I always thought endorsement radio would be good for politics and for movies – because what’s better than word of mouth in these worlds? The problem with politics is that endorsers are putting their reputation on the line – and they should be really concerned those associations. Ideology aside, politicians screw up all the time. You may have read that somewhere. That probably explains why they aren’t backing individuals per-se, but political movements. Basically, the equivalent of the old PACs.

The politicians will want to be concerned as well – you also may have heard that people like Rush and Beck have said things in the past that, while THEY may not regret it, advertisers and networks do. It wouldn’t be fun to build your career (brand) on years of hard work and great rhetoric to be submarined by your association with a perfectly fallible entertainer.

If you’re an ad buyer for a politician and are considering endorsement radio, proceed with caution.

Read the Wall Street Journal’s article on politician endorsements.

I don’t really get it.

On the one hand, endorsement radio is really the only place where an upfront makes sense – especially for the top 10 endorsers. You have a very limited supply (the host and his time on the air) but plenty of demand (direct response advertisers). The networks can and actually do demand an upfront commitment to a certain level of spend. Again, that’s for the “big boys”. It used to be that way at the local market level. But with inventory you could drive four trucks through, it’s become tougher and tougher for a station/endorser to say “I only take an annual deal”. I’ve seen endorsers now say “let’s give it a shot for a month and see what happens”. It’s a different, and more buyer-friendly world.

But an upfront for an integrated package which includes radio, OOH, and digital? What? Why?

In TV it still seems to make sense – continued strong demand with a limited (and falling!) supply. The advertisers that depend on TV to grow the business or awareness, or simply need to hold onto their share of the market because their competitors are on TV, doesn’t have many options but to play in the networks’ game.

Radio, OOH, and Digital? Really? There’s an almost endless supply and diminishing demand.

In TV, what you pay in the scatter market is almost always going to be higher than what you could have negotiated in the upfronts (only in two years in the last twelve has this not been the case).

In radio, digital (owned by the station/network) and Outdoor, I’ll take my chances. It’s still a buyer’s market there and I don’t see that changing anytime soon.

Outside of the terrestrial world, maybe. Pandora, for one, seems to be in a constant sell-out state. Buyers are already experiencing upfront-like negotiations with Pandora and video-sites like Hulu.

But radio – especially non-endorsement radio? Nahhhh.

The first is the subtitle that says that the “radio pitch makes a comeback”. Comeback? It never left. I’ve been a talk radio listener for well over 20 years – and I remember the Hooked On Phonics and Snapple endorsed ads from the early 90s clear as a bell.

The second is that small brands are using it because they can’t afford TV. Ahem. There is an increasing number of brands that spend millions in TV – like Home Depot, LegalZoom, eHarmony, Bose, Apple, Auto Zone, and Mobil, – that also use radio endorsements. However, it is true that if you can’t yet afford TV but you have the right kind of product and the right kind of company, endorsement radio could be a great place to start.

All in all, it’s still a positive piece – and the online brands they single out are perfect for radio endorsements (Carbonite and ReputationDefender, both very good products). Do you want to know why they’re perfect? Give me a call at (888) 788-0242. But hurry, I’m only available for the next few minutes.

Here is the Inc article on on-air endorsements.

When I transitioned from being a brand awareness radio buyer to a direct response radio buyer, I felt liberated.

In my brand buying days – it was all about CPM. It works like this:
You get proposals from every station in the market.
You negotiate each separately.
You divide your share of spend based on the lowest targeted CPM.
If you’re slightly more sophisticated, you consider diminishing returns of reach at the station and market level, but most do not.

Great, you got your low CPM. Congratulations. And it didn’t matter where your spots landed, as long as it was cheap. Country? Rock? Talk? Hip Hop? New station? Old Station? Diary? PPM? How did your buy perform? Who cares, really? You’re job was to negotiate the hell out of the market and that’s what you did – according to the PPM and the Arbitron diaries. If the market didn’t see a lift, it was probably the creative’s fault, right?

In DR buying – you do care how the buy did. In fact, you obsess about it. But with DR endorsement radio buying, CPM isn’t the “end all, be all”. In endorsement radio buying – everything matters: the copy, the offer, the call to action, who the endorser is, what their show is about, what they’ve said in the past about your product category, who their other sponsors are, how long they’ve been on, what their rating trend is, what else is going on in the world – and sometimes, CPM.

I’m not saying CPM doesn’t matter, despite my Yiddish-like title. There is a decent correlation between lower CPM programming fairing better than higher CPM programming. But this is certainly not always true.

Two of my longest buys – both 5+ years, are working with two hosts that have stratospheric CPMs. One of those buys continues to be the most profitable buy that we do. In both cases, I would have laughed the sales reps out of the room in my Brand buying days. I’ll admit that it was tough to sign the contract, holding onto the notion that I can only buy CPMs of $7 or lower.

