“THERE CAN BE ONLY
ONE!”
Sorry…is my 80’s childhood showing?
This scene from the Highlander flashes in my head every time
I ask a client:
“What is your core
message…the one thing that you want to be known for?”
And their answer is:
Lowest Price,
Best Selection,
Superior Service,
Factory Trained Technicians,
Fresh ingredients,
Wi-Fi in the waiting room,
Free toy with every kid’s meal,
Fastest provider but we still take the time to care,
Oh and a wonderful salad bar.
Nooooooooooooooooooo!
THERE CAN BE ONLY
ONE!
Your CORE MESSAGE
is not a stacked up shopping list of FEATURES.
Your CORE MESSAGE
is the one key point that you want the listener to hear, understand and
remember.
You should be able to boil it down to one statement:
“Tires you can trust
with your family’s safety.”
“The cheapest place to
get a good computer.”
Your CORE MESSAGE
is your value proposition, your competitive advantage, the reason why people
should buy from you instead of all the other options available.
The First Rule of
Radio Advertising, the one that most radio creatives understand, is
that you need to start with a core message in order to have an effective radio
ad.
The Second Rule of
Radio Advertising, the fork in the road where most ads go wrong, is
that including a core message will not
guarantee success unless everything else in the ad aligns to support the core.
Here is an example:
“Tires you can trust with your family’s safety” WILL NOT BE heard, understood
and remembered if it is merely a five second statement made after twenty-five
seconds of tire price points.
“Tires you can trust with your family’s
safety” WILL BE heard, understood
and remembered if it is the final statement made after a story of a father’s
close call with a deer while driving the family to the cottage. –
This ad will create an itch that won’t be soothed by the competitor’s lowest
price.
“The cheapest place to get a good computer” WILL NOT BE heard, understood
and remembered if it is merely a five second statement made after a twenty-five
second announcement about how the new monitors are in and available in multiple
screen sizes.
“The cheapest place to get a good computer” WILL BE heard, understood and
remembered if it is the final statement made after a story of a mother whose
child showed great promise in school but needed a computer to keep up with her
class. “With the prices we’ve seen at most stores…it didn’t look like it was
going to be possible.” – Mom’s don’t care about monitor sizes. This
ad will cast the business as a hero in an unfair world.
Want to be sure
the CORE MESSAGE is being communicated?
Step 1: Play the ad
for five people who have not been involved in the creation of the ad.
Step 2: Ask each of
them “What is the one overriding message that you get from the commercial”
Step 3: If at least
four of the five people don’t get the same answer and if that answer isn’t the
intended core message, then you’ve got to redo the commercial with a stronger
focus on the core.
So why do so many
businesses take the shopping list approach to advertising?
They believe that listing off a bunch of features will widen
the appeal of the ad by having something for everyone. Gib’s is selling
trailers, buying trailers and hiring RV technicians. This has more of a chance
of working in print where the reader can selectively choose what to focus on. Print
is where most businesses start advertising so they carry their approach and expectations
over to radio.
Radio is a linear
experience where the message unfolds in a set order. It’s a medium that
demands storytelling and should be used to apply meaning to your message.
Shopping list ads zip through an inventory of features and
items but apply no meaning to any of the individual items on the list. Do any
of the small pictures in the Gib’s ad create the image of being in an RV and
having breakfast with your kids or telling ghost stories around a fire just
outside of one? How successful would a salesman at Gib’s be if he greeted
customers by reading an inventory list to them? (Don’t run away…I only have 15 more to share!) Shopping list ads
make passable print ads. They make miserable radio ads.
In an attempt to
appeal to everybody…they connect with nobody.
Adding additional messages to your ad will only decrease the
impact. To get the most out your radio advertising, you need to focus on maximizing
the impact of your CORE MESSAGE, instead of maximizing the number of items from
your list.
Next week we’ll continue to talk about “The Power of One” by
focusing on the importance of One Core Emotion. Surprisingly…it’s not always
the emotion of the product experience.
Ryan Ghidoni is an
18-year veteran of radio advertising and has worked with some of the most
creative sales reps, writers, producers and voice talent in the business.
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