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ADVERTISER BUYS RESULTS, NOT POINTS
Source: Radio and Records -- Aug 03, 2001
By Pam Baker
Sales & Marketing Editor
pambaker@rronline.com
Does the cost-per-point approach to buying radio advertising really benefit the client? "As a successful programmer of all formats and as a manager of both stations and networks, I know that buying points is the worst way to buy radio," says Sabo Media President Walter Sabo. "Radio is too good at moving product to be put in a media mix just to make other media more efficient."
When publishing company Penguin Putnam was planning the launch of author Eileen Goudge's romance novel The Second Silence, it knew it wanted to use radio, but the company hadn't seen a buying strategy or creative approach that made sense. When Penguin Putnam launched other novels by Goudge, its ad agency took the cost-per-point approach, and the results were lackluster.
Goudge knows and understands the power of radio. "I met my husband on the radio," she says. "I married [entertainment reporter] Sandy Kenyon. He was interviewing me five years ago, when I was doing a radio satellite tour for my book Blessing in Disguise. We hit it off on the air -- I was in New York, and he was in Arizona -- and we developed a great relationship and got married. So I'm like a radio maven. Radio is great!"
Goudge had met Sabo through friends and was intrigued by his unique ideas about the radio industry. She set up a meeting between Sabo and her publisher to discuss a strategy for the launch of The Second Silence.
Coincidentally, Sabo Media was at that time developing a results-based system for buying radio. "We have identified multiple predictive factors that determine the relative effectiveness of a particular radio station to move product off a shelf," says Sabo. "Selling effectiveness has nothing to do with ratings. Our system is called 'Radio Effectiveness Factors,' or REF."
When Sabo met with the Penguin Putnam team of executives, they told him that they loved radio and believed that radio could sell books. "The problem they were having was that when they told the ad agencies that they wanted to buy radio, the agencies told them that they buy points and CPMs," Sabo recalls. "But the publishers didn't want to buy points and CPMs. They wanted to buy customers." The publishing execs didn't understand how radio works, and they wanted Sabo to help them solve their problem.
"I told them that I would help them, under one condition," Sabo says. "The condition was that they would not pay me. I would not take a commission. Here's what I wanted: I wanted them to let me do whatever I wanted to do. If they let me do whatever I wanted to do, they would get results. And when they got results, this is what I wanted them to do for me one day: They would get a dump truck, and I would take that dump truck and pull up behind their building, and they would shovel money into it for me to market other titles from their house."
Penguin Putnam gave Sabo full control of the budget.
For the launch of The Second Silence, Sabo and Penguin Putnam decided to target Boston, San Francisco and New Jersey as their radio test markets, beginning in mid-May and continuing for three weeks.
Sabo selected one personality-driven radio show in each market: WROR/Boston's The Loren & WallyMorning Show, KLLC/San Francisco's Alice Morning's With Sarah & Vinnie and WKXW/Trenton, NJ's afternoon show Scott & Casey.
Each station was given the same budget and, Sabo explains, "I gave the same instructions to each sales manager. I said, 'The client wants to sell books. I don't care what the rate is. I don't care how many spots you run. Here's the money. You decide how to spend it to sell books.' They hadn't had that offer in a long time. I told them that this was a team effort."
Instead of a produced spot or prewritten copy, the creative for the campaign was a live read, with the instructions that the talent should do whatever they wanted and have a good time with it. Each spot contained a compelling paragraph from The Second Silence and a tease to find out more by buying the book.
"It is foolish," Sabo says, "for advertisers and salespeople to give top air personalities live copy and then tell these gifted performers how to perform. We wanted the hosts to do whatever they wanted to make an impression on the audience."
In San Francisco, Penguin Putnam tied in the campaign with a promotion on the KLLC website registering listeners for a romantic weekend getaway and copies of the book.
The results of the three-city campaign, which are still coming in, have been very positive so far. "The top five markets [for sales of the book] include New York-New Jersey in the No. 1 position, followed by Boston, Los Angeles, Philadelphia and San Francisco," says Penguin Putnam Exec. Director/Advertising & Promotion Rick Pascocello. Goudge's novels have traditionally sold best in the Midwest and South.
"I was really happy with the campaign," says Pascocello. "I was especially happy with the live reads more than anything, because the announcers were very engaged with the book. When Sabo came up with the idea of having them read excerpts, I thought he was crazy, but it worked really well."
So is Pascocello gearing up for Sabo's dump-truck stunt? After a hearty laugh, Pascocello replies, "That's exactly what he told us -- the dump truck of money! I don't know if he's going to get a whole dump truck full, but we're going to try it again, that's for sure."
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