Stop Writing About Pandora Radio Ink

2-24-14

Following our story about the upcoming Infinite Dial Study, to be released by Edison Research and Triton Digital, several readers complained that we even give Pandora the time of day. Others refuse to stick their heads in the sand and pretend there is no competition brewing. It was all about the teaser monthly stat released early from the study that 31% of all Americans 12 and over now listen to Pandora every month.

That monthly stat (for Americans 12+) comes from the 2014 Infinite Dial study which is was put together by Edison Research and Triton Digital this year and will be detailed in a March 5 webinar. The 2013 study had Pandora reaching 27% of the 12+ population. iHeartRadio is used by 9% while iTunes Radio rounds out the top three.

Other trends to be explored in The Infinite Dial 2014 include:
* An update on Internet Audio usage, including new data on iTunes Radio, Beats Music, and other services
* Recent growth in Podcasting
* The growth in smartphone ownership, and how it has changed consumer behavior
* Updates on social media usage for services including Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, Pinterest and more
* The connected car, and in-car usage of digital media
Register here for the free webinar: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/125538472
The free March 5th webinar starts at 2PM EST.
Register HERE

(2/25/2014 3:41:02 PM)
Sarah's comments illustrate how hard it is for my beloved industry to grapple with the realities of a rapidly evolving media ecosystem. Denial and deflection among it's managerial ranks are the first signs of a great, mature industry in glacial decline. I love radio but it startles the hell out of me how many of my age 40+ peers and their kids are listening to Pandora and Spotify in addition to radio (or minus radio). Shocking.
(2/25/2014 3:02:00 PM)
Edison is a good company that does research+ surveys. So, they may have 700 respondents which is good but it represents about 300 million so please take this information with a grain of salt. Triton doesn't even monitor most of Pandora's competitors and attempts to convert AAS to AQH in an effort to help Pandora become relevant at the agencies so please understand the source. Pandora is a non simultaneous music streaming service so their customers can be reached 1 at a time. This is not radio!
(2/25/2014 1:21:57 PM)
@ Sarah. Most successful independent buyers are also successful salespeople. How else could they build a business if not for the ability to continually attract clients? But, your myopia is not worth another breath.

As to the accusations made against Ed, I refer you back to my original comments about the multi-platform deficiencies of radio. I understand that radio is trying to address it with their online components, but the integration is not yet complete.

(2/25/2014 11:37:08 AM)
Jen White left radio to form her own "media buying company." ( Agency)
All those like that that I've met were marginal at radio sales. They are very common.
No, Ed. You repeatedly lead with touts to other media and offer few radio success stories. The only radio news you regularly print are quotes from Lew Dickey and Clear Channel. You and Eric have basically given up on radio.
(2/25/2014 11:34:44 AM)
31% of Americans might be tuned into Pandora, but the rest of the Intelligent Americans are tuned into www.dixiebroadcasting.com online and HazzardAyre Radio over the air.

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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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(COPYWRITING) Writing To Voices

6-19-2013

Sometimes it?s easier to write a commercial if you have specific voices in mind. Hearing those voices in your head helps you to write from their point of view.

Even if you only have a limited stable of talent available, like a radio station staff, imagine each of their personalities. As you write, you are essentially speaking for them. How would they express themselves? How would they react? How would they tell a story? 

Where else can you find voices to give you inspiration for writing? Listen to CDs of actors voice samples or downloads from the Web. Think about your relatives, your friends, voices in radio or TV commercials, voices in movies, voices overheard in restaurants, public transportation, or in retail stores.

The ideal way is to capture these voices is to record them, then you?ll have audio samples to refer to. If you can?t do this then write a short description of the person?s voice at the time you?re listening. Interesting voices are everywhere: the gum-chewing store clerk with the nasal twang, the fast-talking investment broker, the laid-back surfer dude at the coffee shop, the nervous kid who delivers your newspaper, the opinionated guy who drives the snowplow. Each of these characters has their own personality, their own story, and their own perspective on life. As you listen to their voices or read their descriptions, ?become? them and write from their hearts.

