Radio Direct Response: Direct Response Radio Advertising Agency | Blog Zone

His name is Vint Cerf. He’s 64. And he’s the acknowledged Creator of the Internet. Esquire Magazine (my favorite non-trade publication) published a one-page “What I’ve Learned” feature from Cerf in this month’s issue.

Here are a few highlights to enlighten your day, with thanks and full attribution to Cal Fussman and the team at Esquire:

You don’t have to be young to learn about technology. You have to feel young.

There was no one “Ah-ha!” moment. Not in the sense that many people want to hear. They see the Internet now and think, Well, thirty-six years ago someone imagined what it would look like in 2008, and that is what drove the process. It wasn’t like that at all.

There was a first “Oh, no!” moment. That was the first time I saw spam pop up. It could have been as early as ‘79. A digital-equipment corporation sent a note around announcing a job opening, and we all blew up, saying, This is not for advertising! This is for serious work!

Will we shoot virtually at each other over the Internet? Probably not. On the other hand, there may be wars fought about the Internet.

Instant messaging and chat rooms have basically created a level playing field for deaf people.

It may seem like sort of a waste of time to play World of Warcraft with your son. But you’re actually interacting with each other. You’re solving problems. They may seem like simple problems, but you’re solving them. You’re posed with challenges that you have to overcome. You’re on a quest to gain certain capabilities. I haven’t spent a lot of time playing World of Warcraft, because my impression is that it takes a serious amount of time to play it well.

Humor is the only thing that allows you to survive every pressure and crisis.

Al Gore had seen what happened with the National Interstate and Defense Highways Act of 1956, which his father introduced as a military bill. It was very powerful. Housing went up, suburban boom happened, everybody became mobile. Al was attuned to the power of networking much more than any of his elective colleagues. His initiatives led directly to the commercialization of the Internet. So he really does deserve credit.

In Silicon Valley, failure is experience. Now, if you fail at everything, that’s different. But a failure is a mark of experience more than anything else.

I’d like to know what the Internet is going to look like in 2050. Thinking about it makes me wish I were eight years old.

Esquire’s “What I’ve Learned” feature appears every month. A three-year subscription to Esquire costs just $16.00. Some of what I’ve learned is priceless. Go on. Treat yourself.

Mark Lipsky, President & CEO

What is it with marketers today?  Do they honestly believe that everyone on the planet wants to be marketed to every waking minute of their life??

I fully understand that I am going to have to put up with a certain numbers of messages when I listen to the radio, watch TV, read the paper or cruise the highways.  However, I draw a line when I’m standing in the men’s room and I have to watch a commercial on a screen while doing my business.  Enough.

When I need to fill up my car with gasoline that costs $3.50 a gallon, I would prefer - and I think there are others who might agree - not to be bombarded with advertising messages while shelling out 50 bucks a week to fill up my vehicle.  How about filling my wallet with some discounted fuel and saving me some money… all for the privilege of being able to advertise to me while I’m at the gas station. 

Whose bright idea was it to fill up restaurants with televisions?  If I wanted to watch TV while I ate, I would put a TV in my kitchen.  Maybe some people want TV’s in their kitchen.  That’s fine with me.  I think, in the last 10-15 years, mobile marketing technology has changed the way we receive messages and view advertising to the point where someone needs to say ENOUGH.  Well, I’m saying it.  ENOUGH.

We pay for the right to be mobile, but where is the line in the sand to make people realize that it’s borderline invasive, somewhat annoying and slowly becoming an infringement on people’s personal space and time?  Enough already.

Danny Ocean, Vice President/Director of Operations

Format Description:
Smooth Jazz, also known as New Adult Contemporary (NAC), is a style of music that widens the appeal of traditional jazz by infusing a melodic musical structure in place of the sometimes-frenetic styling of “pure jazz” and fusion. Most Smooth Jazz formats also incorporate a slice of R&B and contemporary pop vocals to keep the music mix somewhat familiar to a mass radio audience. The overall effect is a smooth, down tempo “mood station” featuring roughly a 50/50 mix of vocals and instrumentals. Smooth Jazz became a radio format in the late 80’s and early 90’s.

