Ads on Radio
 

Why are all the ads that I hear for trash crap products? Weight loss
junk, gold coin crap, how to be a millionaire foolishness, and on and
on and on. There are very few radio ads that I hear advertising a
quality product at a fair price, simply to gain marketshare. I would
honestly be interested to hear about new products, or to hear specials
from companies, to hear the latest deal or sale, or anything that's a
real product, quality, no rip off, no placebo pill with a takeoff on
the viagra name, no hair growth system with a guarantee to get "up to
100% of your money back" (whatever that means). The few decent ads
are local. Does radio just not make the decent businessperson money
anymore, so radio stations have to settle for the lowest common
denominator? I'm honestly curious. You'd think there would be ads
for the latest Nissan truck, or Wal-Mart national radio specials,
something of that sort. Perhaps they exist, but I'm a radio junkie
and all I hear is crap. Please respond. Thanks!

OIE

PS Sorry if this is a repost...after a day sent from my other news
server, it still didn't propagate, so I sent it from another server.

Sounds like you need to be listening to a better class of radio station.
(LOL)

-Steve

"OIE" wrote in message ...
Why are all the ads that I hear for trash crap products? Weight loss
junk, gold coin crap, how to be a millionaire foolishness, and on and
on and on. There are very few radio ads that I hear advertising a
quality product at a fair price, simply to gain marketshare. I would
honestly be interested to hear about new products, or to hear specials
from companies, to hear the latest deal or sale, or anything that's a
real product, quality, no rip off, no placebo pill with a takeoff on
the viagra name, no hair growth system with a guarantee to get "up to
100% of your money back" (whatever that means). The few decent ads
are local. Does radio just not make the decent businessperson money
anymore, so radio stations have to settle for the lowest common
denominator? I'm honestly curious. You'd think there would be ads
for the latest Nissan truck, or Wal-Mart national radio specials,
something of that sort. Perhaps they exist, but I'm a radio junkie
and all I hear is crap. Please respond. Thanks!

OIE

PS Sorry if this is a repost...after a day sent from my other news
server, it still didn't propagate, so I sent it from another server.

Does such an animal exist anymore on commercial radio?
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There must always be the appearance of lawfulness....especially when the law's being
broken.
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For direct replies, take out the contents between the hyphens. -Really!-

"Steve" wrote in message ...
Sounds like you need to be listening to a better class of radio station.
(LOL)

-Steve

"OIE" wrote in message ...
Why are all the ads that I hear for trash crap products? Weight loss
junk, gold coin crap, how to be a millionaire foolishness, and on and
on and on. There are very few radio ads that I hear advertising a
quality product at a fair price, simply to gain marketshare. I would
honestly be interested to hear about new products, or to hear specials
from companies, to hear the latest deal or sale, or anything that's a
real product, quality, no rip off, no placebo pill with a takeoff on
the viagra name, no hair growth system with a guarantee to get "up to
100% of your money back" (whatever that means). The few decent ads
are local. Does radio just not make the decent businessperson money
anymore, so radio stations have to settle for the lowest common
denominator? I'm honestly curious. You'd think there would be ads
for the latest Nissan truck, or Wal-Mart national radio specials,
something of that sort. Perhaps they exist, but I'm a radio junkie
and all I hear is crap. Please respond. Thanks!

OIE

PS Sorry if this is a repost...after a day sent from my other news
server, it still didn't propagate, so I sent it from another server.

As a former radio GM, I am convinced that radio is the best buy for the
advertising dollar. It is very low cost and is very effective and I think
95% of businesses should spend at least part of their advertising budget on
local and/or national radio.

Many advertisers, though, feel like radio is not as glamorous as television,
not as serious as newspaper, and not as timely as outdoor. Of course, I beg
to differ on all accounts.

And as someone who has dealt extensively with ad agencies, both as a seller
and as a buyer, I know that agencies make their money as a percentage of
both the media buy and production costs. I suspect, therefore, that most
agencies tend to steer their customers toward the more expensive media
outlets with the higher production costs.

