(WIZARD) Did You Feel That?

4/22/2015

The ground moved beneath our feet.

There. It did it again.

That first tremor was the growing reality of gender equality. The second was the shrinking of mass media. These trends aren't connected, but they're both significant.

Gender equality is changing the nature of romance. Don't believe me? Watch any romantic movie from 20 years ago and count the anachronisms, those interactions that belong to the past and do not seem to fit the present.

Gender equality also affects advertising and marketing in ways you might not expect.

Not many years ago, it was assumed that lovers would marry and buy a home and establish a life together. But then an entire generation of women were taught not to depend on men, but to establish careers and lives on their own.

That advice to young women changed the landscape in marketing. A study published by Pew Research Center indicates that in 1970, 84 percent of U.S.-born 30- to 44-yearolds were married. By 2007, that number had declined to just 60 percent, and if we extrapolate the trend into 2015, the percentage of married 30- to 44-year-olds is currently at 54.8 percent and falling. We went from 16 percent single to 46 percent single in just one generation.

A once-proud nation of families is evolving into a proud nation of individuals.

The motivations that drive husbands and fathers and wives and mothers are different from the motivations that drive individuals who have no one depending on them but themselves. Consequently, the language and logic of ad copy must be altered to connect with this altered audience.

The trend toward singleness is sociological.
The erosion of mass media is technological.
Each trend accelerates the other.

If the majority of a nation is watching the same TV shows at the same time, listening to the same hit songs at the same time, and receiving similar news from similar sources simultaneously, we can expect that nation to think and feel in similar ways.

Mass media ruled America in 1970. Radio was a Rock station, a Country station, a Talk station, an Easy Listening station, and an instrumental format called "Beautiful Music." Then you had ABC, CBS, and NBC TV. Ted Turner wouldn't create the first cable network until 1976, and Fox didn't appear until 1986. When a movie left the theaters, it would go to the drive-in theaters, where it would be shown for a reduced price, and then it would appear on network television for free about a year later. DVRs, DVDs, and home videotapes did not exist. You either had to be where a movie was showing at exactly the right time or you missed it. This forced us to gather together at specific times for entertainment, where we all heard the same commercials.

Mass media brought us together physically, and it united us psychologically. It also gave advertisers a platform for telling their stories.

Advertising was easy in those days.

Today's technology allows us to opt out of mass media. This is good for the individual, but it presents a significant challenge to the advertiser. The advertising opportunities created by new technology are highly targetable, but they're also shockingly expensive. The most efficient thing we've found so far costs four times as much per person as broadcast radio. And, although the digital product gives us the ability to pinpoint-target a specific audience, that advantage doesn't deliver anywhere near enough benefit to justify the inflated cost. This is not theoretical. We've learned these things through testing.

I'll bring this to a conclusion: We're approaching the end of a golden time when courageous advertisers can invest money in mass media and see their businesses grow as a result. My suspicion is that we've got perhaps five to seven more years before retail businesses and service businesses will be forced to begin playing by a whole new set of rules. No one yet knows what those new rules might be, but this we do know: The sharply rising costs of digital advertising are not being offset by a rise in efficiency.

Advertisers should buy mass media while the masses can still be reached. Reaching people one at a time doesn't offer nearly the return on investment.

There is no more efficient media in the world today than broadcast radio. Sell the people you care about a long-term schedule and make sure they have great radio ads.

Don't do it for yourself. Do it for them.

Roy H. Williams is president of Wizard of Ads Inc. E-mail: roy@wizardofads.com

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(WIZARD) Surprise! Your Client Is Wrong.

10-29-2014

How many times have you heard from a client, ?Our only problem is sales opportunities. If we had more sales opportunities, we?d make more sales.? It makes sense, doesn?t it? So you sold them a schedule and significantly increased their sales opportunities. But their sales did not increase proportionally. That?s when they said, ?You brought us the wrong customer.?

What?

I?ve always been puzzled by the fact that businesspeople think of advertising, sales training, and customer service as three separate departments within a company.

Have you ever developed an impression of a company through its advertising and then gotten a totally different impression of that company when you met with them? The external personality of a company is created through advertising. The internal personality of your company is created by management.

When a company delegates the creation of advertising to an outside group but gives that group no input into sales training or customer service, they create a company with a split personality, every time.

Are your advertisers using the words and phrases created by your ad writers and popularized in their radio ads? Or are they starting an altogether new and different conversation with your listeners, full of new and different words and phrases?

If it?s the latter, that?s a really bad idea.

If they continue the conversation that was begun in their ads, they?ll see their close rates rise significantly. Each of us has a natural connection with three of every 10 people we meet. Another three aren?t going to like you regardless of what you do or say. The remaining four people can possibly be sold, but only if the salesperson does and says the right things.

Does it surprise you that when all categories of selling are combined, the national average close rate is about 20 percent?

Let?s say your client?s staff is well above average, with a close rate of 30 percent. This means they?re selling three out of 10 opportunities. That?s 50 percent more than the two out of 10 everyone else is selling.

Even so, what if they could sell just one of the four remaining ?sellable? customers?

Their sales would immediately increase by 33 percent.

What if they could sell two of those four?

Their sales would increase by 67 percent.

What if, through clear focus and genuine inspiration, they could sell three of those four? Congratulations. You will have helped them double their sales volume with no change in pricing, no change in inventory, and no change in overhead. You did it merely by getting their staff to speak the same language currently being spoken in their ads. And consider this: You doubled their sales volume before you even increased their sales opportunities. Give them more sales opportunities, along with an elevated close rate, and they?ll think you walk on water.

The corporate wall between ad writing and sales training has troubled me for 30 years, but I?ve not spoken publicly about the problem until now.

Shall I confess?

I didn?t mention it because I didn?t want to be asked to fix it. Fixing it, you see, would involve talking to the employees of all the companies for whom I write ads. And frankly, nothing on earth could be as excruciating for me as having to smile and listen to well-meaning people tell me what they think I should do differently.

Truth be told, I?m not really a people person. Few writers are.

Ray Seggern of KROX-FM has put together a marvelous workshop to help businesses repair the split in their corporate personality. According to Seggern:
1. Story is what you say (external message created through advertising).
2. Culture is who you are (internal reality created by sales training).
3. Experience is what you deliver (what happens to your customers when they choose to trust you).

If any of these three is out of alignment, there will be predictable side effects.

When story and experience don?t align, a company gets bad reviews. But when advertising aligns with the customer?s experience, the company has authenticity.

When culture and experience don?t align, your client has a cancer in the building. But when corporate culture aligns with the customer?s experience, your client?s employees will have high morale.

When culture and story don?t align, your client will have a close rate that?s unimpressive. But if you help them get their sales training aligned with your advertising, they?ll need a wheelbarrow to carry their money.

And you?ll need a wheelbarrow to carry yours.

2015 is going to be a very good year for business.

Roy H. Williams is president of Wizard of Ads Inc. E-mail: roy@wizardofads.com.

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(WIZARD) The Advertiser's Dilemma

7-30-2014

Much has been written in recent months about our desperate need for better radio ads. I shall say only a little about this subject, for there is little left to be said.

In his ?Creative Fundamentals That Get Results? of May 25, Katz Media Group?s Bob McCurdy wrote, ?Meticulous planning and strategy will not overcome weak creative, and, for too long, the effort to plan and ?place? the radio commercial has overshadowed the effort to ?create? the commercial.?

I agree with Bob?s observation completely. Radio people who are drawn toward the science of advertising often leave the art behind. Our reverence for numbers and measurements and statistics has caused us to act like every customer?s decisionmaking process is the same.

Bob went on share 14 ?Creative Fundamentals.? I agree completely with 12 of the 14, but agree only partially with two of them:
2. Mention the advertiser?s name throughout.
6. ?Reveal? ads, which put off mentioning the advertiser?s name until 30-40 seconds into the commercial, do not perform well.

Bob, if you will allow me to add the words ?during the early months of a radio campaign? to each of those fundamentals, I can agree with those two as well.

The reader may have noticed that I said, ?early months,? as though a radio campaign should continue for years. This is because I do believe that a radio campaign should continue for years. Many of the clients for whom I write ads have been with me for nearly a quarter century, and considerably more than half my clients have been with me for longer than a decade. And each client I serve is on a chosen group of radio stations 52 weeks a year.

You can see, I?m sure, why I don?t have to ?mention the advertiser?s name throughout.? When a local listener hears my client?s voice ? a distinctive voice heard on no other ads in the marketplace ? that listener knows immediately who is speaking. We don?t have to say the name of the company; the listener is saying it in his or her mind. For my client to mention the name of the company throughout the ad would only make us sound like everyone else:

?At Roy H. Williams Marketing, we believe in the Roy H. Williams Way. This is because Roy H. Williams has been writing successful radio ads for 35 years and the clients of Roy H. Williams appreciate the success that Roy delivers daily to their doors. Would you like to pay your ad writer according to the growth he brings your company? Call Roy H. Williams Marketing today and get started on radio the Roy H. Williams Way.?

?Ad-speak? is an irritating language. I do not advise that you learn it.

Bob also mentions that ?reveal? ads, which put off mentioning the advertiser?s name until late in the commercial, don?t perform well.

Although I?ve never met Bob McCurdy, the wisdom of his other 12 ?Creative Fundamentals? leads me to believe that he would agree that a ?reveal? ad can be spell-binding when the listener 1) instantly recognizes the advertiser?s voice and 2) knows that this voice always shares fascinating insights and perspectives.

Bob would agree, I?m sure, because Bob McCurdy is old enough to remember Paul Harvey.

Bob McCurdy?s 14 fundamentals are absolutely correct in the short term, but as a radio campaign evolves, the rules that guide it evolve, too.

