DAN O’DAY TALKS ABOUT RADIO

Want to learn what it’s like to hang out with Paul McCartney, throw TVs with Led Zeppelin, and trash a hotel room with Joe Walsh?

One of the highest-rated sessions ever conducted at my PD Grad School for radio program directors was “Radio Mega-Marketing” by Beau Phillips.

Beau has just published a book that is rattling the rock world: I KILLED PINK FLOYD’S PIG. Who would have thought any wild stuff was going on behind the scenes in the worlds of rock stars?
Get your copy of Beau’s book here.

(That’s not an “affiliate” link; I don’t make anything from it. But in exchange for promoting it here, Beau agreed to delete the chapter about me, Olivia Newton-John, and those twin sisters who for all world looked least 18.)

You’re a radio sales account executive who continually prospects for new advertisers for your station.

What do you do after you present to a prospect who ultimately doesn’t buy?

I mean, after you add that person to your “try again in six months” file.

Send that person a thank-you note.

After all, she invested her time in you.

Send a real letter via postal mail, not e-mail.

A real envelope, a real letter, even a real postage stamp.

Hand-addressed.

“Dear Mary,

“Thank you again for meeting with me this week.

“Even though you decided not to work with us at this time, I really enjoyed our talk…and I learned a lot about the (_____) business.

(If appropriate, end with an informal reference to some personal aspect of your conversation:)

“Hope to bump into you at some upcoming Raiders game….

“Sincerely,
“Ad Exec”

I guarantee you’ll make a positive and memorable impression on someone who one day might choose to become one of your radio advertising clients.

You think you’re a genius at radio promotions? You’ve heard and seen it all, been there, done that?

Around 1960, Chuck Blore was brought to Minneapolis to program KDWB.

“KDWB was way down at the end of the dial — 63. And up until that time all of the radio stations were above 1100. People didn’t even know that the other end of the dial existed. What we had to do was figure a way to get listeners down there. So the answer was: Advertise on the other radio stations.

“Well, though it’s an obvious answer, it wasn’t that easy to bring off. What we did was get the fellow who invented Hadacol — “

{a much promoted “patent medicine” of the 1950s}

” — to record these commercials for Formula 63. It was free and guaranteed to remove boredom.

“Had any of the stations bothered to check into the situation, they would have found out KDWB was behind it. But they didn’t. They got the spots from the agency and put them on the air.

“We’d bought guaranteed time so that on a given moment if you tuned completely across the dial, all you’d hear was that one spot.

“The product was available in the drugstores. People could go into drugstores and pick up these packages of Formula 63. And they went into the drugstores by the thousands.

“In these little packages was a message that Formula 63 was a radio station and if they tuned it in they would never be bored again.

“Some of the stations were furious; others made us finish the contract. Most of them thought, ‘Hey, we’ve been duped, but what a great thing to have happen for radio.’

“But there’s one giant station in the town that didn’t think it was funny. I guess I wouldn’t have thought it was very funny if someone had done it to me; I’d have been furious.”

Reprinted by permission from THIS BUSINESS OF RADIO PROGRAMMING, copyright by Claude and Barbara Hall.

View video of Chuck Blore telling the KDWB Formula 63 story.

Get the entire Chuck Blore DVD here and use it for a year’s worth a monthly sessions to inspire your jocks.

This type of radio advertising inanity has become all too common, as exemplified in this commercial for MasterCard.

View this MasterCard radio commercial critique on YouTube.