That leaves more inventory available on radio for folks who are savvy enough
to take advantage of radio's enormous reach and effectiveness. Those
weight-loss and gold-coin promoters are smart enough do so, and the radio
owners are smart enough to accept their money.

Why are all the ads that I hear for trash crap products? Weight loss
junk, gold coin crap, how to be a millionaire foolishness, and on and
on and on. There are very few radio ads that I hear advertising a
quality product at a fair price, simply to gain marketshare. I would
honestly be interested to hear about new products, or to hear specials
from companies, to hear the latest deal or sale, or anything that's a
real product, quality, no rip off, no placebo pill with a takeoff on
the viagra name, no hair growth system with a guarantee to get "up to
100% of your money back" (whatever that means). The few decent ads
are local. Does radio just not make the decent businessperson money
anymore, so radio stations have to settle for the lowest common
denominator? I'm honestly curious. You'd think there would be ads
for the latest Nissan truck, or Wal-Mart national radio specials,
something of that sort. Perhaps they exist, but I'm a radio junkie
and all I hear is crap. Please respond. Thanks!

Maybe get off of the sports station?

On 30 May 2004 03:06:42 GMT, "Paul Jensen"
wrote:

Why are all the ads that I hear for trash crap products? Weight loss
junk, gold coin crap, how to be a millionaire foolishness, and on and
on and on. There are very few radio ads that I hear advertising a
quality product at a fair price, simply to gain marketshare. I would
honestly be interested to hear about new products, or to hear specials
from companies, to hear the latest deal or sale, or anything that's a
real product, quality, no rip off, no placebo pill with a takeoff on
the viagra name, no hair growth system with a guarantee to get "up to
100% of your money back" (whatever that means). The few decent ads
are local. Does radio just not make the decent businessperson money
anymore, so radio stations have to settle for the lowest common
denominator? I'm honestly curious. You'd think there would be ads
for the latest Nissan truck, or Wal-Mart national radio specials,
something of that sort. Perhaps they exist, but I'm a radio junkie
and all I hear is crap. Please respond. Thanks!

Maybe get off of the sports station?



I purposely didn't mention the kind of radio, just because it seems to
be on all of it, but just curious, what kind of decent ads do you
hear? Maybe they're just slipping past me.

On 29 May 2004 17:04:41 GMT, "lsmyer" wrote:

As a former radio GM, I am convinced that radio is the best buy for the
advertising dollar. It is very low cost and is very effective and I think
95% of businesses should spend at least part of their advertising budget on
local and/or national radio.

Many advertisers, though, feel like radio is not as glamorous as television,
not as serious as newspaper, and not as timely as outdoor. Of course, I beg
to differ on all accounts.

And as someone who has dealt extensively with ad agencies, both as a seller
and as a buyer, I know that agencies make their money as a percentage of
both the media buy and production costs. I suspect, therefore, that most
agencies tend to steer their customers toward the more expensive media
outlets with the higher production costs.

That leaves more inventory available on radio for folks who are savvy enough
to take advantage of radio's enormous reach and effectiveness. Those
weight-loss and gold-coin promoters are smart enough do so, and the radio
owners are smart enough to accept their money.



Hmm, thanks, that does make a lot of sense.

"Paul Jensen" ) writes:
Why are all the ads that I hear for trash crap products? Weight loss
junk, gold coin crap, how to be a millionaire foolishness, and on and
on and on. There are very few radio ads that I hear advertising a
quality product at a fair price, simply to gain marketshare. I would
honestly be interested to hear about new products, or to hear specials
from companies, to hear the latest deal or sale, or anything that's a
real product, quality, no rip off, no placebo pill with a takeoff on
the viagra name, no hair growth system with a guarantee to get "up to
100% of your money back" (whatever that means). The few decent ads
are local. Does radio just not make the decent businessperson money
anymore, so radio stations have to settle for the lowest common
denominator? I'm honestly curious. You'd think there would be ads
for the latest Nissan truck, or Wal-Mart national radio specials,
something of that sort. Perhaps they exist, but I'm a radio junkie
and all I hear is crap. Please respond. Thanks!