?Physicists like to think that all you have to do is say, ?These are the conditions. Now what happens next???
? Richard Feynman, winner of the 1965 Nobel Prize in Physics

Like physicists, ad writers like to believe that all we have to do is ask, ?What does the customer want?? and an answer will be forthcoming. But in truth, what the customer wants is in a constant state of flux.

Have you ever gone shopping, only to come home with something entirely different from what you had planned to buy? Of course you have. We all have.

Decision is a destination, a tangible place of certainty, but the multiple paths that will take us there can be faint and foggy and damp. We are confronted by choices unanticipated. We find new information, unexpected options, possibilities we did not foresee. Simply stated, our buying motives can evolve from a tiger to a mouse to a llama to a rhino to a little pink pony in the space of a single hour.

Advanced Ad Writing begins with two realizations:
1. Most radio creative is focused on short-term business goals instead of long-term business growth. This is probably due to radio salespeople?s being focused on short-term sales goals, as opposed to recruiting long-term clients.

2. The listener is a moving target, and radio?s creative must move with the listener?s changing needs and expectations if we are not to fall out of step.

If you believe change is in the air, hang on tight.

The best is yet to come.

Roy H. Williams is president of Wizard of Ads Inc. E-mail: roy@wizardofads.com.

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(WIZARD) How Does Your Client Like To Buy?

7-14-2014

Not everyone buys radio according to the same criteria, so why do we always try to sell it in the same basic way?

The first thing you need to know is how your client will make his or her decision. Regardless of what you may have been told, advertisers never make a decision based on price alone. Their criteria may be as simple as price divided by audience size, but it?s never spot rate alone, so please don?t hide behind that myth.

The second thing you need to know is that virtually everyone in radio has a blind spot. (Don?t be embarrassed. If you knew it was there, they wouldn?t call it a blind spot.) Radio?s blind spot is its relentless preconception that every advertiser should have a target demographic: ?Who is your customer??

There are three main groups of radio buyers:

1. Advertisers with no firm criteria for decision-making regarding ad schedules. They need you to be the expert.
2. Advertisers who just want the best deal they can get on one or more of the ?right? stations. They have specific demographic and/or psychographic targets.
3. Advertisers who think of radio as ?mass media? and believe radio audiences to be largely interchangeable. They?re buying 12+ or 18+ reach and frequency at the best prices they can find. You don?t like to hear that, but there it is. You can?t corner these buyers into a ?target demographic,? but on the other hand, they?re willing to pay you for every listener you?ve got, regardless of age, sex, income, or other qualitative criteria.

These three main categories of ad buyers can be separated into distinct groups at two precise forks in the road:

FIRST FORK: ?Do you have a preferred method for evaluating radio schedules, or would you like me to give you some recommendations??

Basically, what you?re asking is, ?Who?s going to be the expert here? Me or you?? If your prospect has no specific criteria for making decisions, you?re dealing with a babe-in-the-woods, a neophyte. You?re the expert. You?re in charge. Be very careful to craft something that will deliver obvious, identifiable results because this client is counting on you. Not on your station, on you. Deliver consistent results and you?ll be in control of this account forever.

On the other hand, if your client does have specific criteria for making decisions, you need to quickly get in step with it: Be for what is. Don?t try to get the prospect to see things your way. Don?t politely argue with them. Don?t present them with new information in the hope of getting them to make a new decision. And for the love of all that?s bright and good, DON?T have a standard presentation that you impose on every buyer.

Asking a buyer to reconsider their buying criteria is like asking them to change their religion. If your prospect wants to be their own expert, let\ them, because they?re going to do it anyway, even without your permission.

Let?s assume your prospect answered the first question by stating that they do, in fact, have a preferred method for making decisions.

SECOND FORK: ?Some advertisers have specific demographic or psychographic targets while others use mass media as a way to reach the masses. I?d consider it a huge favor if you?d let me know how I can best get in step with you. Tell me what you?d like to see in my presentation and I?ll do my best to show it to you.? Listen very closely to the answer. The next words from your prospect?s mouth are likely to be the truth, even if they don?t realize it.

If the prospect talks only about audience size and rates, give them those and nothing else. If they want a ranker, give them that. If they want qualitative, give them that. If they want specific dayparts or sponsorships or ?added value? in the form of participation in station promotions, give exactly what they name.

You can try to convince buyers to buy according to how you prefer to sell, or you can sell according to how the buyer prefers to buy.

I wonder which of these works better? Why not try both and see? .

Roy H. Williams is president of Wizard of Ads Inc.
E-mail:roy@wizardofads.com

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(WIZARD) The Advertiser's Dilemma

3-23-2014

Retailers are asking, ?Why do people buy from my competitors without even giving us a chance?? And I reply, ?They gave you a chance. They just didn?t physically come to your store.?

Customers carry instant access to all the knowledge of the world in their pockets. They no longer have to visit stores or even call them on the phone to compare prices and research their options.

Why would a customer drive to a store to get expert guidance when better, faster, more objective guidance is instantly available online?

You can argue, if you like, that the information your advertiser provides is far superior to the information available online. And you might even be right. But customers are looking for information immediately. They?re looking for information right this second. They gave your client a chance when they went online. That website just didn?t volunteer what they wanted.

If your client?s answer to your listener?s query had been available online, Google would likely have directed them to it.

?Advertising is a tax you pay for not being remarkable.?

There are three keys to being remarkable:

1: Correctly anticipate the customer?s desire.
Is your client doing this? Are they customer-sensitive, or are they struggling to sell what they?re convinced people ought to buy ?if we could only make them understand?? If you have a client who says, ?You need to help me educate the public,? tell your client that radio can drive the customer to their website, but ?education? is best done online. I tried to educate the public until I finally realized that it was never going to work. Save yourself and your client the heartbreak. Get on board with what your customer wants.

2: Satisfy the customer?s desire. Hold nothing back.
Win big. When a client says they are ?competitive,? that means their offer is virtually indistinguishable from the offers made by their competitors. Is your client in the game to compete, or to win? It?s amazing how much better radio works when your client actually has something to say.

3: Package your offer magnetically.
A magnetic offer is impossible to ignore, even when your listener isn?t currently in the market for that product or service. A magnetic offer is sticky, repeatable, remarkable. It?s an offer that no one else has the courage to make. A magnetic offer is where word-of-mouth begins.

These are simple things, but as my friend Jeffrey Eisenberg says, ?Simple isn?t always easy.?

Particularly ?not easy? is this challenge of magnetic packaging.

Magnetic packaging begins with strategy. ?What would the customer be delighted to hear?? Answer this question resoundingly, and you have the beginnings of a radio campaign whose results are easy to measure.

Ad strategy is more difficult to teach than ad copy.

Strategy is determining what a customer would like to hear.

Copy is deciding how best to say it.

Impact in advertising is 80 percent strategy, 20 percent copy. This makes it nearly impossible for good copy to compensate for weak strategy.

We create failure when we pretend that creativity can overcome the fact that our advertiser has nothing to say.

Morris Hite said it sharply enough to pop a balloon: ?If an ad campaign is built around a weak idea ? or, as is so often the case, no idea at all ? I don?t give a damn how good the execution is, it?s going to fail. If you have a good selling idea, your secretary can write your ad for you.?

The most annoying creatures on earth are those smug little weasels who preach that the secret of successful advertising is to isolate the media that reaches the right customer. In effect, these weasels are selling a treasure map. ?The reason you haven?t found the treasure,? they say, ?is because you?ve been digging in all the wrong places.?

But the treasure isn?t buried at all. It?s in the pockets and purses of everyone you see. And if your client offers these people something they?d rather have than their treasure, they?ll hand your client that treasure with a smile and say, ?Thank you.? And then they?ll tell all their friends that they should give your client some treasure, too.

Want to know a secret? The media that delivers the message is the least important part of the advertising equation. When the message is right, any media will work. When the message is wrong, no media will.

During the decade when I lived in hotel rooms and taught advertising in 50 cities a year, my least favorite moment was when an advertiser would follow me into the bathroom during a break and casually lean over to say, ?Mr. Williams, I?m in the [INSERT CATEGORY HERE] business. How do you suggest I advertise? Is it TV? Is it radio? Is it the Internet??

This happened to me a lot more often than you might think.

How would you have answered?

Roy H. Williams is president of Wizard of Ads Inc. E-mail: roy@wizardofads.com.

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(WIZARD) Female Morning Drive

5-12-2014

By Roy Williams

We have female group heads, female general manag?ers, female sales managers, and female superstar salespeople. We even have a woman running the RAB. So where are the female morning drive jocks?

I?ve been asking everyone I can think to ask that question, and no one can name a female morning drive announcer in any of the top 50 markets. Sure, there are plenty of women on morning drive shows, but they all seem to be the ?sidekick? of the male announcer.

Which station is going to be the first to let a woman fly solo in morning drive? Which station is going to be the first with a two-woman or three-woman morning team?

Do it. The talent is out there. I promise it will be huge.

Allison Linn, a reporter for NBC, Today, and the Associated Press, reports that, according to data collected in 2007, 33.5 percent of women at that time were mak?ing more than their husbands. The trend clearly indicates that women will soon be earning more than their hus?bands in nearly 50 percent of all households.

Derek Thompson, a senior editor at The Atlantic, writes, ?Many women still aren?t comfortable out-earning their boyfriends ? and many men still aren?t comfortable earning less than their wives ... Well, they?d better get comfortable! Women are going to be the primary bread?winners in more and more families for so many reasons: 1) the shift from brawn economy to service economy; 2) women?s growing share of college degrees; and 3) sexism softening among male-dominated industries as women establish themselves in more positions of power. A national aversion to successful wives is a really bad recipe for economic growth and family formation. Get over it, guys. It?s a woman?s world, now.?

Advertisers know this. Listeners know this. But does radio?

