4 Reasons Radio Isn’t Dead: An Advertising Case Study about Attorney Big Al

HOLLYWOOD, Fla. - Oct. 22, 2015 - PRLog -- Have you considered radio advertising for your company? If you’re under the age of 60, you may think that radio is an ineffective advertising form, especially with the rise of on-demand streaming sites like Pandora and Spotify. However, the radio isn’t dead, people, and if you’re looking to make a high impact connection with local people, radio might work for you.

We’re going to look at the case of Attorney Big Al, a southern personal injury lawyer who used radio to build an incredibly successful business, to show some of the benefits and disadvantages of using radio for advertising.

You may or may not have heard of Big Al, but for brevity’s sake, let me tell you that he’s a personal injury lawyer based out of the south whose ad campaigns feature aggressive “let’s fight” themes. Essentially, they help little people make money in negligence cases. It’s also worth noting that Big Al is a giant in this industry, with firms using his brand across nine states in 20 cities, and none of this would be possible without the use of the radio to connect with local drivers.

1. Radio is local.

When Big Al decided to start his law firm in Florida, they identified a lack of advertising towards urban people between the ages of 18-35, and they knew that demographic favored a particular radio station that catered to their demographic. Connecting the dots, the Big Al firm launched 30-second radio spots, contests, and promotions on one radio channel and their business blew up. Why did this work so well?

One of the chief advantages of radio as a medium is that it is locally based. In the age of mass production, where TV shows are broadcast around the entire world and advertisements aim to hit as wide an audience as possible, radio ads only air in local areas, so it’s an exceptionally good medium for advertising a local business. Big Al was able to directly connect with people in the broadcast zone of that station and didn’t waste advertising dollars sending his message to people outside the city.

2. Radio is primarily listened to in cars.

When you watch TV or use the internet, you’re often doing something else at the same time that’s highly distracting, for example, eating, talking, or doing chores around the house. But in the car, it’s illegal to do anything highly distracting, so the listener is only driving and listening at the same time, resulting in a fairly high engagement rate. Think about radio jingles that you’ve heard in your life. You can remember a few of them, right? Big Al opted to use this to his advantage by using his phone number (1-800-HURT-123) as the jingle. Because many of the cases his firm takes involve car crashes, it was even more topical.

3. Radio personalities connect strongly with listeners.

Local radio DJs still enjoy a level of connection with viewers that even TV hosts often don’t get. Because these personalities make the drive to work with thousands of commuters every day, listeners develop a strong connection to their favorite DJs, so an endorsement from one of them still carries some weight.

The key here is to maintain a consistent advertising presence with these personalities. If the DJ you choose continually endorses a different product or company a week, the association between the trusted personality and your product won’t stick, and the DJ will just seem like a sellout. Big Al targeted the most popular DJ, developed a personal relationship with him, and the continued endorsement of this DJ for the Attorney Big Al brand ended up generating a lot of business among his listeners.

4. Radio advertising is cheap to produce.

With no visual component or video production to fund, producing a radio ad is relatively cheap. There’s less overhead than a TV spot, and the words don’t have to compete with the visual element, so it’s both cheap and effective.

When Big Al started out, for instance, the firm had a tight advertising budget, so a high-production value TV spot just wasn’t going to work. A quick radio ad is around 30 seconds long, and it’s true that you need a qualified technician to help get the recording sounding great and ready for the radio, but compared to film, it’s much cheaper to organize and takes less time.

Do you think radio would work for you? Of course, you have to evaluate your own advertising needs, but for the right company, radio makes a great, low-cost option with good payoff.