Wearing the clown suit

Did your client dress you in a clown suit today?

One of our AE's sent us a laundry list of items that was truly comical. In the request for copy was a desire for three different themes for two spots, using multiple talent and offering no less than nine separate ideas to be transmitted in 30seconds. We needed to come up with two completely different ideas, they should hook the listener in the first five seconds, they should have a male driving the spot but also have a female presence---and they needed to flow.

That all?

I love challenges. Challenges are what make radio exciting and fresh. But when a client tries to dress you in a clown suit because they know you need the buy, it's difficult. The conversation would normally go like this, V1 being the client, V2 being the AE..

V1 What are you doing...?
V2 Juggling chainsaws..
V1 OK, that's good, but-- I'd like to see you do it blindfolded..
V2 OK..
V1 Left handed only..
V2 Uhh, all right..
V1 On one leg..
V2 Fine...
V1 While you're running in a circle..
V2 Uh-huh...
V1 While singing Lady Gaga
(V2 starts singing Lady Gaga)

When do you finally say 'no'..? It's one of the reasons we always tell our AE's go in to a meeting as the expert. If you worry about what a client likes or dislikes, or you ask a client what they want their ad to say, you're just gunning for trouble-- trouble that will eventually lead, in more cases than you'd think, to you having to do things so incredibly harmful to you, your client and your station, that you'd laugh at all of it if it wasn't YOU in the middle.

So as I said, I love challenges. But what I described above wasn't a challenge. It was a client piling on, trying to exert power. Either than, or it was just plain, old fashioned ignorance, compounded by an AE who needed the buy, and thus, was in no position to risk a 'no' or a 'let me see if your competition will do this.'

So what's the solution? Well, I always go back to establishing yourself as the expert. From the start, you have to make the client realize just because they LISTEN to the radio, that doesn't make them an expert in radio advertising. You're the expert--act that way. Eliminate phrases like 'what do you think?' and 'do you like the spot?' Say goodbye to 'tell me about your business.' Being an expert means being able to target the client's main problem, and isolate their expectations of what they want from their buy.

But if that's long gone, make sure you do one thing---focus. As my wife loved to say, in sales, there is no benefit to the 'show up and throw up' method. So tactfully explain, packing all that info into a 30 second ad is not doing anyone any good. Grab a focus, lean on it, let it be what drives your commercial-- then, when the potential customer has shown up, you have as much time as you want to tell them the rest of the story.

In radio, we get 30 or 60 seconds. It's meant to serve the purpose of allowing the potential customer's imagination to drive them to the client or service. Try to do more, and you'll end up doing less.

No one in radio looks good dressed in the clown suit. I know-- I've had my share of clown adventures. The worst one occurred in 1992, with a big independent client my partner and I were working with. We presented a commercial to him, to which, after thoughtfully stroking his chin for some 40 seconds, he replied, "you have inspired me, to participate." No more ominous words were ever spoken in a creative meeting. A burned out hippie-intellectual forced to do the corporate thing, he proceeded to get so involved, that he literally changed one of the lines in a spot from 'you're just whistling Dixie', to 'you're just whistling Beowolf,' a change that not only baffled us-- it baffled anyone who listened. Needless to say, we parted ways soon after.

And THAT'S the truly infuriating part. Putting on the clown suit didn't do us a lick of good. It never does. So let's make a deal today---put the clown suit away. Forever. It doesn't become you.