The Power of Personality
Is there such thing as paid endorsement radio in politics? I know there are “free” radio endorsements all the time, like a Rush Limbaugh supporting Mitt Romney. But can politicians and political groups pay an endorser, as long as it’s identified as an advertisement, to do a spot?
Sounds illegal, somehow. Right?
One of our top endorsers today just lowered his talent fees, unprompted, by 15%. Among the seven signs of imminent world destruction, a station or talent lowering fees without the advertiser asking for it comes in at #2. Locasts are still first.
Can you believe that?
Could it be that the station and host which has long promised to be our partner is finally becoming a partner? Nahhhhh. Must be a clerical error.
Man, I’ve listened to this guy for years. I must have been one of the oldest listeners in his Lovelines radio audience. Such a fun schadenfreude show. He always pegged a troubled caller perfectly with “so what did daddy do to you”. I’m strangely connected to him, too. First, lots of people say I look like him (any resemblance in the picture below?). In fact, at Leo Burnett in Chicago, a couple of my colleagues called me “Carolla”. Second, we have a similar sense of humor. He makes slightly more money in comedy, though. Third, I was actually on Dr. Drew and Adam’s Lovelines show on MtV. I made up some story to be able to go up on stage and tell a national audience about my problems.
An advertiser could be taking a chance with him. He doesn’t have salesman in his personality. He’s kind of like Holden Caulfied, all grown up and given a radio show. So he’ll be funny in the spots, he’ll make sense, he’ll weave in other appropriate content, but he won’t really sell.
Sometimes that plays to an advertiser’s advantage: it may sound more earnest. Sometimes it doesn’t, like when a listener has some doubts about the product, process, or industry in general. He’s got that laid back “buy it if you want to…I’m not forcing you” way of voicing a spot. Works for Howard Stern. I hope it works for Carolla’s advertisers, too.
For me, I think I’d buy what Adam recommends. His judgments on movies, tv shows, actors, etc, are always spot on. I’m hoping people can make the leap and trust him with his judgments on legal documents, online storage, flowers, and cars.
I just hope he doesn’t ask me about my relationship with my mother and daddy. Er, father. THAT IS NOT WHY I ACT OUT! I don’t think it is, anyway. Oh, Dr. Drew, where are you?
“Click on the microphone in the upper right corner of the website and enter my name…”.
I really like the tracking mechanism ProFlowers has set up to learn which radio endorsements are pulling for them. I think they’ve actually branded a call to action through the repetition and frequency of thousands and thousands of ads. If you’re a talk radio listener, you know that if you go to ProFlowers.com, you’ll want to click in that microphone and enter Bill or Jim or Leo or whichever you listen to.
The problem they then probably have is the problem I have in my reports: what if a listener has heard their ads on Rush for years but that listener finally takes action on that local Bill Handel spot? The frequency and awareness was built on one program, but another program gets the credit. Or what happens if one code hits the blogosphere more than the others, getting credit for people that search for “proflowers discount codes”. (interesting side note: the younger the average audience in the demo of a radio host, the more likely it is that the discount code we use in our ads will hit blogs, coupon sites, etc. We have to do a lot of scrubbing every reporting period.) Or what happens if people simply forget to use the code but were driven through radio? I wonder what percentage of the ProFlowers audience types in the code, and has that percentage changed over time?
Ultimately, they’re probably doing much better than most in terms of tracking the results of their broadcast spending. And they must be eating into a lot of the big players out there. I’ve recently heard ftd AND teleflora.com recently using endorsement radio (around Valentines Day). Strange move for teleflora…I heard Petros Papadakis (sports) endorse them. Funny thing about Petros, he’s the last guy in the world that I would associate with something beautiful like flowers. I mean, he’s funny as hell, but he seems like the drunk frat brother that falls through the table to me. Chris Farley ain’t got nothin’ on Petros.
But I digress…