You Get What You Pay For. (Or, Advertising Salespeople Need Advertising Training, Too.)

Last week I posted a quick response to George Williams' report on the partnership between RAB and VCU Brand Center, "Incubating the Next Generation of Radio Creatives," in which I sort of wondered out loud whether one of Radio's vaunted advantages, the offer of free copywriting and production to advertisers who purchase air time, is really the value we believe it to be.

Might it not also be one of the main reasons for so much pap passing through the airwaves, purporting to be effective advertising?

To put it another way, to the extent that a radio station is in the advertising business, doesn't it make sense that management would make a dedicated investment of time and money for the purpose of training its sellers (who most often are also its copywriters) in the fine art of advertising?

During my formative years in radio ad sales (1973 into the early '90's) I was fortunate to receive a great deal of "sales training," but precious little advertising training.

From the sales trainers I learned how to get the money. Few of them had anything worthwhile to say about how to create commercials that would turn an advertiser's money into an "investment" rather than an "expense."

Most of that education I had to acquire on my own. So I bought books. Tapes. Videos. Studied Hopkins and Ogilvy, Trout & Ries, Jay Conrad Levinson and Bernice Fitz Gibbon (thanks to Chris Lytle for his tip on the latter; I even managed to obtain a signed first edition!), among many others. I stumbled across the Wizard in an interview in Radio and Production and started getting his Monday Morning Memo. When in a particular MMM he asked readers to pick up a copy of his first book, I did. Ditto the second. And the third. Good stuff.

I also listened to ads, hundreds and hundreds of ads, from stations and agencies across the country. Thanks to the RAB cassettes that came with the Monthly Sales Meeting kits (my favorite part was the "Hot Spots"), and the tapes of nothing-but-commercials they generously sent upon request, I was able to pick up many good ideas over the years.

Whether stations continue the practice of offering free copywriting and production services to their advertisers, or they start emulating their TV brethren and charging for them, the increasing demands of the marketplace for accountability and results will eventually force the issue. Stations that invest in the training and resources to provide advertisers and listeners with attention-grabbing, compelling, credible commercials will enjoy a degree of success that cannot be achieved or sustained any other way.