When Ann Richards was governor of Texas, she said, ?Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did. She just did it backwards and in high heels.? Ann was slightly militant in her feminism, as was common 20 years ago when she made her deliciously witty statement.

But the once-edgy defiance of feminism has softened in recent years as Americans have increasingly recognized the abilities of women.

The Twilight series of films was launched 5 and 1/2 years ago. Twilight revolves around Bella, a high-school girl who is average in every conceivable way, yet she?s accepted, respected, and highly valued by immortals of astounding power and wealth. The Twilight films have grossed more than $3.3 billion, and it?s not because we believe in vampires. It?s because we believe in girls.

In 2012, we were introduced to 16-year-old Katniss Everdeen in The Hunger Games films, another successful franchise about an average girl who is called upon to save humanity. Her inner strength, tenacity, and fundamen?tal goodness allow Katniss to survive everything that is thrown at her as she quietly wins the day.

Divergent is the newest of these Joan of Arc films in which an average young woman goes toe-to-toe against strong opponents and wins. The special ability of Tris Prior is that she isn?t limited to seeing the world in just one way, but is able to respond appropriately in ever-changing circumstances. In other words, Divergent celebrates an ability shared by every woman, everywhere.

I don?t believe that Twilight, The Hunger Games, and Divergent are changing our perception of women. Movies like these are just mirrors that show us how much our perception has already changed.

Everywhere except morning drive, that is.

As recently as 10 years ago, approximately half of all men would choose an engagement ring alone. The other half would choose the engagement ring with their part?ner at their side. It was barely thinkable that a woman would shop for an engagement ring by herself and then bring her fiance in to see it later. Yet this is a common practice today.

Do you have any idea how profoundly this affects the language of radio ads for engagement rings? Most women are gracious enough not to be offended by outdated lan?guage such as, ?Buy her the diamond she deserves,? but is such a statement likely to attract women to that store? It would be more elegant to say, ?When you love someone and they love you back, it just doesn?t get any better than that. And a diamond is the symbol of that love.? This sec?ond, more powerful line treats both parties as equals and makes no assumptions regarding gender.

Gosh, even engagement ring stores are escaping the sexism of the past.

Now before you try to claim that ?research indicates? the people of your town prefer male morning announc?ers, let me assure you that a rapidly growing pile of far better research clearly indicates otherwise.

I truly hope that I?m wrong about how no woman is currently flying solo in morning drive.

Am I?

Roy H. Williams is president of Wizard of Ads Inc. E-mail: roy@wizardofads.com.

(5/12/2014 10:50:17 PM)
It was Joan of Arc's boyfriend who was credited with saying: "That's great, Joannie. You go save France. I'm going to nuke a chicken pot pie and watch the game. Call me."

The women in radio I feel for are the clever ones who are arbitrarily lobotomized, thrown on the air during mid-days and monitored regularly with the station's ditz-o'-meter.

(5/12/2014 4:46:01 PM)
Michaela Majoun. 24 years at WXPN in Philadelphia. Non-commercial, but still...
(5/12/2014 3:45:39 PM)
Jenn LuMaye WKIX-FM Raleigh Market #42
(5/12/2014 9:06:08 AM)
Marilyn Russell / WBEN-FM, Philadelphia
(5/12/2014 8:41:34 AM)
Laurie DeYoung WPOC, Baltimore

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(WIZARD) A Time For Confidence

4-18-2014

Most people who sell radio rely on data and statistics.

Data and statistics are boring. A client will say they want data when what they really want is confidence. They want to have confidence in your station, confidence in your schedule, confidence in the ad. They want to know this is going to work.

It?s hard to give other people confidence when you don?t have it yourself. Do you have it? If not, I beg you to find it. Your career will forever rise and fall with the level of your confidence.

Scientists are willing to change their beliefs when presented with data, facts, and figures. But very few of your prospective customers will be scientists. This is why you must accommodate their perspectives, reinforce their biases, anticipate their preferences, and leverage their stereotypes.

You may think you?re winning the argument when you quote facts and figures, numbers and shares, quarter hours and cumes, qualitative data and underwear sizes, but Dale Carnegie was right: ?A man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still.?

Anyone who has ever attempted to use numbers to overcome an irrational belief knows that Carnegie was right. You may win the debate with facts and figures, but they will rarely win you the sale.

In the words of Andrew Lang, we generally use statistics ?as a drunken man uses a lamppost, for support rather than for illumination.?

You must learn to provide illumination. You?ve got to be able to turn on the light in your customer?s mind.

Data, facts, and figures are not the keys to the mind.

The keys to the mind are metaphors, connecting the unfamiliar to the familiar, the unknown to the known. According to Dr. Ricardo Gattass of the Institute of Biophysics, metaphors employ ?symbolic thought,? the only type of thought that bridges the unconscious to the conscious, the right brain to the left, the category to the specific, the pattern to the purpose.

1. Verbal thought is the sound of words in the mind.

2. Analytical thought embraces data, facts, and logic. Both this and verbal thought are rooted primarily in the logical left brain.

3. Abstract thought embraces patterns of events and patterns of answers. It?s a non-verbal, subjective reality built on personal preferences, prejudices, and stereotypes. Abstract thought is mostly right-brain thought.

4. Symbolic thought is a bridge that begins in the land of abstract thought and ends in the land of analytical thought. Success stories, parables, and metaphors are powerful expressions of symbolic thought. This makes them far more persuasive than numbers.

You?ve heard it said that ?Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts.? Yet each of us routinely crafts our own facts from the fabric of personal experiences, preferences, and prejudices.

A stereotype is nothing more than a pattern we?ve observed. This pattern isn?t always predictive, but it is a pattern nonetheless, and we trust it. We base our stereotypes in the misbegotten belief that we have correctly interpreted our past experiences and that our preferences and prejudices are, in fact, correct and reliable interpretations of objective reality.

We?re a funny, funny species, aren?t we?

We?re coaching a basketball game. Cedric makes four baskets in less than two minutes, so we conclude that Cedric has ?a hot hand,? he?s ?in the zone and has a feel for the basket,? so we instruct the other players to feed Cedric the ball.

Does it surprise you to learn that all the data clearly indicates that a player who makes four consecutive baskets in less than two minutes of game time is no more likely to make his next shot than usual? But every coach, every player, and every fan of the sport will continue to feed Cedric the ball.

We don?t trust data nearly so much as we trust our hearts. You need to keep this in mind when making your next presentation.

Win the heart, and the mind will follow.

Don?t fill your messages with data. Because a man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still.

Instead, use success stories, parables, and metaphors that will connect your idea to your customer?s inner world. When you?ve won the battle for your client?s gut feelings, then all that remains is to provide them with whatever logic and data they require to justify what their heart has already decided.

Symbolic thought is the key that opens the heart and mind.

You must have confidence before you can transfer confidence to your customer. Most radio people are in desperate need of confidence.

Techniques don?t mean much when you don?t have confidence.

Have I helped you at all? I hope so.

Sell yourself first. The rest is easy.

Roy H. Williams is president of Wizard of Ads Inc. E-mail: roy@wizardofads.com.

(4/18/2014 9:06:03 AM)
I used to enjoy the recordings of a terrific, little indie-band, "The Courage Of Lassie".
Another swell name might be, "The Confidence Of Roy".

But, there's more to it than just a whizzy name. Roy (and his crew) enjoy the confidence that comes from writing and producing OUTSTANDING commercial messaging.

Without that, all that's left is "DATA" - which sucks as a sales tool.
("And now... another huge hit from 'Pistol Noon'.")
Thanks, RHW.

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(WIZARD) Radio Without Success Stories

3-23-2014

It was a bizarre set of circumstances that caused me to succeed during my formative years as an account executive. None of the business owners on whom I made sales calls had the money to buy any advertising beyond the radio schedule I sold them on my tiny little station. If my ads worked, I got the credit. If they didn?t work, I got the blame. I was never part of a media mix. Let me qualify ?tiny little station? for you. We had a (12+) weekly cume of 18,000 in a market of a million people. Our average quarter hour hovered between 500 and 800 persons.

I proposed 52-week schedules exclusively.

My theory was that 18,000 people each week were enough to make a big difference. But I didn?t pitch my audience as anyone?s ?perfect target.? I?d say, ?After a few months you?ll be a household word among 18,000 evangelists and ambassadors for your brand. And according to Joe Girard, the author of How to Sell Anything to Anybody, the average American has a ?realm of association? of 250 friends, neighbors, co-workers, and family members that know them well enough to call them by their first name. If we impress my audience deeply enough that each of them mentions you to just 10 percent of their friends, that?s 450,000 people. Don?t worry about who you?re reaching. Just rock their world with a message that?s absolutely worth repeating. Now what are we going to tell these 18,000 people that will rock their world??

That wasn?t a sales pitch. I believed it with my whole heart.

The ads worked, my clients thrived, and I got famous.

So why do I never see stories ? not even in Radio Ink ? about the success of businesses that buy no media other than radio?

I?ll suggest four possible answers to my own question, and you tell me if you agree:

1. Account executives are being taught to pitch their audience as ?the perfect target? for the advertiser. When the pitch to an advertiser revolves around whether or not your audience is ?perfect,? the pressure will be squarely on your station to deliver that ?perfect audience,? regardless of how limp and pointless the advertiser?s message might be.

2. Few people have the courage to pitch 52-week schedules, so they take whatever handouts they can get. Most of these schedules will deliver sufficient shortterm frequency, but they fall short in critical ways: A) The product or service has a long selling cycle and the schedule isn?t long enough. It delivers frequency without consistency. Consistency is the frequency of the frequency. There are many things that just can?t be sold quickly, regardless of the advertiser?s argument that ?someone out there is looking for this product right now.? B) Products with short selling cycles ? those things we?re always in the market for ? are being advertised in a way that is easily ignored. When is the last time an advertiser rocked your world?

