Here’s a question to ponder over the Labor Day weekend: Do your commercials suck? Seriously … Is your News/Talk station still airing remnant inventory pushing cheap Viagra just so you can make a quick buck? How about an Alternative station in your cluster airing a spot clearly targeting the Hip-Hop audience found on a sister station, because your sales pros did a combo buy for a little added dollars in the bank? RBR+TVBR Media Information Bureau featured columnist Ken Benner has some thoughts on how some radio stations have forgotten how to use the power of auditory messaging to best reach consumers. It could be one reason why Madison Avenue, and its many millennials, don’t think of radio as the ROI delivery machine it truly is.
By Ken Benner
Back, way back, before the launch of unattended, 24/7 satellite-fed radio programming, I managed a small-market station. Paul Harvey was the most prominent and respected voice of radio back then.
My two largest accounts were auto dealers. One sold Fords, the other sold Chevrolets. Both dealers sold a lot of cars, thanks to our station.
The Chevrolet dealer sold more cars, by far, than any other dealer in the state. This was done largely with the help of Mr. Harvey, who recorded an excellent sponsor intro and outro for his daily network news and commentary broadcast. This included two 60-second breaks for our local sponsorship insertion.
For two hours each month, this dealer and his sales manager traveled 30 miles to visit our production studio to update their commercials.
Their spots provided a 15-second break for our local announcer to describe their “deal-of-the day” related to a new or used car. That car was almost always off the lot before the end of that day.
The Ford dealer did a daily remote from his showroom which frequently drew visitors to observe a live broadcast and receive a free Ford key-ring fob and entry into a drawing for a free oil change, and car wash and shine. This dealer also offered a “daily deal” that sold many vehicles.
All of our station’s clients promoted their sales based on variations of the theme, “Our customers are the source of our success.” Additionally, there was the motto, “We do our very best to provide our customers with the best of service and competitive pricing year after year.”
Those were the days when creative ad copy spelled success for any station. Today, it seems the focus is quantity, with a disappointing new mantra: “The more the better for the bottom line.”
It’s no rocket science — ignoring quality for quantity has doomed many advertising efforts both for broadcast and print.
We find many stations rolling competitor ads back to back, or book-ended in the same six-minute stop set. There are even instances where a spot is followed by a 3-second station ID, and then followed by a repeat of the same spot. Listeners and viewers will soon find other sources for their news and information.
Then again, online streams are guilty of this. How many “Floetry” spots can you hear during one commercial break when listening to an audio stream? How about that local ad insertion technology giving you that Auto Mall ad repeatedly?
Here’s sage advise from Amazon head Jeff Bezos: “Produce a quality product at a competitive price with extraordinary customer service and you cannot fail.”
Bezos has clearly proven this hypothesis.
It’s simple, yet it is perhaps the one thing forgotten most by broadcast radio companeis today: “Support your customers, and your customers will support you.”
As the satellite delivers programming to one or more of your stations this weekend, is everything coming out of the speakers — including your adds — supporting the listener, or supporting your pay check?
Without the listener, you may not have a pay check in the not-to-distant future.
Ken Benner is an independent Alternative FCC Compliance Certification Inspector and a research analyst for the Coalition for Transparency, Clarification and Simplification of Regulations pertaining to American Broadcasting. Benner has more than 55 years of experience providing service to the broadcast industry.
The views expressed by Media Information Bureau columnists are those of the writer only and not of the editorial board of the Radio + Television Business Report or its parent, Streamline Publishing.
