Radio

In the last issue we examined television advertising. But TV is expensive. If you can afford a prime time ad then you can also afford to retire to the Bahamas and stop worrying about it. You can probably afford thirty seconds during last year’s field hockey semifinals on channel 47¼; but Robert (“Who is He?”) Grabb has already reserved that slot for the next six years. The answer, for many, is radio.

Radio has a number of advantages. First, it is relatively cheap. Second, lots of people listen to it; maybe you don’t turn on your radio much, sitting in an office or court all day, but a disturbingly large number of people never turn their’s off. Third, you don’t have to find a suit, rent an office, etc., as recommended for TV in the last article; lack of visuals makes radio simpler. Forth, the standards are not as high; a schlocky TV commercial — up against the competition of ads from huge commercial advertisers — looks terrible, but a schlocky radio ad sounds more or less like all the other schlocky radio ads. Finally, if you’re uncertain about advertising then you can sneak in a few radio ads and hope that nobody you know will hear them (your friends have better things to do than listen to the radio, right? Your friends are all out watching opera or serving meals to the homeless).

There are of course disadvantages to radio. Many of those people who keep their radio on all day are the type who, for reasons mysterious to science, simply like to have noise in the background. They pay no more attention to your ad than they pay to the EBS tests (you know the ones: ‘This has been a test of the Emergency Broadcast System. This is only a test. If this had been an actual emergency you would have been instructed to run like hell.”). In addition, radio is less memorable than TV for the same reasons that lead you to use snazzy graphics at trial rather than to have a witness recite the information. Another problem is that radio isn’t felt to have as much class as television (TV done well, at least); on the other hand, if you’re advertising then class ain’t your boat anyway.

But you get what you pay for. If you could afford TV then you wouldn’t need to read this article. So, the question becomes how to do radio. There are a few different answers.

Regular Ads

These are the basic type of advertisement, like TV without the picture. An announcer (or maybe even you) talks for thirty seconds about, basically, why people should pay you money. You could write the script yourself; the station doesn’t care what you say as long as you meet basic legal standards, don’t use bad words, etc. More likely, your ad agency will script the ad, produce it, and buy the time. Sometimes the ‘talent’ (a word used very loosely in this context) at the station will record the ad; you may wonder, though, whether you want the same voice plugging you that also pitches Roto-Rooters and used cars.

If you use this type of ad then you need a lot of them. Did you listen to the news on the way to work this morning? Name all the ads you heard. Pretty hard, isn’t it? Remember that part about snazzy graphics: what people see is 70% (or 80%, or 60%, or whatever the number is this week) of what they remember. To substitute for visuals you need repetition. The guy who says “I’ll kill that Smith if I have to listen to his commercial one more time” is the guy who remembers Smith’s name.

Public Service Announcements

Not long ago the local radio stations were marketing these heavily. The station plays some generic do-good announcement ("Wearing your Seat Belts is a Good Idea. Do it Often!”) and then the announcer says: “This message brought to by [your firm name and address].” This is cheap, and the station likes it because it gets FCC brownie points for public-service announcements. Big drawback: nobody, absolutely nobody, listens to these things, and even those who do so by mistake don’t realize that you’re asking for their business. If you’re going to advertise then remember Rule One of advertising: to get business, ask for it.

If you realty do want to promulgate good thoughts then subsidize public interest messages. Otherwise, buy lottery tickets instead; you’ll have a better chance of a return on the investment.

Radio Programs

This is a combination of the Public Service Announcement, the Talk Show, and the Call-In show. Certain Bryce Wilson 100 members are already doing one and there probably isn’t a market for more (in Tucson, at least) but we have to mention it because of the sheer brilliance of the concept. You take one of your partners and have him play “host” or moderator; you take all your other partners and have one or two play “guest” each week, rotating the “guest” slots among them. The “host” interviews the “guest” or “guests” on “topics of legal interest”, the topics being the areas of your firm’s practice. Listeners can phone in with questions on that topic for your “guests” to answer. The “guests” give vague (not a criticism; everybody, we hope, knows better than to give specific advice to strangers over the phone) and often correct answers to the questions, recommending that the listener call or make an appointment with the “guest” to learn more. Both the “host” and “guest” mention the firm's name and number frequently. They also suggest that if some folks can’t or don’t want to call into a radio show, why then they’d be generous enough to let those folks call their law office for an appointment. They also tell that to the people who do call.

There’s nothing underhanded here, understand; it’s no secret that everybody is from the same firm. But it doesn’t seen like a commercial, it doesn’t sound like a commercial, and laymen buy the illusion. The advertisers get their message across, they get repetition for half an hour, and they get to look like public-spirited citizens in the process, giving of their free time for the enlightenment of the community. And because it looks kind of like public service the station likes it, too.

If you are interested in doing some advertising, this is one of those ideas that you wonder why you didn’t think of it. Its like having your own ambulance with a Supreme Court Seal of Approval.

The next-best approach is to get yourself on a legitimate public-service show, which everybody knows you’re on just to try to get business anyway. But remember that although the show will be taped at what seems like a good time, it will be broadcast at about the time farm animals are waking up.

Choosing a Station

Radio stations come in different flavors, called "formats." A “format” is a type of programming — country music, for example, or “talk”, or “all-news,” or various types of noise that now pass as music but we don’t want to admit what they sound like to us because we remember when our parents said the same thing about what we listened to and we’re still young and cool but our parents were old and “square,” right? In any event, listeners will identify you by the company you keep so you should pick your station with care. News and talk stations are good bets; the setting is neutral and people are, in theory at least, paying some attention to the words being spoken. If you do criminal law, though, you might consider that on some stations the “musical” groups encourage listeners to perform acts guaranteed to result in a need for your services.

But the existence of “format” brings with it the danger of the dreaded “format change”. The classic Tucson example is KTKT, now a staid, CNN-broadcasting news station of the type we said a minute ago you should advertise on. Recall that in our youth (yes, us, you and me; don’t give me this “before my time” stuff — I can read Martindale too, you know) it was the loud, extreme, adult-scandalizing, illicit-drug-promoting, free-sex-encouraging rock station in town. So, if you don’t want to wake up one morning and hear your ad played just after the latest by Bad Brains (or G. Gordon Liddy, whichever scares you more), you should get a contract that lets you bail out in the event of a revolution at the station.

Response

One of the problems with radio is how to know whether you’re having some impact and getting some return. With television, you know when your ads have been seen because your family and friends tell you that you really look good (bad/young/old/impressive/psychotic) in your new ad, or because some idiot newsletter makes fun of you. With radio it’s different because while radio is fine for reaching folks who will pick lawyers based on ads, a lot of your friends won’t admit to listening to it for fear of revealing their addiction to Rush, country music, or some other non-PC type of stuff. How do you test whether radio is doing you any good? One solution is traditional: ask your prospective clients how they heard about you. But that’s old-fashioned; why not learn the new techniques of your fellow radio-ites? For example: offer a free divorce to the first five lucky callers and see what happens at the switchboard when your ad runs. (Of course, you’ve programmed your voice-mail to tell everyone ‘Sorry, caller number six.”) Or mention in the ad “Tell ‘em Bob (or whatever name you want) sent you”; the poor suckers all will, thinking that you’ll give them some sort of discount or lagniappe if they do it.

Conclusion

Check out radio. Its cheap, it works, and its tacky. Two out of three ain’t bad.

(Next Time: Advertising. Part III — Let Their Fingers Do The Chasing)