Radio Sales Café

One of the many lessons the late Jim Williams drummed into the heads of his students was the importance of measuring advertising results with an equal test for the media involved, e.g. newspaper vs. radio. During the twenty or so years of his radio sales training career, local newspaper was the 800-pound gorilla in town, grabbing the largest share of ad dollars in the market. Jim believed that radio stations fighting other radio stations for the crumbs that constituted an advertiser's "radio budget" was akin to pygmies battling each other to prove which one was tallest. Radio's real competitor was newspaper.

And Jim gave his students a golden piece of advice as to how to approach a heavy newspaper advertiser: "Dollar for dollar, and time for time."  He insisted that the only fair test of radio vs. newspaper would be to measure the results of spending equal money over an equal period of time.

Here, in just under three minutes, is Jim Williams' presentation of the principle.  Enjoy!  [Click on the attachment below to play audio.]

Hear more of Jim Williams' radio advertising sales training recordings here.

Jim was amazing. The Ad Club of Baltimore promoted this idea in the late 80s complete with a station-funded campaign based on a fictitious underwater mall that replicated the monthly newspaper budget of a major advertiser. It was an amazing experiment but in the end, the consensus was that the radio vs. newspaper illustration was more self-serving than customer - focused. Given the budget, a media mix beats a one channel media approach in most categories hands down because no one media channel owns consumer attention.