3. Those AEs who are creating huge success stories are keeping them secret for the same reasons I rarely publish my own successes: They don?t want their clients being hassled. A number of years ago, I published a sparkling success story about an advertiser who used radio to grow his modest business into a juggernaut, with more than a 30-fold increase in annual revenue. It took only a few years and we used radio exclusively. And my client was immediately swamped with phone calls from account executives across America asking him to help them pitch their clients. One of them went so far as to say to him, ?You owe it to radio. Look at what radio has done for you.? Needless to say, I haven?t made that mistake again.

4. This one, I think, is the big one. Too few people in radio today can conjure great creative. Sadly, most of them don?t think it?s their job. The selling of radio seems to have gotten caught up in the data frenzy created by the Internet. Conversations seem to revolve around targets and metrics instead of offers and copy.

In the February 25, 2014 online version of Harvard Business Review was an article by Jake Sorofman and Andrew Frank, ?What Data-Obsessed Marketers Don?t Understand.? These are the opening paragraphs:

?Big data has become the X factor of modern marketing, the hero of every marketer?s story. But it?s a promise at risk of letting you down. You may be thinking that data will magically turn bush-league marketing into a winning ?Moneyball? performance. But that?s an artifact of our big data obsession. Data, alone, isn?t what makes marketing move the needle for business.

?Data can play a leading role in developing strategy and bringing precision to execution, but it does nothing ? absolutely nothing ? to stir motivation and create the desire that makes cash registers ring. Data is important, but it?s content that makes an emotional connection.?

I think somebody needs to recruit Sorofman and Frank into radio. These guys would make themselves and their employers a blistering fortune, and help hundreds of businesses succeed that otherwise probably would not.

Their message: ?It?s not about the numbers. It?s about the advertiser?s offer.?

Hallelujah, amen.

Roy H. Williams is president of Wizard of Ads Inc. E-mail: roy@wizardofads.com.

(3/24/2014 3:18:08 PM)
Mike makes the sincere assumption that "deals" and "calls to action" are necessary. They are not. In fact, those calls-to-action are elements that contribute to burning audiences down.
Anncr: "Make your best deal today!"
Audience member: "Eat my shorts!"

Meanwhile, "leo" calls for the creative types to pull it out and get on with generating some hi-calibre spots. My question: Are there any folks who can do that left wandering the halls or hammering out the hype...? At radio stations, I mean.

(3/24/2014 2:18:41 PM)
These comments are fightin' words! Radio AEs and producers across America, rise up to write "rock the world" copy and present all 52's.
(3/24/2014 1:06:48 PM)
Example of a limp and pointless message... A few years ago a local car dealer had a TV commercial that has to be one of the worst examples ever. No deals, no call to action. They did mention the dealers name a few times. Just a couple guys walking through a corn field, talking about having the lowest prices "at my stores". They didn't mention that they sell cars. If not watching the screen at the end of this boring spot, one might think they were talking about a grocery store.
(3/24/2014 10:07:37 AM)
Indeed, to find horrible examples of the dregs of professional communications, one need only dial up any local radio station.
More compelling copy can be found on the bulletin boards of neighborhood laundromats.
Exceptions are the exceptions, so to speak.

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(WIZARD) My Apology To Programmers

3-10-2014

I?ve often said that the primary job of the general manager in a radio station is to keep the program director and the sales manager from killing each other. When my broadcast group gave me a GM?s office, I looked behind the door expecting to find a black-and-white striped shirt and a whistle.

I walked away from that GM?s job 28 years ago, but I never got out of radio. And I recently realized that I never really understood the job of the program director. It always seemed to me that his job was mostly to babysit irresponsible announcers and be an annoying impediment to sales.

I began my radio career as a part-time announcer, working on a little AM station on weekends. The fulltime announcers at our big FM sister station let me hang around the edges of their conversations. I remember one rant from an announcer called Brother John. ?How come the salespeople make all that money? We?re the heart and soul of the radio station. We?re the ones the listeners love! If it wasn?t for us, those salespeople wouldn?t have anything to sell! And whose idea was it to play 12 spots an hour? We could be number one if we didn?t have to play all those stupid commercials.?

I remember it vividly because it?s the moment I first realized that my career would be in sales. The staggering stupidity of Brother John?s rant makes my knees weak and my vision blurry. I said to myself, ?I am definitely not one of these guys.?

In those days no one, not even the most carnivorous of the sales staff, was suggesting more than 12 spots per hour. Most program directors were trying to push that number back to nine.

I thought those program directors were idiots and obstructionists. I now realize that I was wrong. Horribly and tragically wrong.

Google is an interesting company. There are no tricks you can pull to get Google to elevate you in its search rankings. If you want Google to lift you to the top of its search results, you need only help it serve its customers. Google doesn?t consider the companies that give them money for ads to be its ?customers.? Google believes its customer to be the person who types a search query into its homepage: ?Provide the answer that person seeks, and we?ll lift you higher in the rankings.?

Google?s market cap hovers at about $400 billion. Clear Channel?s market cap is about $17 billion. Do the math and you?ll see that Google is worth about four times as much as all 10,000 of America?s commercial radio stations combined. Google is valuable to Wall Street because Google values its ?customer,? and correctly understands that customer to be the public.

Radio no longer values that customer, and we?re being punished for it.

It has taken me 35 years, but I?ve finally opened my eyes. The job of an account executive is to protect the advertiser and enhance their investment. The job of the program director is to protect the listener and enhance their experience.

?Just one more spot per hour. The listener won?t notice. Certainly we can add just one more, right? Or are you suggesting we should do without the revenue??

A cafe owner, famous for his soup, was told by his accountant that he could boost his profit significantly if he would add just 5 percent more water to the recipe. The accountant was right. The water was added and no one noticed. Months later, the cafe added 5 percent more water, and still no one noticed. Later, more water was added. And then a little more, but never more than 5 percent because we now ?know? that customers cannot detect just 5 percent more added water. As you suspected, the cafe owner didn?t lose his customers incrementally, but all at once. ?The soup here just isn?t as good as it used to be.?

I was told that story by a multi-millionaire Wall Street speculator. He says American businesspeople have a peculiar blind spot to the all-at-once backlash that comes with watering the soup. He said American businesses expect to see incremental declines when they are incrementally abusive, but that?s never how it works. When the wife packs up to leave, she takes the kids and leaves all at once.

I teach advertising professionals ? mostly small-agency people ? in a monthly webcast. This is a question that was e-mailed to me a week ago:

The dominant morning radio show in this market is a talk show featuring a pair of shock jocks on an otherwise rock music station. If you take away the morning show, this station is middle-of-the-pack at best.

For the past several months, they?ve been airing two commercial breaks per hour in the morning show. Each is 8-10 minutes long and with the mix of :30s and :60s, typically has nine to 11 spots. We feel the station could care less about the commercial environment they have created. We have broached the subject with them. They basically shrugged us off.

At first, we thought about attempting to negotiate a ?first or last only? commercial position with them, but now are considering spending their budget somewhere else ? like Pandora or another station that is strong in the A25-54 demo and has a less cluttered format.

1. What would you do in this situation?

2. What do you think we should tell the station?

Maybe I?m wrong, but I think the customers are noticing the water in the soup.

Roy H. Williams is president of Wizard of Ads Inc. E-mail: roy@wizardofads.com.

(3/10/2014 8:33:32 AM)
Amen-And the stations using certain satellite netowrk music programming are forced by the network to run far too many commercials, PSAs, promos, etc. to fill the mandatory breaks. Really waters the soup. But how about TV? I simply can't watch commercial television anymore. Thank God for PBS and Ruku.
(3/10/2014 7:44:47 AM)
Amen! Years ago, Clear Channel made a valiant effort with their 'less is more' strategy, but with the serious debt load and other issues burdening them, it fell by the wayside.
There has not been enough soup in radio's water for years....maybe it's time we started serving stew instead of 'soup'.

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(WIZARD) A New Way To Look At YouTube

2-3-2014

I was teaching the third day of a three-day class. A hand went up in the second row.

?Yes??

?What?s the next big thing??

The answer leapt from my mouth before he had even finished the question.

?YouTube.?

Everyone laughed. This confused me until I realized the class thought I was trying to be funny. Yes, of course, YouTube was already big.

But not in the way I meant.

Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim founded YouTube in February 2005. Google purchased it the following year for $1.65 billion.

YouTube was an idea whose time had come.

During the 365 calendar days of 2011, YouTube delivered more than 1 trillion views. Viewership in 2012 was up by more than 40 percent: 1.46 trillion views.

One million seconds is about 12 days.

One billion seconds is nearly 32 years.

One trillion seconds is 31,688 years.

A trillion is a lot.

The statistics page at YouTube currently says the number of views delivered in 2013 was ?50 percent more than last year.? This means they?ve jumped from 1 trillion views per year to over 2 trillion views per year in just 24 months. It would appear that you and I and the rest of the world are watching a lot of online video.

Sometimes a prospective client calls your station to ask you a question. You answer. Occasionally they walk through your door. You greet them. But as Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak wryly observed in 2010, ?We used to ask a smart person a question. Now who do we ask? It starts with G-O, and it?s not God.?

Prospective clients are gathering information about marketing through Google and YouTube. This means your station website and your online, informational videos are vital new half-steps that fall between prospecting and faceto- face selling.

Are your prospects finding the information they need online?

I?m not talking about search engine optimization. I?m not talking about responding to customer queries made by e-mail. I?m talking about crafting an informative answer to the question you believe your prospect will ask and then posting that answer in a video on YouTube. You can also embed that video on a special website designed to teach advertisers about radio: how it works, what to expect, how long it takes, the importance of a strong message, the importance of frequency.

