Share Your Radio Station-Produced Entry to the Mercury Awards...

Patrick Cleary is upset with the Radio Advertising Bureau. In an article in this morning's RBR, the president of Lost Coast Communications, Inc., parent of Ferndale, CA stations KHUM, KWPT and KSLG-FM isn't mincing words as he shared his displeasure over there being no Radio-Mercury Award for Radio Station-produced commercials this year.

As you've probably read or heard by now, the final round judges (all agency folks) determined that the quality of this year's station entries wasn't good enough to pass muster, so they invoked a Mercury rule that allows them to drop the category and award no station prize this year.

Ouch, that stings.

I share Mr. Cleary's disappointment. As an annual RMA entrant since 2004 (with two horses in this year's race), the judges' decision took the wind out of my sails, too. It took me a couple of days to adjust to it. I called Meghan Buonocore at the RMA headquarters in NYC shortly after receiving the finalists announcement on May 21st, to ask her what was going on. She said that the judges had "raised the bar" and none of the station entries measured up this year. End of story.

Disappointed as I was (and am) at the absence of radio station representation from this year's Mercury competition, I cannot bring myself to endorse Mr. Cleary's call to withdraw from the RAB.

Yes, the organization has its share of weaknesses and inconsistencies (who doesn't?) - as, for instance, its clarion call to stations to write and produce superior commercials, while at the same time providing its own members who come looking for ideas with cliché-ridden pap that ought to have been rejected upon receipt, let alone archived to spread around the industry like a bad cold.

Nevertheless, I believe the RAB's strengths outweigh its shortcomings. As I posted earlier, their offer of a personal membership is something I'd been wanting for a long time, and I jumped at the chance to acquire my own. Even if the RAB were to purge its archives of the stuff that doesn't measure up to its lofty aspirations, there would remain an extensive body of valuable research and creative inspiration, of significant benefit to radio advertising sales professionals and their clients.

That said, Mr. Cleary's message deserves a thoughtful response from RAB's leadership. Some of radio's best and brightest are unhappy with what they perceive as a cold shoulder from the very organization that should be their champion, their advocate, their friend.

Meanwhile, I suspect lots of radio folks would enjoy hearing the Radio Station-produced entries that were submitted to this year's Mercury awards. I know I would. So, over at Radio Sales Café we've created a special forum where station producers can upload their entries to share with others in the broadcast community.

Here's my introduction to that forum:

"The Risk of Insult is the Price of Clarity." - Roy Williams (The Wizard of Ads)

OK, so I'm going to take the plunge and post the two commercials I submitted for this year's Radio-Mercury Awards competition (links below).

They're not stunningly produced, but I believed the copy was sufficiently engaging (it certainly was from the clients' perspective) to be airworthy, if not competition-worthy.

Though, frankly, I'd hoped at least one of them would make it into the finals, even if I didn't expect either of them to win the prize.

I have been supporting the Radio-Mercury Awards since 2004, the year I first entered any of my work into competition. I was surprised and humbled when I learned that my submission had won the Radio Station-Produced award that year. But I was also encouraged by it and determined to improve the quality of all my work.

The following year I entered 5 or 6 spots; one of them was chosen as a finalist. Each year thereafter I've entered at least one or two spots, though I will admit that none has equaled my 2004 entry (which, by the way, is still running on the air as part of a multi-spot campaign for the client, and still producing measurable results for him). Nonetheless, I've thought it important to support radio's premier advertising competition, to continue to raise the bar for our industry and advertisers.

On May 21st I received the email from RAB announcing the finalists and immediately noticed, to my great dismay, the absence of any station-produced finalists. A telephone call to Meghan Buonocore at the RMA headquarters confirmed this, and I have to confess, it took me a day or two to come to grips with the judges' decision.

As one of the early round judges this year, I had an opportunity to hear what I considered some good examples of station-produced advertising. (Listening to the best of them cemented the realization that my own entries weren't likely to win, place, or possibly even show.) It surprised me to see none of them emerge as finalists.

After reflecting on the situation, my biggest personal takeaway was a resolve to do better work next time. But I can understand, and to a certain degree share the feeling expressed by other radio station folks that maybe the playing field for radio work wasn't completely level.

That's water under the bridge now.

I'd like to urge the RAB - Radio Creative Fund to consider balancing the final round panel of judges, by including representatives from the radio side, and not solely the agency side, to avoid the appearance of elitism.

To the extent that this year's RMA competition has been tainted by the wholesale exclusion of the Radio Station-produced category, the RAB would do well to reach out to its station members to answer any questions, address their concerns, and attempt to make next year's RMA a happier occasion for everyone in radio.

