Clients as Spokesmen #2

Testimonials from customers can be powerfully persuasive in a radio campaign. But they have to be real. Listeners can smell a fake a mile away, and that hurts much more than it helps.

Case in point: for the past few weeks I've been signing up exhibitors for our annual Palouse Empire Home & Garden EXPO, an event I've helped coordinate for the past eleven years. Prospective exhibitors are solicited through a combination of radio (our primary vehicle), newspaper and television ads, and direct mail to previous exhibitors.

Every year toward the end of the show the station's news director has taken time to record brief interviews with exhibitors, inviting their feedback on the show while the experience is still fresh. He then passes these recordings along to me, so that I can use them to create vendor-solicitation spots.

These two spots are running on the air as I type these words.

Think the message would be nearly as compelling without the voices of previous exhibitors? Neither do I.