How many questions can you answer intelligently? That?s exactly how many YouTube videos you should create.

Yes, I?m being serious.

YouTube is often called ?social media.? This is unfortunate because we tend to see ?social media? as cotton candy that offers little real nutrition. Entertainment value is measured by the number of views a video receives. I am not suggesting that you should entertain the public, but rather that you should inform them. Information value is measured by how well you anticipate and answer your customer?s not-yet-asked question.

YouTube delivers entertainment when we want to be distracted, but it also delivers information when we are seeking answers.

Google and YouTube offer your prospective clients unprecedented access to information, 24/7. This is changing the nature of selling. As Steve Wozniak pointed out, we?re no longer seeking the opinions of experts face to-face, we?re seeking them face-to-computer-screen.

This is not how the world functioned a short decade ago. Welcome to 2014.

Good video doesn?t require a lot of money. But it does require a lot of thought, a lot of time, and a lot of followthrough.

You?re full of valuable information, insight, and experience and you can tell amazing stories. Online video allows you to be everywhere at once, 24/7. The perfect explanation, delivered perfectly, every time.

You?ll find online video to be an amazing time-saver. You?ll find it to be the ultimate sales aid. You?ll also find it to be the best quality-control insurance money can buy because you no longer have to say the same things over and over, one client at a time. You just e-mail your clients the link to your latest video. Be the person on the screen.

Your prospects are gathering more and more information from online video. Why not let them gather it from you?

The most common mistake is making videos too long. Break complex ideas into bite-size chunks. Shoot for 60-second videos. These are devoured like potato chips: ?Just one more. One more. One more. OK, one more. One more.?

Make a 90-second video only when it can?t be avoided.

Yes, this means you?re going to have to script your videos and read them from a prompter, just like a network newscaster. The outcome will be you ? happy you ? looking directly into the eyes of the viewer. Screen text and graphics are easily added.

So what are you waiting for?

Roy H. Williams is president of Wizard of Ads Inc. E-mail: roy@wizardofads.com

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(WIZARD) A New Way To Look At YouTube

1-20-2014

I was teaching the third day of a three-day class. A hand went up in the second row.

?Yes??

?What?s the next big thing??

The answer leapt from my mouth before he had even finished the question.

?YouTube.?

Everyone laughed. This confused me until I realized the class thought I was trying to be funny. Yes, of course, YouTube was already big.

But not in the way I meant.

Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim founded YouTube in February 2005. Google purchased it the following year for $1.65 billion.

YouTube was an idea whose time had come.

During the 365 calendar days of 2011, YouTube delivered more than 1 trillion views. Viewership in 2012 was up by more than 40 percent: 1.46 trillion views.

One million seconds is about 12 days.

One billion seconds is nearly 32 years.

One trillion seconds is 31,688 years.

A trillion is a lot.

The statistics page at YouTube currently says the number of views delivered in 2013 was ?50 percent more than last year.? This means they?ve jumped from 1 trillion views per year to over 2 trillion views per year in just 24 months. It would appear that you and I and the rest of the world are watching a lot of online video.

Sometimes a prospective client calls your station to ask you a question. You answer. Occasionally they walk through your door. You greet them. But as Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak wryly observed in 2010, ?We used to ask a smart person a question. Now who do we ask? It starts with G-O, and it?s not God.?

Prospective clients are gathering information about marketing through Google and YouTube. This means your station website and your online, informational videos are vital new half-steps that fall between prospecting and face-to-face selling.

Are your prospects finding the information they need online?

I?m not talking about search engine optimization. I?m not talking about responding to customer queries made by e-mail. I?m talking about crafting an informative answer to the question you believe your prospect will ask and then posting that answer in a video on YouTube. You can also embed that video on a special website designed to teach advertisers about radio: how it works, what to expect, how long it takes, the importance of a strong message, the importance of frequency.

How many questions can you answer intelligently? That?s exactly how many YouTube videos you should create.

Yes, I?m being serious.

YouTube is often called ?social media.? This is unfortunate because we tend to see ?social media? as cotton candy that offers little real nutrition. Entertainment value is measured by the number of views a video receives. I am not suggesting that you should entertain the public, but rather that you should inform them. Information value is measured by how well you anticipate and answer your customer?s not-yet-asked question.

YouTube delivers entertainment when we want to be distracted, but it also delivers information when we are seeking answers.

Google and YouTube offer your prospective clients unprecedented access to information, 24/7. This is changing the nature of selling. As Steve Wozniak pointed out, we?re no longer seeking the opinions of experts face-toface, we?re seeking them face-to-computer-screen.

This is not how the world functioned a short decade ago.

Welcome to 2014.

Good video doesn?t require a lot of money. But it does require a lot of thought, a lot of time, and a lot of followthrough.

You?re full of valuable information, insight, and experience and you can tell amazing stories. Online video allows you to be everywhere at once, 24/7. The perfect explanation, delivered perfectly, every time.

You?ll find online video to be an amazing time-saver. You?ll find it to be the ultimate sales aid. You?ll also find it to be the best quality-control insurance money can buy because you no longer have to say the same things over and over, one client at a time. You just e-mail your clients the link to your latest video. Be the person on the screen.

Your prospects are gathering more and more information from online video. Why not let them gather it from you?

The most common mistake is making videos too long. Break complex ideas into bite-size chunks. Shoot for 60-second videos. These are devoured like potato chips: ?Just one more. One more. One more. OK, one more. One more.?

Make a 90-second video only when it can?t be avoided.

Yes, this means you?re going to have to script your videos and read them from a prompter, just like a network newscaster. The outcome will be you ? happy you ? looking directly into the eyes of the viewer. Screen text and graphics are easily added.

So what are you waiting for?

Roy H. Williams is president of Wizard of Ads Inc. E-mail: roy@wizardofads.com

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(WIZARD) 'I Tried Radio And It Didn't Work.'

12-20-2013

Radio desperately needs a new reputation. The more gracious and elegant leaders in our industry may use different words than mine, but if you listen closely, they?re all saying what I just said.

I believe I have a solution to that problem of reputation. But like most solutions that are real and true, my solution isn?t a quick one. It isn?t a slogan or a series of ads or a goofy publicity stunt.

And it certainly isn?t painless.

Today I?m going to suggest a new commission structure for account executives. I pray only that someone, somewhere, has the courage to test this commission plan, because I honestly believe it will work.

Let?s begin with a questionable metaphor and a not-so-questionable look at history:

A farmer with integrity harvests a crop that he himself planted. He doesn?t raid the farm of his neighbor in the middle of the night.

Radio sales reps often limit their careers to calling on people who are known to be radio advertisers ? people who were introduced to radio by an account executive other than themselves. These ?steal-the-account? AEs remind me of Hernando Cortez, the Spanish conquistador who came to North America and immediately began raiding the cities of the Aztecs, hoping to steal the gold of Montezuma.

Advertisers who believe in radio were fortunate to have had a positive first experience. But very few have this good fortune. Most business owners were introduced to radio by a sales rep whose manager was Hernando Cortez: ?Come back with Aztec gold by the end of the week or you?re fired.?

If you call on 30 business owners who are known not to be radio advertisers, the song you?ll hear sung most often is, ?I tried radio and it didn?t work.? Can you imagine how much higher radio?s billing would be if these advertisers sang a different song?

Radio didn?t work for these advertisers because most new advertisers are introduced to our medium by radio?s greenest and least-experienced reps.

A business owner has a problem, an opportunity, a hunger, or a dream. In comes dancing the new sales rep with a package and a promise. ?Our audience is perfect for your business. Your only problem is that you haven?t been reaching the right people, but my station?s got exactly the right people for you. Here, let me show you....?

This AE, of course, has been trained not to sell radio, but to sell only the special qualities of his or her audience. This is the danger of using qualitative selling to sell mass media: It?s a pitch that allows the advertiser to run flaccid and pointless ads in the misbegotten belief that his only problem is that he?s been reaching the wrong people.

I?ve never seen a business fail because it was reaching the wrong people. But if you listen to AEs, this is the only problem a business needs to overcome.

The second problem with the inexperienced sales pitch is that it almost always revolves around a short-term package. To become a successful investment, a short-term package requires the advertiser to deliver an urgent and convincing message for a product, a service, or an event with a very short purchase cycle. And this almost never happens. Thus, at the end of that initial run and forever after, ?I tried radio and it didn?t work.?

Now let?s talk about that new commission plan. I?ll pose it as a question:

What would happen if you paid a significantly higher commission plus a meaningful bonus to any AE who brought a first-time radio advertiser into your station with a 52-week schedule? My suspicion is that radio?s saltiest and most experienced AEs would begin spending more time looking under rocks and behind bushes for virgin accounts.

Few things energize a station like a small advertiser that?s seeing great results from his or her schedule and is growing by leaps and bounds because of it. The amount of new business that comes to a radio station as the result of such a client is amazing. I?ve seen this many times. I?ll bet you have, too.

To create a success story that will ring the bell of your city requires an advertising partner that is:
1. not already well-known
2. does not use a media mix, but
3. is giving the vast bulk of their total ad budget to radio.

These success stories aren?t hard to create. You already have AEs that can sell these business owners on a 52-week schedule if they?re utterly determined to do it.

The problem is that no one is calling on them.

Put together a compensation plan that rewards AEs for the extra energy and patience it takes to land a virgin 52-week account. And make sure the plan rewards AEs for putting A+ efforts into the strategies and ad copy that will be required to make this new account a big success.

If every station in America began 2014 with just two or three such new accounts, America would regain its respect and admiration for radio by mid-2015.

Grass roots. That?s where we?ve got to begin.

There?s a chance I?m wrong.

But I doubt it.

Roy H. Williams is president of Wizard of Ads Inc. E-mail: roy@wizardofads.com.

