12 Rules of Advertising and Marketing

Ran across 12 Rules of Advertising from

Bill Bernbach – Creator of the old VW – Think Small campaign in the late 60s/early 70s. Even though they come from the pre-digital age these rules still rule. Might be something to forward to your sales teams as they hit the street to help their clients.

1) The most powerful element in advertising is the truth.

2) Word of mouth is the best medium of all.

3) It is insight into human nature that is the key to the communicator's skill. For whereas the writer is concerned with what he puts into his writings, the communicator is concerned with what the reader gets out of it. He therefore becomes a student of how people read or listen.

4) Nobody counts the number of ads you run; they just remember the impression you make.

5) You can say the right thing about a product and nobody will listen. You've got to say it in such a way that people will feel it in their gut. Because if they don't feel it, nothing will happen.

6) Forget words like 'hard sell' and 'soft sell.' That will only confuse you. Just be sure your advertising is saying something with substance, something that will inform and serve the consumer, and be sure you're saying it like it's never been said before.

7) Just because your ad looks good is no insurance that it will get looked at. How many people do you know who are impeccably groomed... but dull?

8) No matter how skillful you are, you can't invent a product advantage that doesn't exist. And if you do, and it's just a gimmick, it's going to fall apart anyway.

9) Our job is to sell our clients' merchandise... not ourselves. Our job is to kill the cleverness that makes us shine instead of the product. Our job is to simplify, to tear away the unrelated, to pluck out the weeds that are smothering the product message.

10) Advertising doesn't create a product advantage. It can only convey it.

11) Advertising is fundamentally persuasion and persuasion happens to be not a science, but an art.

12) Properly practiced creativity must result in greater sales more economically achieved. Properly practiced creativity can lift your claims out of the swamp of sameness and make them accepted, believed, persuasive, urgent.

Playing it COOL

Projecting a Cool image is one of the toughest skills to pull off in marketing, branding, and creating the product/station/personality. It's a tight balance point of being noticed and making an impression without overstating or overdoing it.

Watching a Biography channel piece on Letterman he said that he wanted to get into late night talk because he watched Carson and 'he made it look SO easy that I figured I could do it.' The reality Letterman found when he started his late night show and his CBS show was that the job was anything but easy. Carson pulled it off with an style that looked effortless and COOL.

Even though Carson was probably way off the cutting edge in guests, humor or show style from 1975 on he still had enough Cool in his style to pull it off.

Cool can also be way over done. Being too cool for the room is a common phrase and for a reason.

Swing too hard and you will miss the ball a lot of the time. The same swing principle applies to your Cool on the air and in the produce. One of the 'coolest' icons in movies was probably James Dean in the 50s, but look at his movies - often his lines for a 2 hour flick would have fit on 1 page. It was his look, his eyes, his silence, and a careful pause in the timing that built his coolness.

How are you handling your cool factor? Is it in that delicate balance or is it overcooked or coming up rare?

A New Idea for the Royality Mess

The debate continues with Sound Exchange on radio stations paying royalties for the music we play to the record companies with the thought that perhaps some of these funds would go to the musicians in the performance. Of course the real 'exchange' here for many years has been that exposure radio brings far outweighs the royalty potential for all involved and many a musician and record company has made millions from the exposure. Now that the business model centered on the old school distribution of CDs and Albums is dying a fast death the record companies have clung to the old school and are tying to hang on by taxing radio.

Even though there are tons of new media outlets and streaming options Radio still remains a strong exposure vehicle for music. Just look at the remarks from the judges on American Idol. All have talked about 'hearing the performers on the radio' when gushing about their latest performance on stage. Still, the debate rages on, mostly from older musicians who haven't turned out a big song in ages and want to get more from their 'glory days' since we still play their catalog.

Sound Exchange has been pulling artists together and forcing the issue with the Congress and the NAB has been lobbying to continue the exemption. Meanwhile we sit back and wait. But, could we do something?

How about this idea:

Most of the 'force' from the Sound Exchange side comes from the record companies and their hold on the rights of the performance. Yet, we now live in a music world where the record companies no longer control distribution and no longer have the promo machines they once had to really break new artists. We all know that the next wave of new artists are more likely to come from social networks, You Tube videos, and other independent sources outside the record companies.

How about setting up an industry wide 'emerging artists' program. The program would offer exposure of any independent artist to the programmers, music directors, and DJs at commercial radio stations. The artists would be able to post their songs, radio would be able to listen to them, watch charts on them, and even chat with each other. The artists would simply agree to let radio expose their music and performance for free. Radio would pledge a percentage of their new adds to come from the emerging artists and link our audience to them on the web site - perhaps through My Space. There they can distribute the songs and build their fan base.

To fund it? How about taking the funds we were sending to Radio and Records and allocating them to this idea. I bet it would be enough to pay for a few out of work Radio and Record staffers to mind the store here and start to build a business out of it. As the site grows there could be other advertising options - how about Guitar Center??

At the least it would send a message to the Sound Exchange world that there is another way for music to get exposed on radio without their old world business model. It would also open the floodgates for new artists to build their business model on a new world of distribution that is already built and rolling - it just needs an organized way to promote itself.

