The buck stops here

The ugly little secret about radio advertising is that the guys actually running radio stations and companies have never much cared if it’s effective.

I’m probably pissing off a lot of radio execs right now, but honestly, if we cared would we have allowed the kind of commercial production I hear on our stations every day in every city?

If we cared, wouldn’t we have found a way to be held accountable for results a long time ago, rather than being forced to by Google’s wave of click-throughs?

If we cared, wouldn’t we have invested resources in great copy writers and wonderfully creative production values and talent?

Wouldn’t we have hired the best voice actors in the business to really sell those carefully crafted words?

The truth is, we’ve spent less on the advertising we sell and create than any other media.

We get what we pay for.

However, accountability has arrived, and now we have to play catch-up, so if you’re running a radio station or a radio company, you’d best be grabbing ideas wherever you can find them.

Here’s one…

The guys at The WEEK are guaranteeing that a client’s ad will be more memorable in its pages than in a competitor’s pages. They’ll do the research to prove it, and if they’re wrong, they’ll create a new one, and run it for you free until it is the most memorable.

Now, memorability is not the same as effectiveness, but it’s a start.

Would you guarantee the local spots your station writes and produces?

If not, what does that say about their value?