So now, let's hear what you did!

An Offer You Can't (or Shouldn't) Refuse...

When I learned that the Radio Advertising Bureau has begun to offer personal memberships, I could hardly wait to sign up.

At $210 a year, it's a bargain.

$210 a year. $4.04 a week. About the price of a 20-ounce Espresso drink. Or a Happy Meal.

For a veritable treasure trove of research and resources quite likely unsurpassed by any other advertising organization.

The RAB's vast archives contain tools to make creating and selling radio advertising easier, more productive, and more likely to generate results for radio advertisers.

Now, I've not agreed with everything RAB has said or promoted over the years. Decades ago, they often seemed to reflect and reinforce Radio's inferiority complex, the idea that the highest and best use of our medium was in a supporting role to print or TV, as part of a media mix. (If the ad buy were a martini, Radio was the vermouth or the olive.)

But gradually the RAB reflected a growing confidence in our medium, i.e., that Radio as a primary medium was capable of carrying 100% of the weight of a campaign and make it work!

Beginning with radio sales trainer Jim Williams, his protegés Chris Lytle, Chuck Mefford, Darrell Solberg...along with folks like Sean Luce, Dave Gifford, Jim Taszarek, Paul Weyland, and Jerry Frentress...and more recently Norton Warner, Jeff Dostal, Michael Tate and Matt Hackett, radio advertising sales professionals have had unparalleled opportunities to understand and unleash the unlimited potential of our medium. Support from the ad creation side has come from folks like Roy Williams, Dan O'Day, Jeffrey Hedquist, and others (watch for a guy named Doug Zanger to be making big radio waves in coming years). I'm sure there are many more I've failed to name (Jason Jennings just came to mind).

The point is, for many years now the RAB has been leveraging the talents of these folks and others for the good of our radio team and every last player.

$4.04 a week ought to be impossibly attractive, like the sizzle and smell of a prime ribsteak on a bed of hot coals (sorry ... it's Friday dinnertime and I'm fantasizing).

Personally, I was thrilled to be able to secure a personal RAB membership, for my benefit and ultimately the benefit of my clients.

Eric Rhoads, publisher of RadioINK, wrote a thought-provoking piece in which he expressed his concern for the future of RAB, which is facing cutbacks in the support it typically has enjoyed from the largest broadcast groups. They recently (and undoubtedly painfully) announced layoffs that included veterans George Hyde and Mike Mahone, themselves champions of education and training for thousands of radio advertising salespeople.

Whatever the reality of their present circumstances, of this much I'm certain: every membership matters to RAB.

Please consider supporting them with yours.

Thank you!

How to Make Better Radio Ads

Eleven of the top creative directors in the country participated in a round-table discussion in New York recently. They were gathered to judge entries in this year's Radio Mercury Awards, but they took some time after the judging to discuss the disconnect between the growth of Radio's audience (up by 3 million pairs of ears in 2008) and the decline in Radio's ad revenue (down by 9% in 2008).

Andrew Hampp's article in Advertising Age (the online version includes an 8-minute video excerpt from the roundtable) is enlightening and instructive, a valuable read for any radio advertising sales or creative professional.

Toward the end of the video, RAB President Jeff Haley talks about a Houston study by Coleman Research in which researchers observed listener behavior during 92,000 commercial "pods." Haley noted that the "breakaway" (listeners going elsewhere) was just 8%, even in the middle of a lengthy 6-minute break. The majority of listeners stayed with their station.

NOTE: That's not perception; that's measured behavior!

But if you listen carefully to this segment of the video, right after Mr. Haley mentions people listening to 92,000 commercial pods, one of the panelists interjects, "Poor people!"

Why did he say that?

Obviously, because many (if not most) ads on radio are notoriously "bad."

"Radio needs to get better before radio ads can get better," said Crispin's Bill Wright. "When I read a magazine, all the ads don't annoy me. When I watch TV, all the ads don't annoy me. Even when you do a good radio spot, it's still the best-looking house in a bad neighborhood."

There's our problem. And our opportunity. To change, one ad at a time, one client at a time, on stations across America, the quality of the commercials we write and produce.

Radio, as a medium, is powerful, versatile, and personal. It's everything an advertiser could ask for.

But radio advertising needs to improve, to exploit the full potential of our medium, to achieve its highest and best uses in the marketplace.

This is our job, our challenge, and our responsibility as radio advertising professionals. We can't make the industry better apart from making our commercials better. And that, my friend, is an individual operation.

