which you sound very unsure), wilbur beans, the greens, and bread pudding with raisins.
By the time you reach the end of this radio ad, the listener has completely forgotten about the “burnt ends.” (Probably some readers of this critique are realizing they, too, forgot all about those.)
“Even if you have been there recently” smacks of desperation. If they’ve been there recently and enjoyed it, the spot should be enough to reinforce their awareness of Famous Dave’s.
Although one of the radically different things I teach about how to write effective restaurant radio advertising is to sell the experience the diner has and not the food, you need to create or recreate that experience, not simply say “enjoy the experience.”
Suggestion:
Don’t work from the fact sheet or long list of bullet points.
Find out what the one Core Message should be.
If your station’s account executive can’t tell you and can’t or won’t find out, you select the core message.
Get a real sheet of paper and a writing utensil that you hold in your hand (rather than a computer monitor and keyboard) and list bullet points of only the elements that are absolutely necessary to the spot.
Example:
- Famous Dave’s
- Burnt ends
- Hickory smoked
- Texas beef brisket
- Carmelized in sweet, zesty BBQ sauce
- Meat candy
- S. side of Bismarck, across from mall
Then, with an eye on the clock, genuinely ad-lib the radio commercial.
I was in my first year of radio, working at my second station, in Naples, Florida.
On Saturdays I worked an 8 (or was it 10?)-hour shift, babysitting the network feed.
A few times each hour, I’d pop into the studio and play the local commercials and station I.D.
I spent much of the rest of my time browsing through the station’s record library, immediately outside the broadcast studio.
It was there I came across several LPs by Mike Nichols & Elaine May.
And my world changed.
Photo courtesy of the Dan O’Day collection.
I’d never heard anything like it. Two voices. Two people conversing.
On the surface, a comedy sketch. Just beneath, sharp commentary on our culture and, sometimes, the human condition (aka the silliness of humans).
Is there a style of music you absolutely love? When you hear it, it’s as though it was written or performed on your own personal wavelength?
That’s how it was for me with Nichols & May. They just happened to be on my personal wavelength.
From the first time I heard them, I experienced their performance as a musical style that I loved.
It was a dozen years later before I experienced that sensation again.
I had moved back to Los Angeles. At the time, L.A. had a thriving Equity Waiver (i.e., tiny theaters with little if any budget) scene, and I had subscribed to some service that offered half-price theatre tickets.
One day they offered tickets to something called Sills and Company. I had no idea what that might be, but it was half-price and I had nothing else to do.
Sills and Company was in East Hollywood. On or near Heliotrope Drive. It looked like a converted garage.
It turned out “Sills” was Paul Sills. I’d never heard of him.
Soon I’d learn he was co-founder of Chicago’s Compass Theater and its successor, Second City.
The entire evening consisted of improvisational “theater games,” played by a company that included Valerie Harper, Dick Schaal, Richard Libertini (who was breathtakingly brilliant at improv), Severn Darden (considered by many to be the ultimate improv genius), Garry Goodrow and Avery Schreiber, among others.
Paul Sills would call two or more players onstage, tell them what game they were playing and then stand on the sidelines, waiting for magic to happen.
That night, I heard that music again, for the first time in more than a decade.
It wasn’t similar to what I had felt when listening to Nichols & May; it was the same feeling.
Only later did I learn that the team of Nichols & May was born in Chicago, as members of the Compass Theater, directed by Paul Sills.
In fact, it was Sills who introduced them to each other, saying, “‘I want you to meet the only other person on the campus of the University of Chicago who is as hostile as you are.’”
Remember the scene in THE GRADUATE when Anne Bancroft (Mrs. Robinson) is smoking a cigarette and Dustin Hoffman summons the courage suddenly to kiss her…and when he finishes, she exhales a cloud of smoke?
That moment was directly lifted from a Nichols & May sketch created years earlier. No one ever accused the film’s director of plagiarism; the director was Mike Nichols.
If it weren’t for those Nichols & May records, I’m not sure I ever would have stopped trying to be a great DJ and, instead, begun writing and performing my own material on the radio.
Probably it’s not a coincidence that so much of my stuff was simple, two-voice dialogue.
In radio, time is compressed.
Unlike film or TV, you’re not allowed several minutes to establish a character or scene. From your very first words, your audience needs to know who and where you are.
By “who,” I don’t mean just the identity of your character. Your listeners quickly should understand the attitude of your character.
Occasionally I’ll illustrate this with the opening of one of Nichols & May’s most famous routines:
With that one line, Elaine told us volumes about her character. That was a woman guided by an obstructive nature, and she’d never voluntarily help a customer.
Here’s the entire routine:
Humor, like music, produces a subjective experience for those who consume it.
I can’t speak for you.
But for me, listening to that routine again today, more than 50 years after it was recorded, is just as exhilarating as it was the first time I heard it outside the broadcast studio in that little radio station in Florida.
