I remember how a weekly fax changed my radio life. It was called the “Monday Morning Memo,” and it was written by a guy in Texas by the name of Roy H. Williams.
Every Monday, I couldn’t wait to get into the radio station and check the fax machine for his latest missive. It never failed to ignite my soul.
Things That Won’t Change
I’ve written in this space about Jeff Bezos of Amazon and what he considers to be the most important question most people don’t ask about their business and that is “What won’t change in ten years?”
Roy’s Monday Morning Memos are an excellent example of focusing on those universal things that won’t change about branding, marketing and selling. They are those universal concepts that will don’t change with the latest technology.
Secret Formulas
In my broadcast sales class at the university, I would spend the end of the semester with each class reviewing principles of Roy’s book “Secret Formulas of the Wizard of Ads.” All of Roy’s books are a must read for anyone in radio sales.
Here’s an example of some of the things that won’t change for great radio advertising:
- Surprising Broca – most radio ads are predictable and use clichés that listeners have become adept at tuning out. Great radio ads seduce the listener and then persuade.
- Words are Keys – you know the product, just by the ad keys used by the brand. Let me give you a couple of examples: “We’ll leave the light on for you” or “Just Do It.”* Do I need to tell you the brand name or what they sell? Do these two companies surprise you with their ads?
- Engage the Imagination – people only go to places they’ve already been in their mind. The skillful ad writer will engage the listener’s imagination and take the listener where they want the listener to go.
- Sleep is the mind’s eraser – when we go to bed, sleep is the process where the mind clears itself for the next day. Like an eraser on a chalkboard, sleep wipes away all of the advertising messages a listener is exposed to that day. Knowing this is why, building a radio schedule that delivers the minimum frequency to be effective, is so important.
- Power Verbs – present tense and present progressive tense verbs conjure up powerful images in the mind. How often to most radio ads use them? Sadly, not very often.
- The Secret Path to Miraculous Ads – Roy says “journalistic writing is an objective presentation of the facts in an attempt to inform, not persuade. Creative writing is the telling of a story with wit and charm in an attempt to entertain, not to persuade. And Poetry is writing to communicate a new perspective in a brief, tight economy of words. An attempt to persuade.” Will your ad persuade a listener when they hear it? Emotion is KEY. They may forget what you said, but they will never forget how you made them feel. How do you feel after viewing this ad for State Farm called “Never”?
Fearless Flyers
This past Tuesday, September 11, 2018, America remembered the 17th anniversary of the 9/11 attack on America in New York City, Washington, DC and Shanksville, Pennsylvania. My class at the Wizard Academy was supposed to have 29 students. Only four of us showed up: Dr. Kevin Ryan, a famous writing coach from Utah; Chet Young, a big salesman with a booming voice from Burlington, Iowa; Akintunde Omitowoju, a senior programmer of Nintendo games from Kyoto, Japan and me, a radio station general manager from Atlantic City, New Jersey.
It took place in a small, converted gym in the offices of Williams Marketing in Buda, Texas just one week after 9/11 in 2001.
Roy has the students come up with a special name for their class and ours became the “Fearless Flyers.” Each of us flew on a commercial airliner whose crew outnumbered the passengers.
This past week I learned of the passing of Chet Young. His niece dropped by the Wizard Academy to see if this magical place her Uncle Chet always talked about really existed. It does.
Roy shared a memory of our class in this week’s Monday Morning Memo’s “Rabbit Hole.” You can read more about it HERE.
Positive Things YOU Can Do
Want to make your radio station more effective for your advertisers and more engaging for your listeners? Then do those things that will not change for effective radio in ten years.
Subscribe to Roy H. Williams’ “Monday Morning Memo,” read the Wizard of Ads book trilogy and make plans to spend a week at the Wizard Academy to learn directly from the Wizard of Ads, Roy H. Williams.
Thank You and God Bless You Roy.
*Motel 6 & Nike
I was recently invited to be a guest on the radio show and podcast “Watch the Media with John Shrader.” The program airs on the University of Nebraska-Lincoln campus radio station and the podcast of the show can be heard on 
They are part of the Late Majority and Laggards.
The primary way people access radio today is in their car. But by 2020, it is estimated that 75% of the cars sold will be connected to digital services.