If any of you folks from Radio and Records want to get started - be happy to help you brainstorm. Just reach out.

Using Imaging to SELL Not Just Identify

I always look forward to monitoring stations. When you hit the road and spend a few days immersed in a market or even just breaking down a station with an on-line monitor the area that seems to fall short is in the imaging.

All too often we work hard at just keeping it short - so it says nothing and just repeats the calls, name/frequency, and maybe some positioning.

We also tend to make such grand positioning statements. THE best rock!!, All the Hits not just some of them, Today's Hit Music, -- we throw around statements like these and expect the audience to believe them and embrace them mostly because we make sure to say them 14 times every hour.

Of course there is also the BIG production packed with sound effects, movie drops, TV clips, Music hooks, and anything else we can find to layer into the 10 second sweeper. Often these are so packed you can only hear the copy in a production room with the processing set 'just right'.

When you actually break down the message much of the time it's about recycling personalities, selling feature shows, hyping contests, promoting events, and selling that we have more music than others. It's ok to push all these important parts of the station, but does it really SELL THE STATION? Does this really build up any images in the audience's head? Or does it just try and push them around the dayparts? If it's not recycling it's usually making claims that set off the BS meter in much of the audience as quickly as humanly possible.

Think of it like a billboard for a minute. A billboard that just says McDonalds Next Exit will make the sale if I'm hungry on I-75. But, a billboard with a clever phrase or an eye catching picture that leaves a lasting image about McDonalds even if I'm not hungry goes a much longer way to building McDonalds into a real brand.

We don't just need listeners right now. We need them to have great images and feelings for our brand as much as possible to win. You won't get those great images if you don't project them on the air.

The best way is to think in campaigns. Brand building advertising works in series of well crafted messages that communicate the facets of the brand with a creative presentation that catches your ears and eyes. If you approach your imaging this way - with a clear message in mind and stick with it you will be building a real brand.

Now that's worth putting between the songs.

The Old Fashioned Consultant Sell

As radio really came of age in the 80s one of the keys many sales teams used was 'the Consultant Sell.' The concept was built around the sales people taking more of a role as a marketing advisor than just being a person who sold 60 second spots. Learn as much as you can about the business you are selling to and apply all your marketing knowledge and resources to help them make a name for themselves or ring the cash register. The goal was to become their trusted advisor, on the inside of their marketing plans which would obviously mean more sales for you and the station.

It was really a great idea and when it was well done by a sales person it did move the needle on the sales budget and also worked well for many clients who now had a trusted advisor at a media outlet that reached the whole market at a reasonable cost.

We don't hear much about the 'Consultant Sell' anymore. In fact you don't hear much about this style of selling in any industry anymore. One would think that this is a basic building block of selling anything - learning as much about your customer as possible and then try to fill their needs. The sales person who could fill this role should be in the drivers seat.

I see a couple of reasons the Consultant Sell could have fallen off in Radio:

1. Too many Corporate mandates. Who has time to hang with the local Auto Supply store or Insurance Agent to find ways to help them build their business. You have 2 sales meetings, a mandated call sheet, a budget session, 5 spots to write/produce and 3 pitch presentations due today.
2. Not much support. When you have to do all the research, presentations, write your spots, and work with an overstressed promotion department you have to wonder what resources you really have to offer as a marketing consultant to the local business person.

While these reasons may be factors at some stations I suspect the real reason the Consultant Sell isn't used is because it doesn't work anymore. In today's world anyone who can use Google can network on their own to find out all about new marketing techniques and theories. They can stop in on any number of web sites to learn how to use databases, the web, viral video, search engines, ebay, and many more options.

No doubt the web has replaced the sales person in many industries as an expert on their wares. Here in radio we do still have the sales teams - but do they have a role in today's world to relate to the business owners and potential advertisers? Maybe it's time to take the old idea and rebuild it for the New Realities of the digital and new media world.

Product Priorities

Even though Summer officially begins this weekend and vacations are in the air this is the time for every manager to take a look ahead at the Fall. A year ago we really hit wall in the Fall with the economic downturn becoming a nose dive and for most any plans or priorities were tossed overboard for survival. Hopefully the 'storm' has passed and while it has left some damage to the products to repair this Fall you should be able to start looking at rebuilding the product and at least setting some priorities besides cutting everything you could.

So where do you start?

While the specific needs of your station or group of stations are no doubt unique there are some common areas that I bet everyone can look at as starting points to rebuilding the products. Here are 5 areas I bet would be on your list:

1. Get an Honest Evaluation: What shape is your product in? Have you lost key people that are affecting the quality? How are your ratings holding up? Has the competition made any progress or have YOU made any progress during the last year riding the storm out
2. What training and coaching does your product team need as their roles have probably shifted and their time constraints are larger than they were a year ago. Is one of your PDs now handling more stations in the cluster? Are you doing a lot more with fewer staffers and wonder how can they get help to cover all their work and still do a good job?
3. Production and Imaging: This is a crucial department to not only the product but also to sales and clients. Getting good messages on the air for clients to move product with is the lifeblood and I bet many of you cut back this department. It's also the place where the messages and images for the stations are built. Rebuilding this department could be the fastest return on your investment in the building.
4. Promotions: Another spot where many cluster had to cut back on. Just like production and imaging this is another spot where clients interact and use the product to move goods and services. It's also a place where a lot of the images for the product are built. Getting it back in shape can return on the investment.
5. Research: What does the audience think of your product now? How damaging was it to trim out that Mid-day person? Did the promotion cutbacks matter? How about the competition - did they advance? Has their music preferences shifted? Are their feelings about radio as dire as we've been lead to believe? We have lots of questions on the product side and while some of them are not worth answering with a tight budget others are crucial. Many stations have gone years without much perceptual research - it's probably time to get much closer to the audience.
6. The Web: The web and new media have advanced. In the last year satellite radio has faded and the Ipod has become rather common place - no longer the newest gadget in the bag. Now it's the cell phone and the smart phone - using apps and streaming stations into these devices is the new hot gadget. We also have new smaller computers (the Net Book) and more and more wifi in the world. Between the smart phones and the more wifi world the audience is getting closer to a fully plugged in and portable communication experience. While terrestrial radio has let much of the past web/new media world pass it by this is our opportunity to jump in. No it won't return on the investment now, but in 2-3 years those who move on the options here can expand their distribution to the new media. Remember all the years AM wished it could become FM? Here there is no tower-transmitter-modulation system to limit the conversion. Get out that and stake your claim and build it.

There are plenty of opportunities as the economy improves and business gets back to growing instead of just surviving. This summer is the time to assess the situation and build your plans to get moving this Fall and into 2010.

Wow Cell Phone Households - Big JUMP

The Center for Disease Control has released a preview of their bi-annual study on Cell Phone Households from the last 1/2 of 2008.   Of course it grew again and now over 20% of the households in the country have no land line.  Another 14.5% take almost all of their calls on the cell phone despite having a land line.  

That's nearly 35% of the country and if you break it down by demos and over the last 6 years it's a pretty amazing graph: 

In 18-34s is around 40% - nearly half and at the rate it is growing it will probably hit 50% of this demo before 09 ends.   Even when you move to the 45+ cells it's around 15%.  

Keep in mind that this study was from last year and with the recession hitting so hard as the year wrapped up no doubt the growth of Cell Phone Only households will pick up even more.  Cutting out the 20 or 30 bucks a month to the land line is really pretty painless - gee now I can add the data package and not even notice it.  

Aside from the trends in the audience here we also have to realize that this greatly affects our ability to have somewhat accurate audience ratings and research.  Connecting with Cell Phones for research is very hard or impossible as we all know seeing the shrinking samples in our audience research.   We also have to look at the audience research we do in music tests and perceptual studies.  If they are based on telephone samples they are missing at least 20% and probably closer to 40% of the population and in the younger demos it's over 50%.  

If you look at the early snippets from the study you can see that the cell phone only world is different on many levels.  We'll see more in a few weeks when the whole study is released.  You can read the preview here. 

A Current Music Slump??

As we approach the Summer we usually hit the meat of the new songs  for the year in Rock.  Traditionally there is very little action in November, December and January with signs of life in February and by May we are looking at lots of options and usually there are a few real standouts building to the peak in August to October.   

2008 was a banner year when you look at the year end charts.   Especially on the Active Rock charts. 

On the Center Rock stage we had a long list of fairly established bands and a few new comers.  In the top 40 on the year end list you can see Seether, Theory of a Deadman, Buckcherry, Hinder, Finger 11, Nickleback, Saving Abel, Stained and more.  

On the Harder Rock side Disturbed, Slipknot, Korn, Drowning Pool and others kept the hard core's attention.  

On the 'Heritage' stage Metallica, AC/DC, Guns and Roses, Motley Crue, 3 Doors Down, Apocalyptica and Sixx AM came on with some strong songs or at least releases that the audience seemed eager to hear at first.   

So far this year the picking's been a bit dry.  The big news is the new Green Day which may be our only ace in the hand.  Papa Roach came out late in 08 and is still fairly fresh.  Pretty much the rest of the top 20 chart as May gets underway is filled with:  

• Leftovers from the Big Releases from last year.
• Songs that just won't go away even though they have been around 8 months or more. 
• Songs from big artists that just are not testing or causing much excitement (Pearl Jam/U2)
• Brand New artists we really don't know much about yet, Red - Cavo, All That Remains, etc. 

Looking over the Alternative charts the story might be a little better with the breakthrough of the Kings of Leon, the return of Silversun Pickups, and Anberlin but a lot of the rest overlaps with the Active Rock charts and suffers from the same issues mentioned above.   

Should we be looking at playing less currents?  It might be worth the debate when you look at what is out there right now.  It could be that all the issues in the record label side have put us in a bit of a drought.   This could very well be a Summer that is more focused on CHR Pop and Urban tracks with not a ton of effort for Rock.  

It might be time to review your clocks and turnovers so you don't get caught with a set up that's too dependent on strong currents - there may not be enough real 'hits' here to pick from.  

Your library and older recurrent cards may be worth more in your music poker hand than those current aces.