The best radio video ever.
A few days ago I critiqued two commercials for a client.
The client is a direct marketer, so he takes this stuff seriously. (Direct marketers don’t distract themselves with ridiculous attempts at “branding.”)
I was typically meticulous in my critique. (You say “harsh,” I say “meticulous.”)
I’ve never told anyone this, but as soon as I’ve e-mailed a critique to a client, I become a little nervous.
What if they’re offended? I don’t want to offend people. Especially clients.
What if they’re so offended they demand a refund? I really don’t want that. (I also don’t give refunds on critiques, and no one’s ever asked for one. Still, the concern does cross my mind.)
So when my email inbox included two messages from him this morning, I took a deep breath before opening them.
The first was in response to my first critique:
Awesome! Thanks for doing a killer job on this… this is VERY helpful. Once I’ve produced some new spots using your suggestions I’ll send you them to you to review.
The second message, responding to the second critique, said:
Thanks again Dan… great suggestions and points.
It was a nice way to start the morning.
Usually I critique commercial copy before it’s produced. That makes sense to me, because that way the client has time to change the copy before going into production. But in this case, the spots had been written and recorded.
One hour and 16 minutes after I received the client’s second “wow, thanks!” response, I received a very long email from someone I don’t know.
That someone appears to be the guy who wrote and produced the commercials I had critiqued. It was a cc of a message he had sent to the client.
It was not what one would call a rave review of my critique.
Two elements of his rant leapt out at me:
1. He defended the use of the lame voice talent (whom I had pointed out sounded like a schlocky announcer who clearly was simply reading the copy he was being paid to read) by saying, “With our budget, that’s all we can afford.”
Ridiculous.
Those particular spots didn’t require a Harlan Hogan. I know plenty of guys (they used a male voice) who would’ve done a much better job for $300 or so.
I don’t know what they paid their VO guy, but if they’re not willing to shell out $250 – $300 for a decent announcer read, they need to adjust their priorities.
(Come to think of it: The client paid me more than that for the two critiques. And he got his money’s worth. Certainly they can afford a decent voice performer to deliver their sales message.)
2. The email was very long. I mean, this guy was upset.
And Then I Did Something Very, Very Smart.
I closed the email without reading it.
I got the gist of it: “This O’Day guy doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”
Why read further?
So I could become offended?
So I catalog and rebut his evidence of my alleged incompetence?
A number of years ago I managed to learn not to waste my time responding to hate mail or nutty mail. Why argue with a nut or a jerk?
To be fair: This guy’s rant didn’t appear to be hateful or nutty. He just totally disagreed with me.
But do you know what would have happened if I had taken 2 minutes to read his entire attack (or, from his perspective, the defense of his work)?
I would have spent hours mentally refuting his every point. Completely involuntarily.
That’s how my brain works. If I think I’ve been unfairly attacked, my instinct is to defend myself — even if only within the privacy of my own mind.
But I had other stuff to do today. Why waste any of my sorely limited time (and even more severely limited brain power) marshalling an argument I never would deliver?
What Does This Have To Do With You?
Maybe nothing.
Or maybe you’re a radio station producer and a thoughtless salesperson mentioned, while passing you in the hallway, “The client hates that spot you did for him.”
Oh? You mean that spot that was approved every step of the way and now is on the air?
Let it go. Getting upset won’t help.
Or you’re an account exec and the Traffic Director screams at you because you didn’t remind her that she had promised to change your client’s rotation, so she forgot to do it and it’s all your fault.
Let it go. Let her words float past you like a summer breeze. (You don’t bother to argue with the wind, do you?)
Or you’re a jock, and the station engineer (!) pointedly tells you the comedy bit you did on yesterday’s show “really wasn’t very funny.”
Should the station engineer be critiquing the air talent? No.
Should you care anything at all about whether the station engineer thinks you’re funny or your show is good? C’mon.
Let it go.
Use that time and energy for something constructive.
Why, look at me. The time I saved by not reading and then mentally constructing a devastating response to that email?
I used it to write this post.
Recently I did a phone consultation with a Radio Advertising Advantage member — a radio station account executive in a major market.
One of his biggest clients is a laser eye surgeon. The client does tons of radio advertising.
The client measures the success of an ad campaign by the number of phone calls it generates. And the client is unhappy with his advertising results.
1. His commercials — like those of virtually every advertiser in this category, in every market — boast about how many operations he’s done.
2. At the end of the boasting, the announcer gives the phone number several times — without giving the lister any reason to call.
3. The client writes all of his own copy and refuses to consider any new approaches.
To recap: The client considers himself to be an advertising expert and is unhappy with the results he gets.
Can you say “delusional”?
Here are the facts you need to know about this business category:
A) Everyone who wears glasses and/or contact lenses would love to have perfect vision without the aid of lenses.
B) Many of the people I just described cannot afford the surgery.
C) Many of the people I just described can afford the surgery.
D) For the people who can afford the surgery, only one thing prevents them from having it done:
Fear.