(12/20/2013 8:08:07 PM)
Yes, Phil, I did indeed suck at radio sales - in 1969. A little water has gone under that bridge since then. Further, I will comment where I think it might be useful or warranted. I didn't grow up in this business in a programming bubble.

Meanwhile, Roy promotes a better deal for the sales folk based on the longevity of the programs they are pitching. Agreed. Good. Next...?

Just don't ask me anything about engineering. In that area, I truly am clueless.

(12/20/2013 4:59:29 PM)
Ron,

I really have no interest in a dialogue with you, but I suggest that since you've admitted publicly that you were a failure at radio sales that you refrain from commenting on that subject.
Roy's topic was related to sales and retaining salespeople.

(12/20/2013 12:14:17 PM)
Our industry doesn't attract good sales people because they could go sell cars, the customer comes to them, so there's no work on their part, and a single sale is often over $20000. Compare that to radio... we have to identify the customer, get past the gatekeepers to the decision maker, and arrange to go meet with them. If you're not a top station or you're in a small market, the spot rate is only a few measly bucks. Then you have to write, cut and schedule a spot...
(12/20/2013 12:07:19 PM)
To the contrary, Phil. Roy's main point is a "gimme" and who would argue? A little "money motivation" never hurt.

What he glossed over is still more important - supplying the sales department and the client with the appropriate messaging - short and long-term.

That would include those times when an advertiser really does have something unique or outstanding to advertise and could get satisfactory results with a short-term blitz - so long as the commercial content was also up to snuff.

(12/20/2013 10:13:45 AM)
The 3 previous commenters miss Roy's point entirely, of course. But that's what their basic problem is. They don't listen, they preach.
Roy's thought of a higher commission payment for brand-new radio users is a fine idea. A number of stations can attest to it.

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(WIZARD) Lessons Learned From The Poor

10-28-2013

I?m 21 years old, but my thinning hair makes me look about 30. I consider this to be my greatest asset. I walk the retail sidewalks, looking in windows, deciding if I?ll go in. A peddler goes door to door unthinkingly, playing the odds, but I choose my doors carefully, looking for those little indicators that whisper, ?The owner of this business has a brain.?

I climb wooden stairs to the trailer-house office of a mobile home dealer on Admiral Boulevard. Behind me is the neighborhood of Ponyboy Curtis, an unfiltered assortment of bent automobiles, broken houses, and discarded people.

My footsteps drum the wooden deck. Behind the glass, two men drink scotch at a coffee table in a cloud of Winston and Lucky Strike. The heavier one looks up at me, then back to his scotch as I swing open the door and step inside.

?Whatever you?re sellin?, we?re not buyin.?? His eyes never leave the scotch.

?Probably advertising,? said the other, careful not to look my way.

?I came in here because you guys appear from the road to be smarter than most. Don?t tell me I made a mistake.?

Both men turn to look at me. The second one speaks again. ?What makes you think we?re so smart??

?The sign, the flags, and the angle of presentation.?

His eyes grow cold and hard. ?Explain.?

I raise a finger. ?Five sheets of inch-and-an-eighth tongue-in-groove plywood gave you an 8-by-20 sign on which you painted ?Veterans Housing Specialists? in exactly the same style and colors a government agency would use. You?re looking for that Veterans Administration ?one-dollar move-in? money that you know every Vietnam vet has available to them. You?re smart enough to paint the sign. I?m smart enough to know it?s working.?

A second finger. ?Every dealer on mobile home row uses exactly the same strings of cheap vinyl flags to get attention. Red, yellow, blue, green, and white. But you paid extra for strings of metallic silver and metallic gold. It makes your mobile homes look upscale.?

Three fingers. ?You have the least inventory of any dealer, but your customers never realize it because while every other dealer places their homes parallel to the road, you?ve angled yours so no home is ever parallel to the road. This is visually more interesting, gets more attention, makes the homes seem distinctive, and you?re creating leading lines in a V-shape that guide the eyes of passers-by to your seemingly official ?Veterans Housing Specialists? sign.?

The second one stood up. ?I?m Jim McDuffie.? Pointing to his partner, he said, ?That?s Mac McKean.? Reaching toward me for a handshake, he said, ?And you?re our new advertising guy. Tell me what I need to buy.?

I like to tell that story because it makes me look smart. There are other stories I don?t like to tell.

Jim McDuffie?s business is big enough to advertise in multiple ways. This means I have a safety net. If the ads on my tiny little radio station don?t produce results, the traffic generated by the other stations will cover me. I rarely have this luxury.

The upside of working for the smallest radio station in the city is that I can make presentations to businesses with budgets too small for any station but mine. In other words, the salespeople who work for the larger stations are limited to just one of every 100 businesses. The other 99 can?t afford their rates, but every business in town can afford me.

That?s the problem. People buy my station because it?s all they can afford. Nothing else. No safety net. If my ads don?t work, the electric bill doesn?t get paid, the kids don?t have money for school lunches, and the ad man is a con man.

When my ads failed, I had nowhere to hide because my clients could afford no one but me. I?d been given all the money they had. Pain is the teacher you never forget.

When I lost my hair at an early age, I knew it gave me an advantage. But it took a few years for me to realize that being the only salesperson for the number 23 station in a city of 22 stations gave me an even bigger advantage. No other salesperson was given a private physics laboratory in which they could accurately measure the cause and effect of each of the variables in advertising.

Thank you, Mr. Kitchell, for trusting me with your money 34 years ago. I learned some hard lessons at the expense of a lot of good people like yourself who couldn?t afford to lose what I cost them. I kept the education you bought me and helped a lot of people with it. Many of them became hugely successful.

None of those happy people ever really knew the debt they owed you. But I?ve never forgotten what we learned, you and I. The parts that worked. The parts that didn?t.

I think of you often, Mr. Kitchell, and I still regret that I was unable to take you where you deserved to go.

Roy H. Williams is president of Wizard of Ads Inc. E-mail: roy@wizardofads.com.

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(WIZARD) The Snowy Truth Of Advertising

10-2-2013

Every employee has opinions about the advertising that represents their company. This is natural, I suppose, because those ads, by extension, represent the employee as well. And so they tell the boss what they think, adding, ?and all of our customers think that, too.?

But if the development of successful advertising were as instinctive as most people believe, a higher percentage of ads would be successful.

Most business owners trust their instincts and personal preferences in the creation of their advertising. Others empower a ?creative? family member, an ?artistic? employee, or, worse, a group of employees ?who studied advertising in college? to craft their messages and select the media that will move their businesses to the next level.

And the results of these advertising campaigns are nearly always disappointing.

Philip Stanhope addressed this situation when he said, ?Every young man thinks himself wise enough, just as every drunk man thinks himself sober enough.?

Joss Whedon, too, might easily have been talking about writing ad copy when he said, ?Remember to always be yourself. Unless you suck.?

But no one ever thinks they suck. No one considers their own company to be boring or their own product to be average. Each of us is from Lake Wobegon, ?where all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average.?

We look in the mirror and assume that everyone sees what we see. And then we ?hold these truths to be selfevident? in our advertising.

But does anyone ever see us the way we see ourselves?

Most people have an opinion when it comes to advertising. And they feel certain they know what would work. But it?s only when you?re allowed to play with live ammunition ? real dollars ? that you begin to feel the slip of the ice beneath you and draw the sharp air of reality into your lungs.

The amateur believes an ad will be successful if it captures an aspect of the business that is unique and beautiful.

But every business is unique and beautiful, just like every snowflake in a snowbank.

When you have walked on that snow and slipped and fallen again and again and left the stain of your blood on the whiteness, you learn some hard truths that are not self-evident:

1. The world of advertising is noisier and more crowded than you ever dreamed possible.
2. Even though you are paying money to reach them, prospective customers are not required to give you their attention.
3. Until you win the customer?s attention, your message does not exist.
4. People turn their attention ? moment by moment ? to whatever is most interesting.
5. It is hard to make ads interesting.
6. The message contained in your ad must be relevant.
7. The message contained in your ad must also be credible.
8. True isn?t always credible. And credible isn?t always true. Competitors know this.
9. Ads soft enough not to repel anyone are also too weak to strongly attract anyone.
10. If you evaluate each ad by asking, ?Who might this offend?? you will never craft an ad sharp enough to pierce the clutter.
11. Every brand attracts a different set of core values in the hearts of its customers. The strategy that grew Apple computers into a worldwide brand won?t work for J.C. Penney. Just ask Ron Johnson.
12. The best ads contain entertainment, information, and hope.

The hardest part of my job as an ad man is telling my clients how to respond to people they care about when those people begin telling them how they should advertise.

You face the same problem, I know.

When you?re held accountable for real ad dollars, you spend your formative years experimenting with a lot of ideas that make perfect sense and absolutely should work.

They just don?t.

But every amateur thinks they will.

Roy H. Williams is president of Wizard of Ads Inc. E-mail: roy@wizardofads.com.

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(WIZARD) Make Employee Morale Skyrocket

8-12-2013

I?ve had a handful of memorable moments.

Among them was a meeting with Zig Ziglar in 1986. Zig stood at a whiteboard and smiled at the 20 people staring back at him with big eyes. Zig had written several best-selling books and created America?s most popular sales training program. The 20 of us were neophyte managers, trembling with excitement at having been chosen to be in that room.

Marker in hand, Zig said, ?Name for me every attribute of the perfect employee.?

As we called out attributes, Zig wrote them down. We had nearly 90 on the board before we began to slow.

?Can you think of any others?? We painfully named two dozen more.

?Think hard. I want you to describe the perfect employee. I need every attribute.? We studied that whiteboard until we began to sweat. We got to 114.

Pointing now at the first word on our list, Zig asked, ?Is this a skill or an attitude?? We said it was an attitude. Zig wrote a big ?A? next to it. Pointing at the second word, he asked, ?Skill or attitude?? Another big ?A.?