It was only 11-years ago that Steve Jobs took the stage and held in his hand the future. It was an iPhone.
Most research today indicates that since the introduction of the smart speaker, the device that’s getting a little less use is the smartphone. I would concur that is the case in my home as well. Our 3 Amazon Echoes are the way we access at home radio listening, get flash briefs, find out the time and latest weather forecast.
What the smart speaker and the smartphone have in common, are both devices give the user what they want, when they want it. On Demand is the real game changer of the 21st Century communications world.
The other day, we took two of our grandchildren to a wildlife safari park here in Virginia. It was a simply magical day. But that’s not the part of the story I want to share. It is that both kids were wearing their Boston Red Sox baseball caps.
Jerry Lee recently sold his only radio station, WBEB in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It was 55-years ago this past May that Jerry and his partner David Kurtz put the station on the air. It signed on as WDVR. In the 1980s the call letters were changed to WEAZ and the station was branded as “EZ 101.” The station brand was not only well known, but fixed tuned FM radios were given out by the radio station to area businesses to play the station in their stores and offices.
Most recently, Jerry rebranded his station as “101.1 MoreFM.” This change, like all the others, was promoted in every imaginable way and became familiar to listeners virtually overnight.
Once upon a time, all radio listening was recorded using a diary, kept by a listener for seven days. Years of diary reviews at the Arbitron headquarters in Maryland proved to me that the radio stations most familiar to their listeners got the most “votes” from their fans.
People in the survey said traditional AM/FM radio was the thing most replaced by audio listening via their smart speaker.
“Brands now have a chance to behave like human beings, talking, understanding, guiding, empathizing…voice is the single biggest vector of emotion, emotion is the biggest driver of preference. This is a true 1:1 marketing opportunity and a chance to build relationships like never before.” -Mark Paul Taylor, Chief Experience Officer, Global DCX Practice, Capgemini
There’s something that’s been troubling me for some time. It’s the radio industry’s habit of reporting radio listening results by calling it “AM/FM” versus what it really is, virtually all FM radio listening.
WTOP was built on AM radio. It moved its entire operation over to the FM band and grew its audience, revenues and lowered its listener demographic. People who never heard this radio station on its AM dial position were suddenly newly minted fans of their all news format.
From my blogging, I get lots of feedback about a variety of things concerning broadcasting. One reader wrote to me about his father, a sports fan, who turned on WIP-FM to hear the latest chatter. WIP-FM was broadcasting a game of no interest to his father, so his son said to him, why don’t you turn on WIP AM610. Sadly, this person wrote the audio was unlistenable. He wrote: “You’d think the FCC would mandate that AM have standards for audio quality in receivers.”
When I was living in Bowling Green, Kentucky, I couldn’t receive 650AM WSM in my office, even though my office looked south and my antenna was able to enjoy a full wall of windows. The noise floor both inside my university office as well as around town while driving in my car made the station unlistenable. WSM was once listened to all the way to Louisville in northern Kentucky. Instead, I downloaded WSM’s app and could enjoy the radio station in crystal clear stereo. (I see WSM has stopped subscribing to Nashville Nielsen Audio ratings.)
The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) did a review of the range of services it offered on the AM band (called medium wave across the pond) and it included a financial review of all its services too. They concluded the ROI (return on investment) in AM was not there and announced they would be turning off some 13-AM radio stations in January 2018 according to Radio Business Reports.
There’s a great radio operator in Cadiz, Kentucky by the name of Beth Mann. WHVO is her AM radio station at 1480, but if you go on her website, you won’t find any mention of this station being on the AM radio dial. It’s promoted as 
I read a recent article in 
Jeff Bezos’ 
I’ve been reading the trades, trying to grasp what is happening, and it is all so very confusing. Have you felt that way too? That’s what a period of disruption looks like. Black is white. Up is down. It’s enough to give you an Excedrin headache.
at a time when AM/FM radio is no longer the entertainment focus of the vehicle dashboard, replaced by the entertainment center that resembles the touch screen on your smartphone.
The other night I watched Jim Gaffigan’s 5th Netflix special called “CINCO.” In his standup comedy routine, he hit the nail on the head about why Netflix is more popular than cable TV. Here’s what Jim said: