There Ought To Be A Law

There are some things that our advertisers do that are illegal and then there are others that should be.

In both situations, it's the listener who gets punished when programmers fail to police these instances even before a fine comes the radio station's way.

Things every creative director needs to be on the lookout for every day:

1.  End dates for copy.  Nothing sounds less "live and local" than a spot for a Thanksgiving Day Sale on the day after the holiday.

2.  Updates.  Every time-dated spot or promo must have a "tomorrow" and "today" version.  Would anyone tell a friend "sale ends November 20th" ON November 20th?

3.  Sirens.  No, it's not illegal to broadcast one on radio, but has anyone not been in a vehicle when one came on, felt deceived after pulling over to the side of the road, realizing they could have caused an accident?  Surely, there's a more original and creative way to command attention than this hackneyed gimmick.  Let's protect the ears and traffic safety of our listener and offer to make something better for the brand, gratis.

4.  "The first listener to get to (remote location) wins..."  Actually, this one could get you sued if someone causes a collision after speeding up to get your prize.

5.  Anything that contains "prize, chance and consideration."  But, you knew that. 

I wish we'd handle numbers 1 through 3 as strictly as we do that one by using the phrase "I can't let you do that."

Your Heart And Your Skin On Too Many Commercial Units

Fire up your printer.  I am about to share a study with you that you're going to want to keep in your top desk drawer.

But, first, a quick tip of the hat to two academics, Dave Allan and Rob Potter.

Back in 1997, Dr. Allan published “Comparative Effectiveness of 30- Versus 60-Second Radio Commercials on Recall and Rate,” in the Journal of Radio Studies.

Two years later Dr. Potter replicated the findings using heart response and galvanic skin testing.

For example, here's what your heart looks like on too many commercial units:

Potter notes that general managers and sales managers in the wake of Clear Channel's "less is more" initiatives which started almost a decade ago now "may be tempted to double the number of commercial units while keeping the overall duration of their advertising breaks consistent." 

This study investigates the effects of such a decision on listener perceptions of advertising clutter and engagement to persuasive messages in the commercial breaks and the results document that the number of units matters.

To put it scientifically:  "Automatic orienting brings the listeners back to the task of processing the message, and because the message is new, they spend at least a brief amount of time processing it in order to make sense of it.  Therefore, it is expected that in the early portion of a commercial break, having more, and shorter commercials will increase cognitive effort spent on the processing of the advertising break. However, it also follows that each time a listener orients to the onset of a new commercial (recognized through the presence of an entirely new announcer, perhaps new music, and new semantic content) it increases an awareness of how many sequential commercials to which they were exposed.  As awareness that the number of sequential commercials is increasing and reaching a total that is quite high, media users may become more likely to tune out. If the physical ability to tune out is not available, listeners may mentally disengage from processing the persuasive messages."

The next time your boss comes into your office asking you to add units, toss this phrase back in their face "Lang’s Limited Capacity Model of Motivated Mediated Message Processing."

And, if that doesn't drive them away, click on this pdf of Potter's 2009 research and tell them not to come back until they've studied it thoroughly.

Finally, if they still don't get the point that adding units drives listeners away, you can show them what your skin response looks like on too many irritants ... like their harmful requests to add units!

N. O. E. S. L. W. S. T. M. S.

"Using 'commercial-free' verbiage is equal to saying 10-12 minutes of every hour of your station's product is worthless," says Jim Kirkland in Radio-Info.com.

Jim should look at our product from a listener and not just a media buyer perspective.

No doubt that our commercial time is worth a lot more than we normally manage to get paid for it, but there’s a reason why online streaming ads have to be :20 seconds or less and extremely engaging.

The future of media is moving to end user control and those buttons on their radio have always given them the power to avoid anything they don’t feel is worth the time.

Meanwhile, even the AAA confirms that the best bet is not to change stations while driving since even that, they infer, occasionally contributes to distracted driving.

OK, I'll stop now, after one final "No One Ever Said Life Was Supposed to Make Sense."

A Lost Art?

Bill Dodd has such deep programming and management roots in the Kelso-Longview-Castle Rock area of Washington State, that it's easy to forget that he was a major market talent in San Francisco (see the 1975 KSFO scope here for proof), Portland and Seattle:

"We’re undergoing the agony of a new traffic system. Marketron merged with DeltaFlex and we are forced to change. Today I found out the new system does NOT provide for prioritizing the filling of spot breaks. For 20 years we have filled the last one first, etc--- a lot more music, a lot less talk. It’s worked great. Now we’re going to have to move spots by hand. Sheesh. We can’t be the only people doing this! These companies providing service seem to have forgotten that they are working for us. I suspect that today's traffic software was developed mostly for TV, and most stations just don’t care about what spot placement can make them sound like."

He's right, of course. With PPM's proof in minute-to-minute usage that great commercials can be eight times as engaging as normal ones, it has become even more of a competitive edge to set your breaks up so that the spots run in an order designed to hold maximum audience yet doing so with the new traffic software is next to impossible unless you do it manually.

Hopefully, someone at one of those firms reads this blog and a lightbulb goes off over their heads.

Meanwhile, do you have a system for setting up your breaks to maximize flow? Or, do you worry about it at all?