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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