With your client in mind, listen to your collection of voices until one or two of them ?speak? to you. Now listen to all the samples you have of those voices. Picture who they are and where they live. Create a story about them and then write your commercial in their voices.

As you write a commercial from a character?s point of view, you?ll find that as it develops you may change the characters? personalities from what you originally had in mind. You?ll see your commercial story take on a life of its own. Just go with it and see where it takes you.

The final step in this process is recording the commercial with either the voices that inspired you or similar voices. The actors of course will have their own personalities and may bring something to the commercial that you hadn?t envisioned originally. Be flexible enough to adapt your script to the changing point of view.

Like any story, your commercial will evolve. Don?t try to hold on too firmly to the original idea.

Let the voices in your head create a commercial to touch the hearts of your audience.

Jeffrey Hedquist has been hearing voices and inventing stories about them for years. Send professional help to Hedquist Productions, Inc. Phone 641-472-6708. Email jeffrey@hedquist.com.

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(COPYWRITING) Writing To Music

5-30-2013

How many times have you heard a piece of music and been inspired? How many times has music brought tears to your eyes? How many times has music made you chuckle or smile? How many times has music triggered great memories?

The power of music lies in its close link to our emotions. One of the reasons we love our favorite movies so much is the music scoring.

Oftentimes a song from our past will bring us back to the moment we first heard it. With this catalytic power, it?s no wonder that more and more writers use music as a tool to help them break writer?s block and improve the emotional depth of their writing. The next time you create a spot, don?t just select music in the production phase to complement the words you?ve already crafted. Let the music help you create the words.

Try this: select several pieces of instrumental music and, with the client information at hand, simply listen to each one and see where it takes you. Begin writing while listening and continue for at least two minutes. Don?t try to make sense out of the story yet. Just write what the music inspires you to write.

You?ll come up with ideas, thoughts, feelings, and emotions that you wouldn?t ordinarily have thought of without listening to the music. At the end of two minutes you may have a complete commercial, the concept for a commercial, pages of possible campaigns, or random ideas. You should at least have the start of a commercial.

The music has allowed you to bypass the thinking process and write from your heart, your gut, your emotional center. This is good, because that?s the level on which listeners will react to a commercial.

If the music you?ve chosen inspires you to write something cogent, continue to refine the commercial. If not, pick another piece and continue the process.

Don?t be afraid to pick music that doesn?t seem to match your advertiser. Sometimes that can be the most inspiring.

At first, that gentle harp piece may not seem to fit with the amusement park you?re writing for, but give it a chance. That military march wouldn?t have been your first choice for the fast food restaurant. That world music piece with the children?s choir may not seem like a natural fit for your car dealer, but listen to it and start writing anyway and see what happens.

Each piece of music will have rhythms, chord changes, melodies, and hooks that will be natural complements for the words you write. After using this technique you may find that the blending of words and music in your commercial seems more natural than if you had just added the music as an afterthought.

I?ve been teaching this technique in seminars for 25 years. Now a new generation of writers is discovering its ability to break writer's block. Craft your words listening to music and you may find your advertisers singing your praises.

To guess what kind of music Jeffrey Hedquist was listening to when he wrote this, contact him at Hedquist Productions, Inc. Phone 641-472-6708. Email jeffrey@hedquist.com. For a free newsletter full of techniques for creating more effective radio, go to www.hedquist.com.

(5/31/2013 4:09:40 PM)
Good advice! I've been doing that for years with spots & jingles. Find the most fitting music first and the the style and rhythm will carry the message like a hawk ahead of a Summer storm.

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Listener Writing Book About His Favorite Station.

