[Radio Advertising] Big-Time Radio

You’ve got this great idea for a commercial. You can see it in your head. A virtual blockbuster for your business; the Titanic of bug commercials.

You make a list of props. You’ll need a Humvee. Maybe you know somebody who knows somebody who has one. Ideally you’ll have three Blackhawk helicopters, which you admit, may prove problematic. And a little costly. And you’ll need a professional actor — a real good one who can play a grizzled field general. He’s going to shout, “Call in the big guns,” to another actor, a mousy guy playing a radioman. And you want the entire siege to take place in mid-town Manhattan. And for your efforts, you expect to win every advertising award possible.

How much will this commercial cost?

One million?

Ten million?

On television, this commercial might cost twenty million dollars to make.

On radio, it will probably be less than $10,000.

Southern California’s Lloyd Pest Control won the industry’s top radio advertising honors in 2005 with their “Bad Bugs” radio campaign, a series of four spots produced in Hollywood by radio ad agency Bert Berdis and Company. The National Pest Management Association “Pesty” award honored the spots for their creativity and professionalism.

Their “Interrogation” commercial starred famed Hollywood impressionist and comedian Billy West (also known as the cartoon voice of both Ren and Stimpy) as a petulant termite who refused to admit his crime, despite all evidence to the contrary. Here’s a brief excerpt:
LLOYD INSPECTOR: Isn’t that you eating a cross beam in the living room?
TERMITE: Pleeeease….I’m a termite. We all look the same, hey…
LLOYD INSPECTOR: Okay. Then you won’t mind if I place this piece of rare Brazilian Rosewood here on the table.
[SOUND EFFECT]: Thud!
TERMITE: You do what you gotta do.
LLOYD INSPECTOR: Yes, with its soft shades of red and subtle streaks of violet.
TERMITE: GULP!
LLOYD INSPECTOR: And I’m sure, being a termite and all, you’re not tempted by the straight grain, the medium luster, the forgiving texture….
TERMITE: OKAY, I CAN’T TAKE IT ANYMORE!!!! I did it! And if Lloyd Pest Control didn’t foil my plan, I would have eaten the whole house.
LLOYD INSPECTOR: Take ‘em to the chair boys.
TERMITE: Chair? Is it a wooden chair? Mmmmmmm.
LLOYD INSPECTOR: Nahhh, not really.
ANNOUNCER: The Maximum Security Service from Lloyd Pest Control is your best choice for guaranteed termite solutions. Call 1-800-Bad Bugs or go to BadBugs.com. Termites, ants, roaches… Lloyd Pest Control puts bugs out of business.

The radio spots featured the sounds of maximum security prisons and funky blues music around the announcer copy. In addition to NPMA, the San Diego Radio Broadcasters Association also named the 60-second spots as the year’s best. “We received a lot of press,” said James Spring, marketing director, Lloyd. “And we received a lot of phone calls.”

Spring says that the company saw a 22 percent increase in residential sales in just one year, an increase he attributes wholly to radio. “Radio was the only thing that we did differently in 2005.”

It had been six years since Lloyd had last advertised on radio. The lengthy hiatus was based largely on two factors. “San Diego radio was all over the place for a while. It was hard to track down the stations that best represented our demographic,” Spring said. “And, truthfully, our radio commercials were not very good.”

Oh, that. Bad radio commercials are like a rusty fish hook in the ear. They send listeners scurrying around the dial. At their worst, bad commercials can cement the decision of some potential customers to never use your service.
“One of our competitors in San Diego uses a jingle that makes customers call us,” Spring said. “Their song is so annoying that it compels people to go anywhere but to them.”

Lloyd Pest Control knows this territory all too well. “Six years ago, when we last advertised on radio, we thought we had all of our ducks in a row,” Spring said. “We created a budget, chose our stations, picked our costly day parts, negotiated for free rotators. Then they asked us for our commercial.”

Lloyd didn’t have one. “We weren’t Budweiser or Coca-Cola,” Spring said. “Besides,  radio stations told us that they would build the spots for us. It was all included in the price of our radio buy.”

Unfortunately, Lloyd Pest Control soon found that free radio commercials were worth every penny. “Those radio spots were really pretty bad,” Spring said. “The ‘actors’ were just people who were working around the radio station. A receptionist played an ant. The engineer did some voices. I even did a voice. The commercials sounded cheap. Our phones didn’t ring.”

Bert Berdis, president, Bert Berdis and Company, Hollywood (and an ex- comedian who appeared in sketch comedy shows such as Laugh-In and the Tim Conway Show), sees this happen to too many businesses. “Many companies look to spend fifty-thousand or a hundred thousand, or two-hundred thousand on a radio campaign, and then they just take the free commercials that the radio stations give them,” Berdis said. “It makes commercials like the ones we create for Gillette or Delta Dental sound like King Lear. But funnier.”

Berdis is not bragging. He’s got the trophies to back it up. To date the company has garnered 89 Clio awards. Bert Berdis and Company has written national radio spots for a huge list of clients, from Anheuser-Busch to Visa and Xerox.

And now they have a Pesty Award.
“I’m embarrassed, in hindsight,” said Spring. “We bought four radio commercials from Bert Berdis and Company — fully produced, and as funny as they come, and we spent $30,000 total — for all four. This was less than 10 percent of the cost of our radio run on the stations we utilized. And the impact was phenomenal.”

While television has long been considered the high water-mark in advertising, Spring says he sees too little value. “In our region, people spend two to three times as much time in their cars as they do watching television — and then they have two hundred channels to choose from. On the radio dial, listeners really only have about ten viable options in town,” Spring said. “Plus, to produce an acceptable TV spot costs big bucks. I look at places like the local restaurants that advertise on cable, and I see these ugly commercials that show badly lit plates of food and stiff actors, and I think to myself, no way. That’s not going to be us.”

Bert Berdis agrees. “Radio is a great value. It takes very little of the advertising budget to hire a creative agency to make your commercials float above all the rest.”

Berdis’ company recently delivered three new 60-second commercials for Lloyd Pest Control’s 2006 summer campaign. “We’re very proud of the new spots, and our employees are proud,” said Spring. “And I can honestly say that, once again, we look great on radio.”

The author is a San Diego-based freelance writer.