Core Audience:
Adults 35-49 (57% Male Skew)

Core Artists:
Kenny G, Sade, George Benson, Joe Sample

Key Radio Stations:
KTWV-FM Los Angeles
WNUA-FM Chicago
KKSF-FM San Francisco
KYOT-FM Phoenix
WLVE-FM Miami

DR Factor:
Smooth Jazz is one of the better-performing music formats for Direct Response advertisers. As always, rates and placement play key factors, but this format can be a dependable performer for positive cash flow.
For more information, visit Wikipedia or SmoothJazz.com.

Sixty seconds. It doesn’t sound like a lot of time does it? Well, it is…annnnnnnnnnnnnd it isn’t.

When I first started in radio, when I was learning how to run a soundboard where every button I was hitting was causing something to go out over the air (or in some cases, NOT go out over the air - OOPS – but only 1.5 million people heard that, right?) the prospect of ONLY having sixty seconds scared me. It downright terrified me.

So there I am learning how to segue music and sound elements, how to broadcast commercials, how to run a cart machine, all the “technical” things that a “board op” does, the prospect of ONLY having sixty seconds seemed like a blink of an eye. (As one Program Director said to me, “If I could train a monkey to do that, you’d be gone tomorrow”. Now, with automation and computers, he’s gotten his wish but that’s another blog for another day.) I’d stare at timers and my li’l fingers would hover over buttons, shaking nervously and uncontrollably. Let’s face it, I was a mess.

Flash forward all these years later and sixty seconds is a lifetime. It’s amazing what you can get done in that amount of time. So what’s this have to do with writing and producing a radio commercial? Excellent question. In DR, sixty seconds is NEVER sixty seconds. How’s THAT for a head scratcher?

I’ll explain.

You’ve got your product. You want to market it on radio. The normal units to time to buy are :30 and :60. The smaller the unit of time bought, the less expensive the time is. Makes sense, right? So you decide you want :30s. Here’s why you need :60s.

As a rule of thumb, a call to action (how will someone get my product/service and what will I be enticing them with – hence forth known as “the offer”) will take :15. Do you have a specific legal disclaimer? It can hopefully be done in :10. That’s :25 of your :30 spot. Oh yeah, you haven’t even begun to describe what your product is, what it does and why someone needs it. You thought :60 was a short amount of time? Good luck explaining the features and benefits of your product in :05. I don’t think the great John Moschitta could pull that off.

Ian Cohen, Production Director

Every week, our agency receives roughly 10-15 “tire kicks” from entrepreneurs, direct marketers and national brands interesting in marketing their products and services on radio.

Usually, it takes about five minutes to determine if what they’re offering is a good fit for the medium. More often than not, it’s not – and we politely explain why these marketers shouldn’t let us, or any other agency or radio station, take a dollar of their money.

There are two general rules of thumb to follow to eliminate a product from the “probable winner” category in direct response radio.

1. THE PRODUCT MUST BE VISUALLY DEMONSTRATED – Radio is not the best medium to differentiate one sit-up machine from another. It’s also not a logical first choice to market cosmetic and beauty products, lacking the full force effect of visual media like print or television. That’s not to say that radio can’t drive retail sales or do a powerful job of building brand. But taken in context of measurable, accountable, direct response radio – where a marketer seeks to spend a dollar and make back two – products that require visual stimulation beyond the range of verbal description to close a sale – are generally not the best candidates for DR radio.

2. LOW PRICE POINT – Every week, we field at least one inquiry from an author or recording artist who wishes to sell their new book or CD via DR radio. The challenge here is purely a numbers game. For what it costs the average direct marketer to generate a qualified lead – and then close the sale – the metrics simply don’t work for someone making a one-time, $20 sale. So why do so many radio commercials offer “free 30-day trials” and “no cost” offers? Because these marketers know that by giving away a free taste, a lead will convert to a $200 or $500 customer over the next year or two. They know the numbers and have sufficiently deep pockets to absorb the initial loss for the long-term return of annuity.

That’s not to say there are no exceptions to these guidelines. We’re presently working on a launch of a $40 price point item with such universal appeal, it has a strong chance of beating the odds to generate enough leads and sales to turn a profit.

But the truth is not every product or service is “right” for a pure, direct response radio model. And knowing when to say “no” is a critical part of surviving the obstacle course of taking a product to market.

Mark Lipsky, President & CEO

It’s a very exciting time to be in Broadcasting Industry. Consumers have never had so many listening and viewing choices as we do now. No longer are we tethered to the towers, cables and sticks of TV, AM and FM. At our fingertips lay the vast universe of the Internet, satellite radio and TV, HD radio and TV, cable radio and TV, mobile radio and TV, podcasts, digital radio and TV, streaming audio and video, VOD, GPS, iPods, low-pods, and whatever the hell else the future holds.