6-17-2012

WOXY-FM in Oxford Ohio station was known as "The Future of Rock & Roll" and long-time listener Phil Lacefield (pictured) is raising money on Kickstarter to write a book about it, called ?BAM! The Untold Story of 97X, WOXY, and the Future of Rock & Roll.? So far, he's collected $2,500 of the $7,500 he needs. The station would have been 30 years old. In 2004 owners Doug and Linda Balogh decided to sell the facilities using the proceeds to retire.

"The Future of Rock & Roll" became one of the first stations to completely transition from terrestrial FM radio to broadcasting solely as an Internet radio station at WOXY.com. Due to financial challenges, the station ended its online feed in 2010.

Lacefield tells Radio Ink that place was like a family member to him and thousands of others. "I've been toying with the idea of writing the history of the station since before they stopped broadcasting online. I've remained good friends with a great many of the old jocks and staff, and I'm a member of the Facebook alumni group, so it's been discussed for ages. Next year would have been the 30th anniversary of the FM station going live, so it seemed like a fitting time to get the thing written and out there. Plus, with the advent of Kickstarter making such projects easier and easier, the stars were in perfect alignment.

Lacefield says the book won't be so much a history of the station. "It will be a collection of the stories and the people who made it happen, from staff and jocks to listeners, advertisers, musicians, labels...you name it, everyone I've spoken to about the place has not only fond memories but amazing stories. THAT'S what I want to capture (plus perhaps put a bit of shame into the state of radio these days, which just ain't what it used to be)  Once finished, it is my intent to shop the book around to publishers, so that I can get it on bookshelves worldwide."

Read More HERE

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Writing Funny For Radio

12-1-2011

If you struggle with finding your voice and your humor in your writing, you?re not alone. Radio people, hired to talk on the radio, are now required to write too. Blogs! Status updates! Tweets! And you thought you were off the hook. Write to Done, a writing blog, posted tips on getting more humor in your writing. Many of the tips are parallel to what makes funny radio, and yet we read social media posts and blogs all the time that lack these basic elements. Here are the tips, with my thoughts on them.

1. Be the joke. Self-deprecation works everywhere.

2. Be specific. Generalizations can be funny, but specificity is better. Sensory details, in particular, take us into the story, into your life. Finish the sentences ?I see?? ?I hear?? ?I smell?? ?I taste?? ?I feel?? to dig for those details and include the juiciest ones.

3. Use comedic timing. ?This can be as simple as applying the funny word, phrase or sentence at the last possible moment. You can force a pause before the punch line by starting a new paragraph. If you?re telling a story, you can use this technique to apply the element of surprise, taking the reader in an entirely unexpected (and funny) direction. This method works 100% of the time.

Unless it doesn?t.?

4. Use a thesaurus. In writing, clever choice of words becomes even more important. One single word can be really, really funny. Monkey. Banjo. Flabbergasted. You get the idea.

5. Use a ?swipe file.? When you read other people?s writing, keep track of words and turns of phrase that you like. The example the article uses is ?not to be outdone?? I wrote a Facebook post on November 15, after reading the article: ?I met a mom of 4 last night who has finished and wrapped all her Christmas presents. Not to be outdone, I am taking down my pumpkin arrangement.?

6. Edit. Use the rules above to make your first draft better. Then do it again. Then read it out loud to someone, to allow you to hear, and correct, the cadence of your writing.

And a final note not included in the writing blog: Use exclamation points and text language like LOL sparingly for more comedic punch. My friend Shay just posted on Facebook: ?turns out it?s not a good idea to drop the phone in the soup.? Compare that to ?Turns out it?s not a good idea to drop the phone in the soup!!!!! HAHAHAHAHA!!!!? It?s effective to allow the reader the opportunity to figure out for themselves if something is funny, or how funny it is.

Angela Perelli is a SVP at the The Randy Lane Company (www.randylane.net).
She can be reached at angela@randylane.net
www.facebook.com/TheRandyLaneCompany
www.twitter.com/TheRandyLaneCo

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