Those CMO’s love their TV advertising according to a new Nielsen study of CMO’s. More than 51% say Television is either highly or extremely important in their marketing plans. 30% ranked TV as “extremely important.” No other traditional media reached 10%. Only 9% of the CMO’s in the study say radio is extremely important.
Both print and TV are generally considered effective by large majorities of marketers. Sixty-two percent see print, and over 61% consider TV to be effective. Forty-five percent of respondents thought the same for radio. A little less than half (43%) of respondents ranked TV as a “very” or “extremely” effective media channel. Twenty-one percent ranked print as “very” or “extremely” effective, 19% gave radio the highest marks. TV was the only traditional channel that was viewed as extremely effective by more than 10% of respondents.
Not only do our so-called radio company “leaders” not know how to sell radio advertising, they invest nothing in the creative process. The reason radio doesn’t work is because radio stations don’t know how to write and produce a good ad. Most agencies don’t know how to produce a good radio ad. The spoken word is the most powerful emotional tool that humankind is exposed to, and all our industry comes up with is copy lines like “plenty of free parking” and “only the freshest ingredients.”
My wife owns a small (38 client) agency, 3 of her clients are retailers, the kind of retail businesses that used to be regular radio users. She gets phone calls, emails constantly from radio stations and radio groups.
Two weeks ago she handed me a presentation from the GSM and AE from one of the largest radio groups. They were asking for 31k over 2 months for a promotional campaign on 4 of their stations. There was no break down of where and when the commercials and promos would run or on which of their stations would be carrying them. The presentation made no sense. Not only that, the in person portion of the presentation they made was weak and confusing. She said the GSM had difficulty answering any of her questions in any detail. The AE, her rep, said nothing except hello and goodbye.
My wife has spent a lot of money on radio over the years, especially when she was the VP of Marketing for one of the largest furniture retailers in Southern California She knows radio (she began her career as a radio sales rep) She’s watched and experienced the decline in the quality of radio sales people, the massive turn over in sales at stations. (one major LA station had 4 different reps call on her in a 9 month period) She says that whenever radio sends out a manager with the reps, the manager is one of two things , arrogant or soaked in flop sweat.
The last radio campaign she ran for one of her clients, she did the research, planned the buy,wrote the copy called the stations and bought the schedule. She ran 35 units on each station a week for 3 weeks.She paid full rate card for 6a-6p, one unit per day part, Monday through Friday She asked for and got 20 units a week as a bonus., She ran 10 of them like this one unit, 7-12 and one over night M-F, the other 10 bonus units ran midday on Saturday and Sunday. Did the campaign work? It did and worked well, because she understands radio better than the people who sell it.