Terrestrial radio and TV will never die. However, both must evolve, as an industry and as a technology, into something more than it is today and what it was in the halcyon days of yesterday. Traditional broadcasters must infiltrate the “new media” and “new technology” and find a way to become a part of it, not a victim of it.

The ubiquity of WiFi is lurking just around the corner with a big monkey-wrench. In the not-too-distant future, the Internet will be available in your car, on your mobile cellular device, in your eyeglasses, and in a microchip planted under your skin. Further on down the road, people won’t be tethered to their desktops and laptops as our computers and Internet literally becomes a part of our anatomy.

“Personal Computer” will have a new meaning. Our bodies will vibrate like human radios with the sound of our own internal music soundtracks. We’ll be able to call upon all of the information available on the World Wide Web with a literal wink of an eye and project the written word on the backs of our eyelids. We’ll be able to access news, sports, entertainment and information without buying a flat-screen TV. We will become the flat screen TV. Email will flow directly into our brain. If you hate spam and commercials now, just wait!

If broadcasting companies are concerned about the Sirius/XM merger, the viability of HD radio, Internet radio and ubiquity of WiFi, then they are only reacting to the present, with no anticipation of what the future holds. As the famous vaudevillian, Al Jolson, once said, while performing after an earthquake in San Francisco, “You ain’t seen nuthin’ yet!”

Vince Raimondo, Vice President of Marketing

Let’s start this blog experience with a simple outpouring from RDR’s youngest staffer. I am a bit crazy when it comes to music. There, I feel closer to you already. Now that I’ve bared my soul, I’ll expand on that secret. I’m crazy about music in the sense that I get lost, overwhelmed, distracted by the power that music can assert over me. When a sweeping instrumental hits its peak and seemingly EXPLODES thought through the instruments, I get that feeling in my stomach that can be compared to those great, emotional film moments. The ones that cause a wave of butterflies in your stomach – say when E.T. has to leave Elliot behind on Earth for his long and arduous journey home. Or perhaps, for those of you who prefer music with words, I can compare it to a cleverly crafted line of lyrics that seems to speak to you, and ONLY to you, at THAT point in your life. What can be better than imagining that your life could be so grand and so important that songs were crafted with your emotions in mind? Anyone? Raise your hand and speak up!

Even if you did want to say something, you didn’t. I know why though. It’s because like so many things in life that we involve ourselves with, we want to believe in something that makes us happier than we felt in previous moments. That is what drives me to discover and experience my love affair with music day-in and day-out.

What I’ve said applies to marketing. Marketing is about action. Action to buy, participate and inform. Playing the emotional card in marketing is where music comes in, not as a means necessarily, but as an example of an every day vehicle to deliver that POWERFUL brush against someone’s emotions, a connection between the idea of the marketer and the consumer’s personal experiences.

The emotional bond bridges the gap between brand and consumer. Choirs of angels sing and the brand has yet another loyal customer. HOORAY! Find your emotional card to play and you can build a crescendo in your marketing message EXPLODING thoughts and a directive to make your customer act by way of their personal experience.

In the end, just like me with my ‘desire to discover and experience my love affair with music,’ why not try, as a marketer, getting emotionally connected and reflective about your brands ability to cause a stir in the mind of your target audience. Maybe you’ll find a love affair of your own.

Scott Fisher, Junior Account Manager

Format Description:
Music format born in the late 80s as an alternative to conventional rock radio formats. Modern Rock created a format for new rock artists to receive airplay on commercial radio. Depending on the individual market and station competition, Modern Rock stations can shade their core artist playlist to include grunge, electronica or hip-hop artists.

Core Audience:
Adults 18-44 (65-75% Male Skew)

Core Artists:
Red Hot Chili Peppers, Green Day, Linkin Park, Foo Fighters (Current Billboard Magazine Modern Rock radio tracks.)

Key Radio Stations:
KROQ-FM Los Angeles
WBCN-FM Boston
KNDD-FM Seattle
KDGE-FM Dallas

DR Factor:
Younger music formats are not traditionally the first choice for direct response marketers. However, this format is a passionate favorite with listeners in this demo. The right product and the right offer can generate sales and turn a profit.
For more information, visit Wikipedia or FMQB.