“THE BUY”.

If you are buying and placing the time yourself, then YOU need to do some research. You want to find the radio station(s) in your market(s) whose format and listeners will meet the criteria for your prospective customers. Now if you are simply buying radio in a single market in which you happen to live, the task becomes less complicated. Your familiarity with those stations will help you make that decision; on the other hand, you still must decide at what day part to run the spots. You need to look at the stations’ research to help you make that decision.

Should you need to buy airtime in multiple markets, more research is required. However, if you hire a media service to do all this work for you, the savings will be twofold. First a media buying service will have the statistics you need for every radio station in every market at their finger tips, They are experts at determining which radio stations target your prospects and when those listeners are most apt to be listening. You will save lots of time. Secondly, because the media buying service is making a multiple station buy for you, their leverage and their negotiation with those stations (sometimes group owned) may earn discounts and thereby save you some money.

So is that “all there is’? Will the proper placement of the buy insure you that you will be getting your money’s worth when using the medium of radio? Many business CEO’s, owners, and marketing directors may think so. But unfortunately, they are wrong!

“The Message”

Most of my youth, BT (before TV) was spent in front of a radio listening to” Heigh-ho Silver” or the “The Shadow Knows” , or Arthur Godfrey, Charlie McCarthy, etc. I was entertained. I was glued to the radio. I was emotionally invested in what I was hearing. Here’s my point. Radio is still one of the most intimate and entertaining media forms available to us.

Unless your message is entertaining and makes an emotional connection to the listener, why should anyone pay attention to it. Don’t under estimate the need for good creative radio commercials. If only ½ or ¼ of the listeners hear your message, then your investment in radio has been shortchanged. How many times have you changed the station during a commercial to avoid having to listen to someone making an announcement or someone shouting at you? Your message has to draw the listener “in”. The listener must find your message entertaining or compelling in order to identify with your product or service.

So, unless you want “little bang for your buck” with your radio advertising budget, don’t settle for getting half the job done. Find a good media buying service and find a company or ad agency whose business it is to understand the writing, the talent and the production you need to make your radio commercial the most effective it can be. Make sure your investment in RADIO doesn’t go in one ear and out the other.

It is a commercial production company or ad agency’s job to “wear their clients’ hat” to fully understand the product or service being sold, to know whom they compete against and to understand the nature of their targeted consumer. After all, it’s those potential end-users of the product or service whose attention they need to garner.

It is also their job to “walk in the shoes” of radio listeners. It is the audience that both they and the client need to reach. It is the audience who needs to respond to the message buried within that 60 or 30 second time frame. This goal unto itself is simple to understand, but the execution represents a challenge that is often hampered by the client’s preconceived notion that the radio listener will automatically focus their attention to their radio commercial message simply because it’s on the air. There is a vast distinction between a radio listener who HEARS the commercial and a radio listener who LISTENS AND RESPONDS to the commercial.

Many clients simply fail to walk in “the listener’s shoes” but rather step into their own shoes, their colleague’s shoes, or their family’s and friend’s shoes. All those shoes just happened to be laced with a personal stake in the product or service. 99.99% of the radio listeners reached by their message have no reason to pay attention to the client’s message. They simply don’t share that affinity to the product or service.

The business owner or marketing exec (client) must change his footwear and walk in the shoes of those “no personal connection” radio listeners to fully understand their listening habits, i.e. what makes them pay attention, what makes them respond and what makes them remember the message. The client could spend a great deal of time on research, spend lots of money on focus groups, or spend a great deal of time seeking statistical data from broadcast associations, etc.

Or they can find a radio specialist who has already “broken in” those shoes, who understands HOW to get those listeners to hear, listen AND respond to their commercials, who understand the need for creativity, thought and more thought (brainstorming) before that message is unequivocally ready to go on the air and grab the attention of the radio listener.

So check your closet! Do you have the proper hats and shoes?

Listen to Famous Radio Ranch Eddie Carroll spots:
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For 25+ years, we have specialized in the writing and producing of effective radio commercials. The key word here is “specialize”. Our clients are spending money for airtime because they believe in the medium of radio. However, local radio stations don’t always have the luxury of time, the personnel or the advertising expertise necessary to provide the special attention the client needs and deserves.

The consumer needs to LISTEN to (as opposed to just HEAR) the client’s message. The listener needs to react to it, to relate to it emotionally and to remember it. Unfortunately, Harry always wants to “tie us up in nots”. The goal for us is not to bow to the subjective whims of Harry. The goal is not to see how many times we can mention Harry’s name or product in the commercial. The goal is not to have the actors read lines to stroke Harry’s directorial or production jollies. And certainly the goal is not to jam all the facts we possibly can in any given commercial.

For us, the goal is to make the client’s message so distinctive that it will stand apart not only from their competitor’s message but from the clutter of ALL the messages. The goal is to deliver a message that is dramatic, entertaining, informative, memorable, and creates an emotional connection to the listener. The goal is to get results for our clients and thereby gain their trust.

That’s what we do…and that’s why clients who come back to us time and time again are never named HARRY.

Rush Limbaugh was inducted into the NAB Broadcast Hall Of Fame in 1998. Although my political views were not in line with his, I agreed with many in broadcasting, including my long time friend, Eric Rhoads of Radio Ink, that the uniqueness of his controversial radio style and performance made Limbaugh an appropriate choice. However, that initial opinion has been gradually eroding over the last few years and has dramatically changed for me recently with the capper coming during the disaster that struck Haiti last week.

In a series of recent broadcasts, Limbaugh has blasted the giving of aid to Haiti, using the tragedy to further exploit his negative political position with regard to President Obama. Limbaugh’s basic position is that the President’s endorsement of 100 Million US dollars in relief to the island nation is simply a cheap political effort to curry favor with the US black community. He later added that the filtering of humanitarian dollars through the White House was, in part, a scam since the White House would be keeping 28% of these charitable contributions as a “handling fee” surcharge – an assertion the White House has denied.

While I agree with a number of bloggers who maintain that Limbaugh still fits the leadership and performance criteria of the NAB award, I am also fully aware that he reveals a reckless insensitivity to one of the most horrific human tragedies of our time. The affect of this most recent Limbaugh calumny is, in my opinion, a clear SOS to mature and caring radio broadcast leaders to finally censure the man or, better yet, remove this dangerous hate-monger from the airwaves where he is increasingly and irresponsibly spreading his demagogic poison to the radical right and the emotionally vulnerable. I am talking about the kind of action taken by the Catholic Church in terminating the racist and anti-Semitic message pedaled by Fr. Coughlin in an earlier shameful era of radio.

Rush Limbaugh isn’t simply exercising his right of free speech, but blatantly appealing to the very worst impulses in his ditto head listeners.

Therefore, if there will be neither censure or removal, then I respectfully ask the NAB to remove my plaque from the Hall of Fame. I am embarrassed that my award, as well as those of others I so highly respect, is in the company of this perfidious human being.