John Records Landecker — one of the all-time great radio disc jockeys and also a darned good guy — explains what it really takes to have a career as a radio personality….
If the commercial copywriter can ask only one question of the account executive before starting work on a new radio advertising campaign, here is the question that should be asked:
“Tell me what I need to know to be able to sell this product or service to our client’s customers.”
What if a radio show prep service were to present you with an outrageous offer:
“A collection of 2,500 pieces of material…all of them guaranteed to fit your personality and to work for you on the air. If even a single one of those 2,500 bits doesn’t work for you, you don’t have to pay a penny.”
If such a guarantee were possible, would you be interested?
Might you even pay for such a service?
Here’s a technique I call Preparing in Reverse — and it seems so obvious that you might want to kick yourself for not having done this all along.
If you’re a clever, articulate person, during the course of a typical show you will ad-lib a number of remarks that are at least mildly amusing: an off-the-cuff comment about the weather, a humorous intro to a record, or even just an offbeat way to give the time or temperature.
As soon as you deliver it on-air, write it down.
Use it again in six months or a year.
If on average you come up with only two such remarks per day and if you had begun writing them down (after the fact) one year ago, by now you would have 500 custom written, personally tested pieces of material that you know will work for you.
If you had been doing this for the past five years, you would have at your fingertips a collection of 2,500 such pieces of custom written material.
If you haven’t been doing that already, start today.
And be sure to thank yourself five years from now.
A Loyal Reader Asks:
“Do you have any seminars regarding how you pitch/ present clients their radio creative? After you’ve gotten the order and agreed on what the campaign will be like and now are presenting the finished spots to the client?”
While neither the audio seminar or the e-book is completely devoted to that topic, I do address it in:
HOW TO EDUCATE YOUR RADIO ADVERTISING CLIENTS (e-book)
HOW TO EDUCATE YOUR RADIO ADVERTISING CLIENTS (audio seminar)
Naturally, you should buy both the e-book and the audio seminar. But here’s some advice that is certain to shock many readers.
“Impossible,” they’ll proclaim.
“Ridiculous,” they’ll scoff.
“Inconceivable,” they’ll declare.
Here it is:
Never give a client the authority to “approve” the copy — that is, the actual script.
Very few advertisers have the ability to “hear” what the words (and other sounds) on a page actually will sound like after they’re recorded.
Unless, of course, it’s a terribly written, incredibly boring script…in which case it will be just as boring on the radio as it is on the page.
There is no reason why your advertisers should be able to “hear” the written commercial. Heck, most people who work for radio stations can’t do that either.
I’ll bet a good accountant can quickly scan a business plan and tell you whether or not it’s likely to succeed.
But to me, it would be just a bunch of meaningless numbers. I can read the numbers, but I don’t know how they interact with each other to create a complete message.
On the other hand, I’ve got a knack for dialog. I write for the spoken word better than most, and I can “hear” spoken word scripts better than most.
Probably if you’re a good copywriter, you can, too.
But your client?
How is he supposed to know that one line is written with an intended degree of sarcasm, while another is to slide ever so gingerly off the voice talent’s tongue?
Okay, I’m still not convincing you. So you tell me:
Have you ever sent an e-mail to someone who misunderstood your intent? They understood the words, but they completely missed the message?
Most commonly, what you intended to sound light and breezy struck them as cold and critical.
That’s certainly happened with me. That’s why it takes me 30 minutes to write a single e-mail message — to painfully search for each potential land mine that I didn’t mean to plant.
Why are e-mails so dangerous?
Because the reader can’t hear your intent.
Expecting the average client to be able to judge a radio commercial by the script alone is unfair, unwise, and an invitation to failure and frustration.
O’Day, The Expert
A while ago I spent a few days consulting with an ad agency that specializes in radio.
On the plane ride, I reviewed a couple of dozen commercial scripts they had sent me. I noted some things I thought could be strengthened, some that were bad, some that were good.
The agency specializes in Direct Response advertising, and they very carefully track the results of every commercial they create.
Because in most cases they had sent me more than one script for any particular client, someone on their team thought it would be interesting (i.e., a wonderful opportunity for me to fail) to have me critique and compare competing commercial copy — for example, giving my opinions on two spots written for the same client and proclaiming which is likely to be more successful.
I’m very good at that.
But despite what you might have heard from people who claim to have reduced advertising to an exact Science, it’s really a combination of Art and Science.
And when there’s Art, there’s always some Uncertainty.
Fortunately, my “predictions” were highly accurate: In every case, the ones I said were stronger turned out to have produced greater results.
For one particular client, I had made a number of notes on three commercial scripts — rewriting entire lines and paragraphs, nitpicking individual phrases. The copy wasn’t bad, but in certain places I made notations including:
“Very weak, rings false”
and
“Unbelievable.”
Before I tried to predict the outcomes of those spots, my hosts said, “This guy has a very unusual voice. You should hear the actual commercials first.”
They played the commercials, voiced by the advertiser.
After hearing the first spot, I said, “This guy is a platform speaker, isn’t he?” (That’s industry jargon for a “professional public speaker.”)
“Yes, he is.”
“Right,” I said, throwing my notes aside.
That guy had a speaking style that I never could have imagined from the scripts.
For one thing, it never occurred to me (from the raw copy) that the speaker had a New Zealand accent.
And I had no way of knowing the speaker would be such an accomplished salesman.
If I’d had only the written words to go by, I would have predicted failure for two of the three commercials.
But upon hearing the actual spots, I knew they were winners.
And I was right. His commercials work. They make money.
Moral
I’m supposed to be pretty good at judging commercial copy from the words alone, but without a clear understanding of how they would be delivered I would have rejected the copy as too weak.
I would have been dead wrong.
And I’ll bet I’m a lot better than your clients are at judging commercial copy.
How do you get a client to approve a commercial without giving them script approval?
Remind to tell you how in a future blog post.