The Client Whose Ad Copy Never Gets Changed

Consistency is a great virtue in advertising, all other factors being equal.

Most of my advertising clients have annual contracts that call for being on the air every day. This degree of exposure usually requires regular changes of copy, to maintain a healthy balance between repetition and freshness.

But I have one client, a mom-and-pop automotive body shop and towing service, that's been running the same ad every week, every month, every year...for well over a decade.

Yes, from a servicing standpoint it's almost an embarrassment.

We laugh about it from time to time.

All the way to the bank.

Because Myers Auto Rebuild and Towing also happens to occupy the enviable Top Rung of their category ladder. By a mile.



A dozen years ago, Steve and Theresa Myers met with a jingle company rep we'd brought into town and decided they'd move forward on a custom "musical image" for their shop.

If you've ever worked with jingle salespeople, you know that they often follow an interview format not unlike the RAB's "client needs analysis." They meet for 30-45 minutes with each prospect, asking lots of questions in an effort to document the advertiser's niche, his USP, or at least what HE thinks are his strong selling points. Then they turn these answers over to a lyricist, who presumably will distill from these notes the poetry that will woo buyers out of the WOOdwork.

It has been my experience that many of these well-meaning efforts end rather poorly. in an attempt to feed back to the client in one 30-second song, everything about the business that came up in the interview, the result is an unfocused exercise in musical chest-thumping.

In the Myers' case, the first draft was faxed to them for approval within a week of their interview. Theresa called me, a tone of concern in her voice, to ask if I would stop by to review what the jingle writer had come up with. My response merely confirmed what their gut had already told them.

It was a mess.

The tune was catchy. The singer was perfect. But the message was deficient, to put it kindly.

I quickly offered to rewrite the lyrics.

We checked with the singer to see if he had any objection to this. He didn't; he just wanted to sing something and get paid.

I've always enjoyed writing rhyming copy. The challenge here was to keep the narrative straightforward and focused, to convey when and why someone would call Myers Auto Rebuild, and what they could expect as a result. The completed story meshed nicely with the music, resulting in a :30-second full-sing jingle that has enjoyed remarkable longevity.

When a few weeks after the jingle first hit the airwaves Steve and Theresa received a telephone call from the owner of a competitor's body shop, complaining that his kids were singing their jingle, they knew they had a winner.

And they haven't been inclined to change their copy ever since.

Radical? You decide. Listen to the Myers Auto Rebuild Jingle.

2009 Radio Mercury Awards Call for Entries!

The 2009 Radio Mercury Awards competition is officially underway. As soon as I received the email notification from Wendy Frech this afternoon, I headed over to the website to check it out.

What a great new look! Click on a link and up pops a new web page cleverly disguised as a radio commercial V/O script. The requested information is presented clearly and concisely. Kudos on the attractive website makeover, performed by Cabell Harris, WORK Labs.

This year's RMA competition introduces a new category ("Integrated Radio Campaign") for the best use of radio within an integrated multimedia plan. Winner takes home $10,000. This one's open to agencies, production companies, and radio stations, and clients. Here's the summary of all the prize categories this year from the RMA website:

Prizes:

• One (1) $100,000 Grand Prize
• Two (2) $5,000 Agency/Production Company Prizes
• New: One (1) $10,000 Integrated Radio Campaign Prize
• One (1) $5,000 Political Category Prize
• One (1) PSA Category Award and $2,500 charitable donation
• One (1) $5,000 Radio Station-Produced Category Prize
• One (1) $5,000 Spanish-Language Category Prize
• One (1) $2,500 Student-Produced Category Prize

To be eligible for a prize this year, the commercial must have aired for the first time on a U.S. commercially licensed radio station between January 1, 2008, and February 28, 2009. Deadline for entry at the standard fee ($125 per commercial, most categories) is March 20th; late entries will be accepted between March 21-28 with a higher entry fee ($150).

Full details, rules, links to previous winners and more at the RMA website.

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Want to hear what great radio advertising sounds like? Spend time listening to - and learning from - previous RMA winners. You'll find a substantial library of commercials representing seventeen years' worth of winners archived at the RMA website. The library is fully searchable by client, agency, commercial title, year, and category.

Attention Station Managers: Want to get your team members fired about about selling/writing/producing more effective commercials for local clients? Get everyone together for a 30- to 60-minute meeting (around a computer with a good set of speakers) for the sole purpose of listening to commercials from the RMA archives. See if you don't come away with some fresh ideas for advertising prospects and clients.