Most of us have heard of (or know) people who had the surgery and love the results.
And most of us have heard of (or know) people who had the surgery and now suffer from vision problems they didn’t use to have: Blurred vision….Light sensitivity….Poor night vision….Distorted depth perception.
If you’re unlucky enough to suffer negative effects from the surgery (beyond the adjustments that are predicted for all patients during the first few days after the procedure), those effects are irreversible.
Hey, I’d love to have perfect vision.
But to me it’s not worth the risk of damaging my vision… permanently.
It’s not worth spending the rest of my life with blurred vision — and with the knowledge that I caused it by opting for laser surgery.
I can afford the surgery. So what stops me?
Fear.
What should an ad campaign promise? Perfect vision for the rest of your life.
What must an ad campaign find a way to address? Prospects’ fears.
You don’t need to address them explicitly (although you might choose to do so). Maybe you’ll say something like this:
“ONE DAY” – :60
You know that one day you will have laser eye surgery. You don’t like having to fumble for your glasses. Contact lenses are a pain.
You’ve heard about all the famous actors and athletes who have had laser eye surgery, about how it’s changed their lives.
In fact, you know some people —people you work with, neighbors, people from your church — who already have achieved perfect vision with a simple, completely painless 10-minute procedure.
But….Well, you’re a little nervous about the whole thing.
The people at Ed’s Laser Eye Clinic understand. After all, many of them already have had the procedure themselves.
That’s why Ed’s Laser Eye Clinic is offering you a completely free consultation, to help you determine if the time is right for you.
Laser eye surgery isn’t for everybody. But it is for most people who presently wear glasses and would like to throw them away forever.
To schedule your free consultation, just call 310-476-8111. That’s 310-476-8111. Let’s find out if the time is right for you to see your future.
A friend called me up, all excited.
“I took Claude Hall’s book” — THIS BUSINESS OF RADIO PROGRAMMING — “to help pass the time on a flight from L.A. to New York.
“The interview with Ron Jacobs blew my mind — especially when he talked about the ‘future’ role of computers in radio programming.”
I pulled my copy off the shelf and eventually found the pertinent part of the interview.
Jacobs was heavily into computer technology when he programmed KGB/San Diego — mostly for researching his audience.
Hall asked if a computer could be used “for programming, too?”
Jacobs: “It will do ANYTHING, providing the input is there. Right now, the only thing preventing all of the wonderful science fiction stuff from happening in radio is the fact that we do not have the capacity, in a small physical space, to store music.
“On a one-inch by two-inch piece of computer tape, we can store hundreds, thousands of bits of information. But on audio tape, that’s only a 15th of a second of music.
“Whenever we achieve solid state storage of music, so that a tiny chip might be the entire Jefferson Starship album — or, perhaps, their entire catalog, so that a radio station doesn’t have to have a gymnasium-sized room for its music library — then we’ll be able to completely use the computer.
“If you were only programming the playlist of a Top 40 station, you could use the computer 100 percent now.
“But try programming 3,000 songs, try programming 6,000 songs, try putting them all on cartridges and programming by computer. You’d have to have people on roller skates whizzing around the room, going up and down ladders, racing from Instacart unit to Instacart unit. You’d have to have a building full of Instacart units.”
Hall: “So (at KGB) the computer handles everything — not only business aspects, but programming aspects?”
Jacobs: “Sure. Normally, when you mention the word computer, people get uptight. They think a robot will walk in and take over their job. The machine is only a tool for mankind — always has been.
“It’s the wheel helping man, not vice-versa. Sooner or later, the computer will be a way of life in radio, helping the manager, the program director, the sales manager, the music director, the air personality — not replacing them.”
Hall: “But what will be the role of the air personality in the computer world?”
Jacobs: “Communication. The computer has yet to be invented that can truly communicate with people. That’s not to say that technology doesn’t exist to make computers talk. In an airport, you hear a series of tape loops about arrivals and departures that come off computers. That’s information, not communication.
“Communication has to do with emotions. Communicating is a human voice passing on to another human a feeling: I love you. I hate you. The disc jockey’s role is still going to be to communicate.”
Dan’s Postscript: By now most of the radio world (except, of course, for college disc jockeys) has gotten used to the idea of someone other than the jock picking the music for his show.
But whenever the concept is introduced to an emerging international radio market, there’s a loud protest from the air talent: “I know better than anyone else which music to pick for my audience!”
If you’re programming to a well-defined mass appeal audience…No, you don’t know better than anyone else.
Music is easy to research accurately.
Whenever I hear some jock complain about this, I can’t help but think back to my days as an air talent. I used to complain — loudly, to anyone who happened to be in the studio while I was preparing for my show:
“Why do I have to decide which songs to play and then find them? Why can’t a computer do that, and I can concentrate on what I’m going to say between those songs??”
Maybe that’s the difference between a visionary…and just a guy who complains. I whined and cursed and complained about the way things were; Ron predicted the way things would be.
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