Maybe get off of the sports station?



I'm not in the US, so I wasn't sure how general the problem is. The
type of ads described, I keep hearing on syndicated overnight shows,
like "Coast to Coast". I can't listen to much US programming in the daytime,
and obviously much of the night is now syndicated. So I just assumed
those junk ads had more to do with the type of programming than an ongoing
trend.

Michael

As a former radio GM, I am convinced that radio is the best buy for the
advertising dollar. It is very low cost and is very effective and I think
95% of businesses should spend at least part of their advertising budget on
local and/or national radio.

Many advertisers, though, feel like radio is not as glamorous as television,
not as serious as newspaper, and not as timely as outdoor. Of course, I beg
to differ on all accounts.

I'm guessing that when you were a GM the station(s) was/were owned by a
company smaller than one of the mega-groups. Or maybe it was taken over by
one of them. I think one of the reasons that so many advertisers are
by-passing local radio stations is that there's a good chance they are not
being called on by account execs who have any clue as to what they are
doing. It seems to be the policy of both Clear Channel and Infinity (and
possibly others) to fill their sales staffs with quantity rather than
quality. Both chains hire herds of sales people, irrespective of experience
or qualification. They field such large sales staffs that account lists get
thinned out too much for many of them to earn a decent living. So most
stations end up with a few successful sales people who call on their old
reliable clients, and a revolving door of beginners and other lesser sales
people who have neither the sales skill, understanding of radio, nor the
ingenuity to convert the vast numbers of potential advertisers into paying
customers.

Lee


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To e-mail, replace "bucketofspam" with "dleegordon"

"OIE" wrote in message ...

Maybe get off of the sports station?



I purposely didn't mention the kind of radio, just because it seems to
be on all of it, but just curious, what kind of decent ads do you
hear? Maybe they're just slipping past me.

I hear "decent" ads all the time. Whether it's national ads for places like
Sears or Radio Shack, or local ads for restaurants, stores, etc., radio is
full of them! Now I do spend a couple hours a day on the local sports
station, and there one will hear the type of spots you mentioned, plus ads
for local adult stores, plus of course "male enhancement."

Some of these ads are tasteless in my opinion, but they may not be in
somebody else's opinion. This is a free country and the right to discuss
male enhancement goes along with the right to critisize the government. Now
as for anyone stupid enough to think any of this crap would actually work,
maybe they deserve to be seperated from their money. If anyone is
perpatrating a fraud, then they should be prosecuted, but until such time as
that happens, they have just as much right to the airwaves as Sears does.

It's not limited to radio. Some night, you should check out the ads on the
networks' nightly newscasts... you'll see a disproportional number of ads
for patent medicines covering all kinds of gross conditions.

-Steve


I purposely didn't mention the kind of radio, just because it seems to
be on all of it, but just curious, what kind of decent ads do you
hear? Maybe they're just slipping past me.

Lee, you were right about my radio group not being one of the big ones. It
was owned by a local businessman who had other business interests but no
other stations.

The owner's philosophy was similar to that of Clear Channel, To him, it was
all about the bottom line, no matter what.

When I went to work for him, he owned the top station in the area. Then he
bought the competitor. And then he started dismantling both. He let all the
high-paid jocks go, automated the stations and hired minimum-wage baby
sitters to watch the computer and throw in occasional weather and liners.

Obviously sales dropped, but since expenses dropped even more, then he
remains happy. I got out on the way down, and I'm so thankful to be gone!

Oh, the stations are a joke now. There's dead air on any at any given time.
His son is the chief engineer, so no one is pressuring anyone for the sorry
sound and performance.

Lee, you were right about my radio group not being one of the big ones. It
was owned by a local businessman who had other business interests but no
other stations.

The owner's philosophy was similar to that of Clear Channel, To him, it was
all about the bottom line, no matter what.

