The Industry

     I have made up my mind. I am becoming an inventor on the side. Seeing as how I am still fighting for a job in the radio biz, I am going to create the best product in the world so that I don’t have to have money worries. My idea… Sunscreen Hair Gel. This is mostly because I, being a spiked-hair enthusiast, spent the day in the sun and now have a severely burnt scalp… not good. Gel that doubles as an impenetrable UVA/UVB forcefield for the noggin… I’ll be a billionaire. So with a beet/cherry red head I am talking all about getting creative in the copy department WOO- ow… it burns!

The copy department is just another branch of a radio station that is crucial to the whole money thing that I hear is so important. The copy department is responsible for taking the clients from the sales team and writing ads incorporating the clients needs/wants. Not as easy as it sounds. How do you, as a writer, make your clients commercial stand out among the hundreds out there. This is the true task of a writer and to top it all off the are limited to 30-60 seconds to do it… not a lot of time. The biggest part of any ad, that you need to master, is centered around the three best letters…F….B….P! What? They are the best letters…no?

F.B.P - Feature Benefit Persuasion. F.B.P is the backbone to any ad. It is cheese to a pizza, chocolate and peanut butter, beer on a hot day… essential! So what exactly is it?

• Feature: With any product or service there will be a bunch of things that the client will offer. You want to interrogate interview your client and find out the main focus/feature that will fit with your stations demographic and psychographic (your audiences age, gender and their needs/wants) If they say that they want to include price, style, convenience and store atmosphere you get to reel them in and explain how just by saying that long shopping list they have wasted 10 seconds of their 30 and the listener could get confused as to what the purpose of the clients business is. One feature per ad, that’s the rule. If the client is persistant suggest a campaign where the ads can vary weekly/monthly all working together. However, you will learn just like I did that sometimes you just have to smile and make it work… that stupid phrase comes to bite you in the butt “the customer is always right…”. 
  Example: Michelin tires have deep tread.
• Benefit: This is plain and simply what the product is going to do for the consumer. This is where you as a writer will get creative! You will pick the benefit based on, once again, the demographic/psychographics of your audience.
  Example: The benefit of “deep tread tires” to a mother will look different then a young man. For the mom you could go for the safety angle “The tires will provide better traction in bad weather”. Whereas for the young man you could go the route of “The tires are designed to tackle the toughest terrain”. Same product, different audience, different benefit. 
• Persuasion: This is where you again use your powers of the word to persuade the consumer to actually BUY or DO something! You back up the benefits. This doesn’t mean you have to fall into the trap of the “sell line” or “Come on down to Jimmy’s Tire Store to buy your off-road tires”. How often do you hear that? This can be done in a way that incorporates the mood of the ad. Again get creative!

Remember that Feature, Benefit, Persuasion can work for all forms of your writing. The typical commercial, P.S.A’s, station programming (countdown, special shows etc.) and station promotions. F.B.P is your best friend. Take it to dinner and a movie, go play tennis, walk your dogs together, and if you have one to many and dance on the top of the bar while belting out the Canadian anthem and holding back the intense urge to pass out… F.B.P won’t judge you… if you’re lucky. 

Now that you understand this your true creativity can shine. This is where you really get to show off your mad skillz (yes skillz has a ‘z’… it’s cooler that way). Tomorrow I’ll elaborate on this idea and go over the types of ads out there. Device, dialogue, hard sell… you name it… TOMORROW! Use that little RSS feed to make sure you don’t miss it and come tomorrow the posts should be back to being posted mid-day.

Huzzah! Also… comments… well there are barely any… COMMENT AWAY! Hahaha.