Twenty minutes later, Zig tallied the final score: Of the 114 attributes on our list, only seven could be classified as ?skills.? Five were ?skills/attitudes,? and a whopping 102 of them were purely ?attitude.?

Zig could have saved himself 30 minutes by just blurting out the punch line: ?Employees don?t lose their jobs because they lack skill. They lose their jobs because they don?t have a good attitude.? But Zig didn?t want to say those things and then try to convince us of their truth. Zig wanted us to say them, and thus convince ourselves to ?always hire people who have the right attitude.?

I sat there drenched in realization and recalled a few lines from Elbert Hubbard?s famous rant of 1899, A Message to Garcia: ?I know one man of really brilliant parts who has not the ability to manage a business of his own, and yet who is absolutely worthless to anyone else, because he carries with him constantly the insane suspicion that his employer is oppressing, or intending to oppress him ... Tonight this man walks the streets looking for work, the wind whistling through his threadbare coat. No one who knows him dare employ him, for he is a regular firebrand
of discontent.?

Twenty-five years after that meeting with Zig Ziglar, I had a similar moment with the great David McInnis.

?I finally figured out how to improve employee morale,? David said. ?Productivity skyrockets and everyone loves coming to work. It?s a program that never fails. Works every time.?

I stood there looking at David.

He stood there looking at me.

Finally, I raised my shoulders and turned my palms upward. Looking steadily into my eyes, David said, ?Fire all the unhappy people.? Those words struck me with such comical force that I began to laugh. But David wasn?t laughing.

None of us wants to run a sweatshop. None of us wants to be that hard-hearted boss who fails to appreciate the humanity of employees. None of us wants to abuse our people with the cold pragmatism displayed by Wal-Mart.

And this is why so many radio stations become country clubs for employees.

Here?s how it happens: A whiner makes a reasonable request, and you grant it. That request is expanded upon and accelerated until it ceases to be a privilege and becomes an inalienable right. And that was only the first request in an unending stream, brought to you by an increasingly dissatisfied staff. And you, sadly, are now seen as the oppressive King George.

But this revolt is unlike that famous one of 1776. This time it will be King George who delivers the declaration of independence to the whiner.

David?s advice, and mine, is that you identify the ?firebrand of discontent? within your station ? if you have one ? and give that person a smiling declaration of independence as you shake their hand, thank them for their months of service, and say, ?You are now free ? free to go.?

It?s a plan that never fails.

Roy H. Williams is president of Wizard of Ads Inc. E-mail: roy@wizardofads.com.

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(WIZARD) Shine Your Spotlight Of Words?

7-19-2013

A radio commercial begins, ?I?m Ronald Watersdown, and I?m here to tell you about a very important opportunity that I?m sure you won?t want to miss. It?s an incredible chance for you to....?

What did those 29 words make you see in your mind?

Not much, right? But what about these?

?Owl was neither wise nor old. She was a teenage assassin whose large, dark eyes said she was sleepy or depressed or bored. I was never really sure which.?

Twenty-nine words. You saw 1) a momentary owl that became 2) a young female assassin with half-shut eyes, then 3) you considered the emotions she might feel, and 4) you wondered about the relationship between her and the narrator. All in just 29 words.

Perhaps you?re thinking, ?Well, radio ads can?t be as interesting as the opening lines of novels.?

But why is that, do you suppose? Why couldn?t a radio ad begin with 29 words about a teenage assassin?

?Owl was neither wise nor old. She was a teenage assassin whose large, dark eyes said she was sleepy or depressed or bored. I was never really sure which. But her sister Procrastination was even harder to read. Procrastination ... the passive assassin of Opportunity. Silently killing, one day at a time ... Don?t let Procrastination take what you love. Give yourself a new [name of product] today and feel on top of the world. Feel like you can fly. Feel like liquid springtime. Don?t put it off. Procrastination will say ?wait.? But what do you say??

The absence of a real product in this ad disallowed the inclusion of specifics, so we can?t be sure it would bring in customers. But it would definitely hold the attention of listeners with a much tighter grip than the limp, wet hand of Ronald Watersdown.

?A great big bright red...?

English is a language built backwards. We speakers of English string together a list of modifiers before naming the thing we modify. In so doing, we expect our listeners to commit to memory that string of modifiers so they can later be applied to the thing we finally name. I?m told the Romance languages have solved this problem with a much more friendly sentence structure: ?A rose, bright red and big.?

A good ad is a series of vivid mental images projected onto the movie screen of imagination. Here are a few tips for writing opening lines that will flash and crackle in the mind with the smell of burnt electricity:

1. Name something easily seen.

2. Modify it only after you have named it.

3. Choose verbs that carry context. I said ?flash ... crackle ... burnt electricity,? and you saw lightning even though I never used the word. You were engaged by the language, a willing participant in our co-creation of a vivid mental image.

4. Clarity first, creativity last. A few paragraphs ago I wrote, ?English is a language built backwards. We speakers of English....? My original line was, ?We speakers of this inverted tongue....? but I decided that was a little too clever. ?Inverted tongue? is visual, yes, but it?s also potentially confusing.

Creativity that blurs clarity is pretentious.

Creativity that sharpens clarity is genius.

Words carry energy. What will you light with them?

Isaac Newton discovered that impact is mass times acceleration. How big is the idea in your mind? How quickly can you transfer it?

5. Shorter hits harder. Always hit hard.

Now that you know how to write an opening line that captures the listener?s attention, there?s one other thing you always need to do:

Convince the advertiser to give you a message worth delivering.

Bill Bernbach said it best: ?Advertising doesn?t create a product advantage. It can only convey it.? David Ogilvy learned this lesson the hard way: ?Can advertising foist an inferior product on the consumer? Bitter experience has taught me that it cannot. On those rare occasions when I have advertised products which consumer tests have found inferior to other products in the same field, the results have been disastrous.?

An unsuccessful ad campaign is usually the result of an unsuccessful offer. Change the offer and you?ll change the result. I?ve proven this more times than I can count.

Now go.

Find a message worth delivering.

Seduce the attention of your listeners.

Show them what you?re offering.

Be sure they see it clearly.

Accept with grace the praise from your client for a job well done.

Roy H. Williams is president of Wizard of Ads Inc. E-mail: roy@wizardofads.com.

(7/19/2013 3:58:02 AM)
"But, Roy", the advertiser said facetiously. "Where are the three products and the demands to 'get on down here and make your best deal'. And the location. Damn, we can't leave out the location! And the phone number!?"

Indeed, the same thing is being said by the stations' GSM's, reps and probably the GM's.

No arguments, though, from the Creative Department. You know, the girl weeping uncontrollably and cowering in the back corner. Yes, the one with the skin disorder, sallow eyes and nervous twitches.

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(WIZARD) Ad Strategy Vs. Ad Writing

6-24-2013

Ad strategy is more difficult to teach than ad writing. Ad writing, essentially, is to choose:
1. An intriguing angle of approach into
the subject matter and
2. The sharpest words and phrases to
make your point.

Ad strategy, essentially, is to choose:
1. The point you need to make.

Bad strategy happens when you:
1. Listen to an advertiser?s wishful thinking and then
2. Assume that a radio schedule that
3. Delivers great frequency and
4. Reaches the perfect audience
5. With really good copy will
6. Make that advertiser?s dream come true.

If you?ve been selling radio long enough, you already know that a client?s wishful thinking will help you sell that client a radio schedule, but it takes a lot more than wishful thinking to motivate the client?s customer.

CLIENT: ?I wish I could sell these items.?
ACCOUNT EXEC: ?Let me help you.?
CLIENT: ?How can you help me??
ACCOUNT EXEC: ?We have a loyal audience.? (Insert success story here.) ?Advertising is an investment in your future.? (Insert schedule and contract here.) ?Now tell me exactly what makes these items different and special and better than the ones your competitor sells.? (You start taking notes like crazy. The client is animated. Sincere. Hopeful. Excited.)

You return to the station with a contract and a run order. Now all you need is great copy, right?

Let me pause here to say that it?s not my goal to discourage you. My goal is only to open your eyes. I want you to see the problem clearly so that you no longer walk into a trap from which there is no escape. We will now continue.

You work really hard and write a great piece of copy. Excellent copy. Miraculous copy. The greatest copy ever written. Your co-workers love the ad. The client loves the ad. High-fives all around and champagne for everyone.

The schedule runs. The ad airs. Everyone is commenting on it. Very little of the product is sold. Beyond generating those comments, the ad has minimal impact on the business.

What the hell?

Your copy, indeed, was fabulous. You employed an excellent angle of approach, held the listeners? attention, and made a powerful point in a clever way. Well done! But your fundamental strategy was flawed. Your ad answered a question that no one was asking.

You walked into the trap when you failed to question why the client was overstocked on the item he wanted you to advertise. The real problem is that no one wants the item. Your client assumed ? and you assumed with him ? that if people ?only knew and understood,? they?d rush in to buy the product. So you told the people, you made them understand. And they still didn?t want the product.

Advertising will only accelerate what was going to happen anyway.

Convince your client to let you offer the public what the public already wants. This is what drives traffic into a store. And many of those people will find other things to buy from your client. In other words, fish with bait that you already know the fish love. Don?t try to convince the fish to swallow bait they don?t really like.

The inexperienced account executive allows the patient to diagnose his own disease, then prescribes treatment under the illusion that the patient?s diagnosis can be trusted. If medical doctors did this, they would go to jail.

The treatment, the copy and the schedule, is the easy part. The diagnosis, the strategy, is the tricky part. A quick glance at the symptoms does not prescribe the cure. Identical symptoms can arise from many different causes.

