Who’s the most important person in your radio commercial?

Is it you? Is it the announcer? Is it the guy at the radio station who makes sure your commercial actually goes on the air?

Answer: None of the above.

The most important person in your radio commercial is your customer. That’s who we talk to. That’s who we must inspire. That’s who ultimately pays for your advertising, so we better trigger something profound in his little heart.

Now, you’ll notice there’s a lot of funny advertising on this site. Which would lead one to infer that we specialize in funny commercials.

Not entirely true.

Funny is fun. Funny often works. Funny is hard to do properly. But funny is not the reason for being.

A lot of advertisers say, “I want a funny commercial!” Or, “I want a commercial people will talk about!” Or, “I want an award-winning commercial.”

What we want is a commercial that matters.

For instance, are you selling mortgages? Then we’re not going to write you a funny ad. You can beg. Implore. Demand. Bang your shoe on the desk.

The only results we’ve ever seen from a funny mortgage commercial is a precipitous decline in call volume.

It seems that people don’t want to get a mortgage from a guy in a clown suit wearing a funny nose and floppy shoes. They’d rather get their mortgage from a guy in a suit who looks like Al Gore clutching a lock box.

So be it.

The most important part of this process of creating advertising is hitting the message nail square on the head.

One of the single most effective commercials we’ve ever done was for a family therapist.
He’d bought a uniquely weak schedule. It went completely against all the rules of good media buy.

It was our job to compensate.

Compensate we did.

By targeting a single, desperate individual with a unique solution to her problem, that therapist found almost 50 prospective patients each month.

His commercial was not funny.

In fact, it was pretty serious.

More importantly, it was relevant.

And that’s what matters to us.

With any luck, it matters to you, too.