Bad Ads

Common flaws in both promo and commercial copy:

1.  Trying to sell too many things, using…
2.  Too many words, and
3.  Little or no listener emotional involvement.

Fixing the quality of your radio station’s writing, and getting better results for your clients, is as simple as “1-2-3."

Bad Promos

No promotional announcement should ever be longer than thirty seconds.

Paint a picture.  Use theater of mind, metaphors and similes.

Start and end with your station brand name, but incorporate it authentically so that it doesn’t seem tacked on or “old school” radio in style.

Deliver a “promise” in the first sentence, pairing your brand name with it.  Make sure the target listener gets hooked by the “promise” before the brand is linked to it.

Use sound effects to enhance the mental picture.  Marketing is placing your product in the mind of the consumer so that they picture themselves using it.

Effective promos MUST sound superior to any commercial that will air before or after them.

There must be three to five versions of every promo to keep the working fresh and unpredictable.  Produce updates for each one that are time-dated (Sunday, tomorrow, today).

Use “reach” and “frequency” stats to calculate how many times to air one to be sure the majority of your target hears the message.  One they have, they’re going to mentally “tune out” if you overplay the message beyond that point.

The most effective promos are perishable.  Build fresh ones constantly and don’t recycle old ones unless you wait a VERY long time before doing so.

The Stages Of Every Radio Promotion

One of my early heroes was San Francisco’s Jim Gabbert.  I learned a lot listening to his radio and watching his TV station.  He is a master of self-promotion, having learned from Gordon McClendon and Don Keyes who taught many great radio lessons on how to stage and execute a big idea back when they owned KABL.

1. Start to sell in advance.  Tease.  Entice.  Don’t just tell me something is “coming soon.”  Take a lesson from movie and TV show trailers and get me interested by revealing what’s in it for me.
2. Launch.  Make a major event of the the day of unveiling.
3. Fertilize it.  Remind listeners often with new, intriguing updates.  Make sure that new listeners that were attracted by the buzz of the event also know all the things they need to fully participate.  Do this for the life of the promotion.
4. Add excitement.  Embellish continually during the life of the promotion by adding new prizes, bonus days, repeating earlier clues, new ways to win.
5. Keep tension high by keeping the promo announcements intense.
6. Memory.  After it’s over, summarize the event.  Thank listeners who participated and sponsors, make use of “winner audio,” but if you do that make sure that you have multiple versions including what it sounded like in replay of when they won, what it sounded like when they claimed their prize, later talking about how they used it, etc.

Skipping any of these steps hurts the potential of any promotion you do.

A Lasting Lesson From An Unforgetable Influence On Me

Dave Newton is retired and living in Yakima these days. He's one of the best writers I ever worked with.

I thought of him recently as I listened to a client radio station and realized that everyone in the place seems to have forgotten about "active verbs."

Most writing - news, commercial copy, promo, liners, personality bits and all - could be improved with one simple act. Throw out "passive" verbs and replace them with more powerful "active" verbs.

A little voice came into my head as I listened, which I immediately recognized as Newton's, from more than 25 years ago:

When verbs get specific, writing comes alive. Verbs are much more important than adjectives or adverbs. In fact, master novelist Elmore Leonard calls adjectives "horrible things." So, while all writing rules must be broken, I think it's a good idea to stay away from passive verbs, like "is" or "are" or "have" or "do" ("Have your best jock do a remote at the fair."), and embrace powerful, specific verbs, like, well "embrace". ("Send your best jock out to broadcast live from the fair.")

Your active verbs don't have to be exotic or highfalutin' ("Shall we peregrinate to the store?"), just active.

Writing that harnesses the power of active verbs is always more dynamic, interesting and persuasive than...writing that has passive verbs (like the last phrase of this sentence). Notice, please, that I have used "is" and "be" in this paragraph. It's still O.K.

Use more active verbs than passive ones in everything you write or say and it will be better than "O.K."

Mini-bibliography: The Elements of Style, by Strunk and White, is a slim, crisp little book that everybody who writes should reread about every six months.

Never Seen This Before!

The note from John Windus, PD at KKRV/Wenatchee says it:

"Oh, Copytimer! Is there anything you CAN'T do?"

* Accurately times scripts written in English or Spanish.

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* Spot Timer times all the text you enter in a flash.

* Script Timer supports a screenplay format, timing only dialogue.

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* Web-based Copytimer™ requires no installation or disk space.

* Write, edit and time scripts from any computer, anywhere.

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* Time your scripts as you write them, saving untold work.

* Work with scripts faster and more efficiently than ever before.

... i.e., VERY cool stuff!