The point is, they can charge a lot because they work so well for so many advertisers.

Now, obviously, you still negotiate your pants off (and their shirts off). You still try to get everything you can, in terms of added value, bonus, website presence, etc. But could I make a CPM of over $20 work? I’m doing it right now quite well, thank you very much. Some of the hosts we work with can flat-out sell!

Plus, when you’re tracking results correctly, you’ll understand what CPM will work for you. So you start at a high CPM but learn that you’re only going to break even at $10. So you can put it to the station/network: listen, if we’re going to stay, we’re only going to be able to pay $8. Unless it’s a host in huge demand, they’ll often work with you. Money on the table tends to be snapped up these days.

So you brand advertisers can buy your low CPMs. I’ll take the stuff that works.

I’ve recently became a big fan of Colin Cowherd. Got to have dinner with him in fact:

I’ve learned that Colin has been trumpeting the Vizio HDTVs for a while now. I’m sure some Sony executive somewhere was a listener and correlated the fact that Vizio was eating their lunch to cool, aggressive marketing techniques like big time endorsement radio.

I’m not a fan of the Dennis Miller Sony read for reasons I’ve stated. But I love what Colin does: he owns one (several, likely) and talks about it as if it’s the only way to watch TV.

Word to Sony: you don’t just give an endorser a script. He has to love the product or at least give the appearance that he does.

ESP solutions have always been a business-to-business sale. But when I think about it, many small businesses are really more of a B-to-C play, especially newer businesses of 10 employees or less. Because many (most) small businesses haven’t risen to the visibility of the small to mid-size email service providers, I can’t imagine that there is really any go-to brand name among ESPs for these businesses. So like anything else, I’m sure SBs do one of two things: google “email solutions” or ask their more established contacts and friends which ESP they use.

Email has been a very important part of retention marketing for the last ten years despite falling open and click rates. It becomes all the more important over the next three years, when many economists are expecting an ongoing recessionary environment. In those environments, effectively staying in touch with past customers, leads and “hand-raisers” will be crucial for survival.

Enter Constant Contact. They are on their way to be the first true Brand among ESPs…a name that businesses will recognize immediately. It appears that they will be building this Brand, in part, through endorsement radio. I heard an NPR “ad” for CC the other day and it was really well done. Next step in my mind: full voiced endorsements.

Fantastic idea. They of course get the clutter-cutting benefit of a radio endorsement. But more importantly, they get the recommendation from the listeners’ trusted source…and to small businesses, advice from trusted sources means everything.

Most importantly, their salespeople (and website) are going to have a much easier job selling a solution that small businesses have heard about. In a couple of years, Constant Contact competitors will be kicking themselves.

I love it when a new school idea partners with old school solutions to build something great.

Yesterday I heard an endorsement ad for Sony products. I can’t even remember who the endorser is. I’m sure I need that 3+ frequency

Was it Dan Patrick? Rush? I forget. I’ll post when I find out.

—————
Got it. It was Dennis Miller talking about Sony HD TVs. His ‘endorsement’ is lacking a lot, though. He needs to say “I got one, saved 30%, will never buy one from anyone else again, and the picture blows me away”. Nice attempt, Sony, but you’re not maximizing the concept.

But the article also talks about something that I had heard before, but needed reminding: creatives don’t like working in radio because they don’t see a lot of payoff. TV, Print…likely even billboards seem sexier than radio to many copywriters. And so creatives don’t give the radio copy their best efforts. From there it’s a trickle down effect: the poorer the ads, the worse the results. The worse the results, the lower the spend. The lower the spend, the less you have for creative costs dedicated to radio. And so on…

And that’s why I love radio endorsements. You only need to create some key bullet points with your value propositions. The

hosts

then get to be the creative ones. And usually, on a national level, the hosts fees are wrapped into the unit costs.

So, in effect, you’re still capturing all of those millions of ears listening to talk radio with better than “produced” ads, without having to pay a dime to some “creatives” who would rather work on tv ads.

I do hear some decent hospital ads. The problem is, they all do it. And there are some hospitals and health groups out there with the best ads but the worst reputations.

But better than any ad telling you what a great hospital they are and how many awards they’ve one, is a friend telling you the great care they received and the nice rooms they have…with decent meals and plasma screens.

Now, how about if that friend is the person you listen to every morning?

It’s like a good bedside manner reaching out through your radio. If any hospital takes my advice, please please please make sure that the promise of the endorsement actually happens in those corners: let’s keep death and pain at bay, if you don’t mind. And nurses, please try not to roll your eyes.