6-30-14
That's up, according to the FCC, from 5.8 percent in 2011. The details come from a report released Friday by the Commission regarding the FCC's 2014 quadrennial review on broadcast ownership. That 6.7 percent number represents 383 FM stations, compared to 323 two years ago. Men own over 4,200 FM's or 74 percent of the total 5,714 commercial FM stations. 143 stations are jointly owned.
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1-22-2014
?C?mon, give me 20!? I was just thinking how my army drill sergeant and the woman who three decades later led my poetry class used almost the same command.
Tough ol? Sgt. Blades at Ft. Benning had me hit the ground for pushups whenever he felt I wasn?t pushing hard enough.
Diane Frank, my gentle poetry mentor would circle one of my ordinary phrases and say, ?Push it further. Think of 20 more ways to say this.?
?Twenty!?! How about five or six??
?No, give me 20. You can do it.?
Drove me crazy. Made me a better writer.
How does this apply to radio? Your audience is awash in advertising messages raining upon them from every possible direction. What could possibly pique their interest?
They?re like fish. Really bored fish.
The words don?t have to be unusual, just unusually juxtaposed. Combine them in unexpected ways to spark interest, to surprise, to seduce. What are you casting into that pond of listeners? A flashy lure that catches the sun, a delicate fly that dances on the surface of the water, or stink bait?
I?ve written before about the importance of your ?audio headline.? Listen to the first few words of your commercial. If they?re ordinary, they won?t capture your audience?s imagination. Time to push it. Come up with 20 more unexpected ways to open the spot.
Set a timer. Give yourself five minutes. You?ll be amazed at the dramatic, shocking, intriguing, or funny approaches waiting below the surface.
You don?t necessarily have to access a thesaurus, although that might help. Think of some twist on the familiar to pull people in.
It?s easy to write, ?At Downtown Jewelers we?ve got just the gift for that anniversary??
But it might take some pushing to write, ?She didn?t think you?d remember. She worried that, after 10 years, you?d lost the spark??
Instead of, ?Dr. Robinson makes your dental visit painless??
How about, ?The loudest sound in the room was my own breathing, I could feel my heart beating, my palms sweating, and that was from just thinking about the dental visit?then I remembered Dr. Robinson at Gentle Dental??
It only takes seconds to write, ?Metro Transit has the solution to your commuting needs??
Push for a few more seconds to get, ?Lost keys, morning panic, phone ringing, half a bagel, sip of coffee, traffic crunch, hair pulling, pressure rising, or?read the paper, sit in comfort, watch the scenery, get some work done, take it easy?on Metro Transit.?
Don?t give up too soon. Sgt. Blades? approach was brutal. Diane?s was much gentler. You can visit her at http://www.dianefrank.net/. I don?t think Sgt. Blades has a website.
C?mon, push it, and pull in your listeners.
To get your very own free copy of ?Hedquist?s List of 226 Cliches,? email me jeffrey@hedquist.com and I?ll send them. Guaranteed to reduce commercial effectiveness.
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12-4-2013
If your commercials sound like commercials, listeners will probably ignore them.
Here are some of the ruts we fall into, making our commercials sound like commercials:
1. We get it backwards. We start with the client?s name before we?ve given the listener a reason to remember it. Or we initiate the call to action before there?s a reason to respond.
-- ?Downtown Credit Union presents??
-- ?At Crestline Jewelers, we don?t just save you money??
-- ?Save this Saturday the 25th!?
-- ?One night only!?
-- Jack Frost Dodge/Chrysler/Jeep/Toyota/Isuzu/Hyundai/ Desoto/Studebaker, Pleasantville?s Number One dealer is changing all the rules?
-- Stop everything and write down this number!
Remedy: Give the audience a reason to respond, and then give them a way to respond.
2. We use clich?s, and speak in ?commercialese? instead of having a one-to-one conversation with the listener.
Remedy: Scan for clich?s and explain each in language people use.
Maybe your client does have a "friendly knowledgeable sales staff.? Is there a more effective way to make that point? Tell a story about how a customer?s problem was solved, about how the specialized training they?ve received will benefit the customer, or about the powerful guarantee the store offers to make sure the customer is completely satisfied.
3. We tack unrelated entertainment onto a spot, hoping to get the listener?s attention. Spots that start with a joke, followed by a pitch disappoint the listener. Unrelated humor doesn?t sell.
