Those are the words of Ad Agency Executives Blair Overesch (pictured) and Jeff Chase. Overesch is the Media Director and Chase is the Creative Director at
Walz Tetrick Advertising in Kansas City. Their clients include the World Champion Kansas City Royals and Dairy Queen. In our latest podcast, Chase and Overesch, who are big proponents of radio, say they would be willing to pay more if their clients didn’t get lost in a long pod of horrible-sounding commercials. It’s just one of the topics we discuss in the podcast, however it is the hot topic of the week.
LISTEN ABOVE
When spawt-rates are hovering in the “dollar-a-holler” range, it is necessary to cram the hour with as many commercials as is humanly (not humanely) possible.
No advancement comes from this practice – it’s like marking time at charging speed.
Meanwhile, would the “Realist” be of the same opinion if he were pitching for The Blue Jays? 🙂
In the same spirit of this comment, I’ll make my own admissions.
If I was a billionaire, I would donate almost all of it to charity.
If I pitched for the Yankees, I would spend hours after the game signing autographs for kids.
Now why doesn’t someone post on Social Media that they are going to run less units per hour so this gentleman can “like” it?
Agencies don’t give a rat’s ass for individual stations, clusters or companies. They grind for numbers and then stomp all over those fees for their own (lucrative) profits.
The “diamonds in our own backyard”, so to speak, are those spots that are so well crafted and effective as to become the salvation of local clients. The stations(s) then become the darlings of all local media.
Only then can an outfit deal with agencies for rates on a levelled playing field.
I realize I am also talking through my hat. I mean, what are the chances…?
What Fred is saying in his assuredly diplomatic prose is that when you spread ’em wide for agencies to get the biz, you’d better have a gizmo ready to make up the dip to make quotas.
The stations that don’t play this whore game won’t comment here. They adopted Nancy’s “Just Say No” a long time ago and, yes, they still get the buy….on the station’s rate. Once you cut the rates to “get the buy” your station calls and your name gets noted….for all future use.
Quite gentlemanly of Walz Tetrick to offer a premium for clients being placed in shorter stopsets. Although WT may be the exception to the rule, 95% of the agencies in business are asking for pricing that is as aggressive as it has ever been regardless of commercial load. Most agencies, for their own reasons, now give little to no value to inherent qualities of a radio station, focused simply on acquiring and achieving the most aggressive pricing ever seen. Many of the requests border on absurdity. And we ask, why radio revenue is flat to down. As we acquiesce to their desire, we have to be smart enough to have the plan in place to overcome the revenue loss for transactional business. That ranges from event and digital revenue generating assets to personnel cuts. Quite the conundrum.
If you want to control what a station does with it’s available advertising time, buy all of it. Otherwise, it’s none of your business.
While I’m sure this shop is sincere in their comments, in actuality most shops have zero intention of paying for shorter stop sets. I know, because I did it.
I took that challenge, did a “back in three” guarantee (no more than 3 min in a break of 4 units max) for over a year. I/we explained how we thought that was valuable for the clients, etc, etc, etc. 95% of the time, agencies said “hey, that’s awesome…but if can’t hit my CPP, it doesn’t matter”. We promoted it significantly as a differentiation feature on the stations and it never moved
the needle in PPM as well.
Good theories and good headlines. For for most agencies these days, it’s not about buying better media. It’s about buying cheaper media. That’s the truth.