The Radio Ad That Made Listeners’ Ears Bleed…

And The Phones That Just Kept On Ringing.
Don’t Try This At Home.

Written by Rich Harshaw.

Do Not Try This At Home.

I’m serious. Sometimes the stuff that works is so specific to a situation that it’s not really replicable anywhere else. If you try to do or use what I’m about to show you, you very well might fail. You’ve been warned.

So… I recently gave you some examples of some radio ads used by a company in a small town. I got a lot of positive feedback from professional, small-town remodelers who said they could identify with that kind of company. I love writing and running those kinds of ads because they do such a wonderful job of capturing the company’s identity and communicating it with power, precision, and passion.

But sometimes—for reasons known only to myself—I stray from the middle of the road into some pretty strange paths.

Nordine Remodeling is one of those cases. I met George Nordine and his wife Sandy 4 or 5 years ago at a seminar. George is one of those big, burly teddy bear contractors; he’s a super nice, super honest, “never harm a fly” kind of guys. He ran (and still runs!) a nice little roofing and remodeling company in Normal, Illinois. I had a lot of fun using Aim ‘N Flame negotiation tactics with his Yellow Pages rep.

Then George asked me to help him write radio ads. He’d been on two or three stations for YEARS. The town was small enough and the spots were cheap enough that he was running 10 to 15 spots a day on all the stations. He’d been doing it for so long that he was worried that nobody even paid attention to his ads anymore.

That sounded like a challenge to me.

First we cut a few “straight up” Identity-based ads; the kinds of ads you might expect to hear from me if you’ve been paying attention to this blog. Here are a few examples:

• Noah’s Kitchen
  
  
• Persnickety
  
  
• Rumor
  
  

These ads all have a fairly edgy take on the subject. They’re a lot more “in your face” than some contractors might be comfortable with. But they do a good job of selling the points of the company, and they were working.

But I wanted to “up the ante” a bit—so I asked George if he’d be willing to run an ad that I WARNED HIM WOULD MAKE PEOPLE ANNOYED AND ANGRY… but that I predicted would make the phones ring like crazy with leads. George said sure, so I came up with this ad that was designed solely to FORCE people to stop and listen. I told the station to run it 50% of the spots, and to divide the other 50% of spots among the other ads.

This ad generated more buzz—positive AND negative—than any other ad I’ve run:

• Original Rhyming
  
  

The first week or so, the response was somewhat muted. Then the call volume started to pick up during the second week… and peaked the 3rd and 4th weeks. People were calling the station demanding that they quit running the ad—they were about to pull their hair out in frustration. It was driving them crazy.

George called and told me what was happening, and I asked him what he wanted to do. He reported that leads were indeed coming in like crazy, so he decided to keep running it.

A couple of weeks later the pressure got to him. His wife had received so many complaints that George bowed to pressure and told the station to pull the ad. I, of course, was devastated—I hate to pull ads that are working well. But then again, I didn’t have to live there and listen to all the complaining.

I asked George if I could take another stab at the ad—something with the same general premise, but a little less annoying. He told me to go ahead and try, and this is what I came up with:

• Dr. Seuss
  
  

This one worked well, too—not quite as good as the first… but the complaints dropped immediately. And after running it in an equal rotation with other “regular” ads (i.e., about 20% instead of 50%), things quickly normalized in Normal, IL.

So… should you risk annoying the crap out of your entire city? Probably not. But don’t be afraid to try some out of the box ideas. The worst thing that can happen is for your radio ads to get ignored completely because they sound so ordinary and expected that nobody bothers to care.

Just for fun, here are few other crazy ads we ran for Nordine.

Remember, I warned you. Don’t try this at home.

• Bad Gift
  
  
• In A World
  
  
• Idiot