Be wary of stories where the name of another advertiser can be substituted. Attempts at humor that make fun of members of the target audience can be painful results-killing mistakes.
Remedy: Weave the entertainment and marketing together. Make the heroes of your story audience members who are empowered by the advertiser. If you poke fun, make the target someone your audience would poke fun at.
4. We ?announce? commercials and subject the audience to bad acting.
Remedy: Direct your talent to talk with your audience, not at them. Engage their imaginations. Don?t write beyond the capabilities of your available talent. Increase your talent pool.
5. We start jingles with the client?s name.
Remedy: Create original music that?s a song, not a slogan. At least save the client identification for later in the music.
6. We create spots that are predictable ? If you create a commercial that follows these patterns or myriad others, it?ll sound like a commercial and won?t do as well as it would have if it didn?t, but it will if it doesn?t, so don?t.
Remedy: Radio has the ability to ?sneak up? on listeners and engage their interest.
? Do the unexpected. Tell your audience something about themselves that they knew, but they didn?t know that you knew, or cared about. Surprise them.
? Start your stories in the middle. Throw away the first paragraph.
? Use unexpected spokespersons or characters to tell your stories.
? Use a variety of story forms ?? non-commercial-like ways to tell stories to get results for your clients.
? Create your commercial as if you were just recommending the
advertiser to a friend.
Jeffrey Hedquist has had lots of practice digging himself out of ruts at Hedquist Productions, Inc. To get your very own free copy of ?Hedquist?s List of 217 Cliches,? email me jeffrey@hedquist.com and I?ll send them. Guaranteed to reduce commercial effectiveness.
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10-2-2013
One of the ways to improve your skills in any field of expression, whether it?s visual art, poetry, songwriting, filmmaking, or writing is to analyze the work of the masters in each medium and discover the principles that make the piece successful.
Will it work for radio commercials? In my experience, yes. Whether you use it as a way to break writer's block, or as a continuing method to improve your writing, this exercise may be useful.
Pick a great spot, take it apart and analyze its structure. Summarize what?s happening in each line of copy. Use that structure (not the content) to create your own spot.
With writer's block, if you weren?t able to generate results in right-brain mode, this switch to left-brain mode can take the pressure off. As you pick the commercial apart, ideas may emerge which will enable you to construct your own.
Example: Here?s an analysis of one of my favorites. The advertiser had just merged with another company and was changing its name.
Two characters (A & B); quirky tone
A: Has a big announcement to make.
B: Skeptical, mentions a previous ridiculous announcement from ?A.?
A: Doesn?t react, simply starts to relate the big news about the advertiser.
B: Interrupts with the news before ?A? finishes story.
A: Ignores ?B? and makes the big announcement.
B: Reiterates that ?A?s? news is common knowledge.
A: Ignores ?A?s? comment and goes on to say how surprising the news was to ?A.?
B: Attempts to interrupt?
A: Goes on to build a case that ?B? should acknowledge the change about the advertiser.
B: Reminds ?A? that ?B? already has.
A: Thinking ?B? still needs to be convinced, makes another point.
B: Starts describing benefits of the change, hoping that ?A? will understand that ?B? knew about the change all along.
A: Concludes that ?A?s? oratory skills persuaded ?B.?
B: Gives up objecting and agrees.
A: Convinced of newfound persuasive abilities, asks for approval of a personal favor.
B: Favor has so little consequence to ?B?s? life that ?B? gives approval.
A: Compliments self on persuasive abilities.
B: Sarcastically agrees with ?A.?
A: Does a callback to previous ridiculous announcement mentioned by ?B? at the beginning, including advertiser.
Announcer: Short reiteration of news about advertiser.
Condensed version: ?A? presents big news to ?B? who already knows about it. Conflict: ?A? ignores ?B?s? responses and plows ahead with ?A?s? own agenda.
Oh sure, it may not look funny in this form, but the commercial, from one of the masters of radio, was entertaining and delivered the message effectively.
Sometimes, finding just one structural trick or interesting premise will open up the gates for you. For instance, hearing an interesting conflict, noticing repeated callbacks to an earlier statement, and especially observing how the entertainment and marketing are woven together.
There are hundreds of successful commercials out there. You can learn something from each of them. Now you have an organized way to break the code on what made them successful and apply it to your own work.
Want another way to break writer?s block for free? Email me jeffrey@hedquist.com and I?ll send you a way to use an old Saturday Night Live sketch to create a powerful radio campaign. No charge.
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