When I went to work for him, he owned the top station in the area. Then he
bought the competitor. And then he started dismantling both. He let all the
high-paid jocks go, automated the stations and hired minimum-wage baby
sitters to watch the computer and throw in occasional weather and liners.

Obviously sales dropped, but since expenses dropped even more, then he
remains happy. I got out on the way down, and I'm so thankful to be gone!

Oh, the stations are a joke now. There's dead air on any at any given time.
His son is the chief engineer, so no one is pressuring anyone for the sorry
sound and performance.

Lee, you were right about my radio group not being one of the big ones. It
was owned by a local businessman who had other business interests but no
other stations.

The owner's philosophy was similar to that of Clear Channel, To him, it was
all about the bottom line, no matter what.

When I went to work for him, he owned the top station in the area. Then he
bought the competitor. And then he started dismantling both. He let all the
high-paid jocks go, automated the stations and hired minimum-wage baby
sitters to watch the computer and throw in occasional weather and liners.

Obviously sales dropped, but since expenses dropped even more, then he
remains happy. I got out on the way down, and I'm so thankful to be gone!

I'm guessing that one of the first things this guy got rid of was the
copywriter, if there was one. Why not let the sales people write the copy.
Here's why. Even the relatively few competent sales people are not
necessarily competent copywriters. And the cluless ones are, well, cluless.
One reason that advertising sales evaporate is lack of results. And
pointless, boring, clumsy ad copy does not produce results for the adverser.

If you are listening to a radio station and you hear "for all your
(advertiser's product) needs," "(holiday or event) is upon us," "save, save,
save," or just a mindless husband/wife or boss/secretary conversation
crammed with stilted (client's business) jargon, you can be pretty sure that
the commercial was written by the account exec or, worse, the client.
Besides being generally ineffective advertising, the hours a salesperson
spends agonizing over crappy copy add up to time not spent doing his/her
real job: selling advertising.

Lee


--
To e-mail, replace "bucketofspam" with "dleegordon"

Lee... I am impressed! You are right. The first thing our owner did WAS fire
the copywriter.

At that time, the station's commercials were so far ahead of any station
within 100 miles. At first, I couldn't put my finger on the reason. Then I
got to know our copywriter and found out that all those good ideas were
coming out of that one young lady. Give her the facts, and she could whip
out a commercial in a couple of minutes. And it worked! Those spots were
dynamite!

But it appeared to the owner that our copywriter was merely a drain on the
bottom line. She didn't sell anything, didn't produce anything (that he
could see), and only seemed to look busy maybe an hour or so each day. So he
fired her.

That's when it became real obvious just how important that copywriter had
been to our station.

After that, all the spots were at best, mediocre. Our sales people were
stuck writing spots when they could be selling. And the ones they wrote were
often worse than that of a grade school student. I tried writing spots
myself, and I was so slow and terrible at it that I quickly abandoned that
idea.

Hats off to anyone who can write good radio.

Back in the late Fifties, when I was the CE for an Arkansas AM kilowatter, the
station had a big book of ad copy. All one had to do was to fill in the blanks.

In return for my on call engineering service, I got a stipend and all the free
ads for my TV service shop they could fit in.

The DJs were students at the adjacent college. My favorite DJ, who had the best
voice, loved to cut commercials for me. They were great. And their results were
great, too! G

In recent years, I heard an ad on a mom and pop station that came out of that
book. It begins, "There's Spring in the air." So the book is still around.

Bill in SE Texas

Hats off to anyone who can write good radio.

It's easy. Or impossible, depending upon your skill set. g

Lee


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To e-mail, replace "bucketofspam" with "dleegordon"

I wrote: In recent years, I heard an ad on a mom and pop station that came
out of that [ad copy] book. It begins, "There's Spring in the air."

Oops! I meant, "There's MUSIC in the air!"

I had a special deal to repair a radio with each TV I repaired. Immediately
following the above pronouncement, the DJ put in a bar or two of lilting music
before continuing speaking out the ad.

Bill, K5BY