The successful diagnostician knows the truth of a statement is not determined by the sincerity of the speaker. In other words, a deeply sincere, passionate client can easily be wrong in all of his assumptions. If you allow your client to frame the fundamental strategy and decide the principal point that your ad will make, you are at the mercy of your patient?s self-diagnosis. You and your station will be blamed when that patient fails to recover.

The solution is simple. You must separate the selling of the schedule from the creation of the strategy. Selling requires you to be warm, receptive, and empathetic. Strategy requires you to be cold, objective, and suspicious of the client?s self-diagnosis.

Ask yourself this question: ?Are customers not coming because they don?t know about this client, or are customers not coming because they do know??

Diagnose the real problem. Offer the client?s customers what you know for certain they want. Are you beginning to understand why it takes a few years to become a doctor? But stick with it. Don?t give up. Have courage. You?ll get there.

Roy H. Williams is president of Wizard of Ads Inc. E-mail: roy@wizardofads.com.

(6/24/2013 9:56:37 PM)
Phil, take the time to find and hire better reps.
(6/24/2013 9:56:36 PM)
Phil, take the time to find and hire better reps.
(6/24/2013 9:59:52 AM)
Roy,
No one knows his business like the client. His opinion that too few people know about him is probably correct and should be acted upon by the radio rep.
I like your analysis of the problem, but to ask the typical radio salesperson, age 23, 4 months into the business, previous career; bartender, drives an old car, to do a study of what this client needs competitively speaking, is dreaming.

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(WIZARD) I Dare You

6-5-2013

As a buyer of radio advertising, I?m willing to pay you for every listener you?ve got. If they?re old enough to vote, they?re old enough to drive cars and have money and influence a lot of other people who have money. Every listener matters. That?s why I like to target adults 18+. More than 50,000 business owners who buy radio advertising received the following memo from me recently:

I?ve never seen a business fail due to ?reaching the wrong people.? So why do most business owners instinctively believe that ?reaching the right people? is the key to successful advertising?

Who, exactly, do you not want to know about you? Who isn?t qualified to repeat the good things they?ve heard about you? And when is the best time to advertise?

Solomon wrote about these things in the 11th chapter of Ecclesiastes: ?If you wait for perfect weather, you will never plant your seeds. If you are afraid that every cloud will bring rain, you will never harvest your crops ... So begin planting early in the morning, and don?t stop working until evening. You don?t know what might make you rich. Maybe everything you do will be successful.?

It would appear that Solomon advises, ?Don?t over think it. Just tell your story every day in every circumstance. You never know who might be listening.?

Matthew, Mark, and Luke felt the following moment to be important enough to include in the books they wrote about Jesus. Here?s how Luke tells it: ?A large crowd came together. People came to Jesus from every town, and he told them this story: ?A farmer went out to sow seed. While he was scattering the seed, some of it fell beside the road. People walked on the seed, and the birds ate it all. Other seed fell on rock. It began to grow but then died because it had no water. Some other seed fell among thorny weeds. This seed grew, but later the weeds stopped the plants from growing. The rest of the seed fell on good ground. This seed grew and made 100 times more grain.? Jesus finished the story. Then he called out, ?You people who hear me, listen!??

Neither Solomon nor Jesus advised, ?Target the good soil.?

Maybe Jesus just didn?t understand. And maybe Solomon wasn?t very bright.

I know it?s counterintuitive, but if you look at all the offers from all the sellers of mass media and then accept the offer that allows you to reach the largest number of adults 18+ each week, 52 weeks a year, for the fewest dollars per week, it?s hard to make a mistake.

Radio is called "mass media" because every radio station, regardless of format, reaches the rich and poor and middle class masses across a wide range of ages and locations.

Radio is not a rifle; it is a shotgun. Radio is not a fishhook, it is a net.

Pick a random radio station. Any format, any city. Call and give an AE a weekly budget for a consecutive 52-week schedule. Ask that AE to send you a reach-and-frequency analysis for whatever schedule delivers the largest net reach of adults 18+ with a 3-frequency within that budget.

The odds are 9-to-1 against you receiving what you requested. Instead, you?ll receive a schedule that shows you only the demo of which the station is most proud.

Call and ask. I dare you.

My staff and I have been calling more than 2,000 stations a year for more than 25 years. Fifteen years ago I quit hiring people with radio experience to buy media for me. I swear I?m not making this up. Every time I stole an AE from radio and taught them to buy media, they?d always get deeply depressed in about 90 days.

?What?s wrong?? I?d ask.

?They tell me they understand what I want, then they send me something completely different.?

?Don?t let it get you down. I told you it would take multiple conversations.?

?That?s not it.?

?Then what?s bothering you??

?Every one of these reps says exactly the same things to me that I?ve said to buyers a thousand times.?

?And that bothers you??

?I always thought I was being clever.?

The strength of every radio station is anchored in the irresistible nature of sound and its broad appeal to the masses, but most sellers of radio insist on presenting it as a narrow, targeting device. Why present only a fraction of your audience when the entire audience is so much more impressive?

?Because the buyers insist on seeing target demos.?

No problem. Give them exactly the numbers they requested, and then show them the remaining balance of your audience as you say, ?And these are all the listeners you get at no extra charge.?

That, my friend, is added value.

Trust me, looking at the whole audience is more impressive than looking at just part of it.

?And these are all the listeners you get at no extra charge.?

Roy H. Williams is president of Wizard of Ads Inc. E-mail: roy@wizardofads.com.

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(WIZARD) How To Write Effective Copy In 2013

5-31-2013

Elmer Zubiate (Zoo-be-AH-tay) grew up embarrassed that his name was Elmer. After losing everything he owned in 2005, Elmer started a little HVAC company. Last year he decided to make the most of the Elmer thing.  This is the 30-second spot he put on the radio:

There?s Elmer Fudd, Elmer?s Glue, and Elmer me, Elmer Zubiate of Elmer?s One-Hour Air Conditioning and Heating. We?ll be there within one hour of the time we promised you, or whatever you need is free. No charge. There?s no way you?re going to wait for us all day. Great prices. Fabulous service. Elmer?s One-Hour. Dial two one oh, thirty-three Elmer.

[JINGLE]
Two one oh, thirty-three Elmer

Last year One-Hour Elmer did $3.8 million, and he?s trending toward $6 million in 2013. We have every expectation that he?ll bag $12 million in 2015. Elmer tapped in to the four principal indicators of successful ads for 2013.

The most effective ads today tend to share the following characteristics:

1. Intimacy. The ads reveal the advertiser to be vulnerable and imperfect, but openly willing to admit it. This is the signal of a friend to a friend. We don?t hide our imperfections, or our insecurities, from people we trust.

2. Authenticity. The ads are unposed, occasionally even awkward. ?Polished and professional? comes across today as ?phony and pretentious.?

3. Pace. The ads employ a series of rapidly evolving mental images. Big things happen quickly. Big thoughts are compressed into few words.

4. Details. The ads don?t make vague claims or use ambiguous terms. Specifics are always more believable than generalities.

Richard Kessler is known around the world as an extraordinarily successful jeweler. Here are a couple of the 60s he?s currently airing:

Three quarters of a carat is a big diamond. It will take your breath away. And a matching pair will take away yours and hers.

Put three quarters of a carat on each of her pretty earlobes and then look over her shoulder when she looks into the mirror for the first time. You?re going to remember that face forever.

This is Richard Kessler, and sometimes I get lucky. Extremely lucky.

Today I?m going to share that luck with exactly 22 people. But before I continue, let me say, ladies, that you don?t have to have someone else buy these for you. You can buy them yourself.

I know that. And you?re going to want to. Because I?m talking about a matching pair of fabulous three-quarter-carat diamonds ? a carat and a half total ? for just thirty-nine hundred dollars. Badda bing. Badda bang. But I?ve only got nine pairs of those. Fortunately, I?ve got 13 more pairs ? just a tiny bit smaller ? for just thirty-four-sixty. Badda boom. Today is your lucky day.

Kesslers Diamonds. I?m Richard
Kessler.
[No location tag.]

Let me pause here for a moment to say that I?m not giving you this ad copy to use for your clients. I?m simply providing three concrete examples from which you can learn. All three ads are copyrighted 2012 by Roy H. Williams Marketing Inc.

I was head-over-heels in love. And I was poor. I saved up for three months before walking into that jewelry store.

I was nervous and excited ? and a little bit proud of myself. I walked out five minutes later, crushed and humiliated. I remember standing there on the sidewalk, looking at my shoes. The man behind the jewelry counter had looked at my shoes before he looked at my face.

He asked me why I was there.
I told him.
He asked me how much money I had.
I told him.
He rolled his eyes and said, ?Well, maybe there?s something we can do, but I don?t know....?
Some things stay with you forever.

And now you know why Kesslers specializes in engagement rings. [Determined now ? a little bit defiant.] No one at Kesslers ? no one ? will ever look at your shoes. Or your clothes. Or the color of your credit card. The man I met that day was all about diamonds and gold. Me? I?m about people and relationships. Diamonds ? even perfect ones ? are much less valuable than people.

I?m Richard Kessler, and I want to be your jeweler.
[Those are the last words. No location tag. No Web address.
Nothing.]

The story Kessler tells is absolutely true. No one can tell that story but him. Every person has a lifetime of powerful stories inside them. But how many advertisers have the courage to share something so intimate? In 2013, it will be all the successful ones.

Roy H. Williams is president of Wizard of Ads Inc. E-mail: roy@wizardofads.com

(6/1/2013 5:51:51 PM)
Roy, these are really great. You're a great believer in radio and what it brings to the advertiser...BUT why do your media buyers treat radio stations so poorly in the negotiation process? It seems there the two sides to your mouth and we only hear from one in public forums like this Sooner or later your clients will suffer as the local radio stations refer to them as toxic key accounts that they dread the annual negotiation process....and the spots are freely shifted to the edges of day parts

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