Paul Cugliari, General Manager, & Steve Thompson, Manager, Creative Services, Oldies 1090 & 105.3 KOOL-FM, Kitchener, Ontario, Canada
By Jerry Vigil
It’s nothing new to you. You know how important the creative is to the success of the client’s campaign. We talk about it all the time in these pages. What is new is when not only you understand this simple truth, but so does your sales staff… AND your General Manager. And even more amazing are clients that understand, clients that understand how much more important their message is than getting that spot on the air tomorrow. This is how things work at Oldies 1090 and 105.3 KOOL FM in Kitchener, Ontario. And guess what? It all revolves around a common-sense approach of doing “what’s right” for the client. Imagine that… servicing the customer.
With the vision and leadership of General Manager Paul Cugliari and the expertise of Creative Services Manager Steve Thompson, these two stations are proving that you CAN teach clients that the phone number doesn’t need to be in the spot 12 times. You CAN teach salespeople that if the spot has to start tomorrow, the creative is going to stink, the ad won’t work as well for the client, he won’t be back, and everybody loses. Paul, Steve and their entire creative team are using the power of radio to its fullest for their clients and are rewarding themselves with long-term happy customers. They tell us how it works and why in this month’s RAP Interview. Listen for a demo of commercial work from Steve and his team on next month’s RAP CD. (RAP Awards Finalists on this month’s CD.)
JV: Paul, let’s start with you. Tell us about your background in radio.
Paul: In 1981 it was CKFM in Toronto, in the Music Department. I became Music Director in 1984. From 1985 to 1987 I was Program Director at CFMS in Victoria. 1987 to 1993 I was Program Director at CHYM-FM here in Kitchener. From 1993 to 2000 I was Program Director for CFCA/KOOL-FM and Oldies 1090 here in Kitchener, and the last three years I’ve been here as General Manager.
JV: You never went through sales?
Paul: No. Although I can say I’m one of those rare PDs that understand that my role is to create the party and invite our listeners so we can then introduce them to our clients who pay our bills.
I think there are many people in sales that spend six months learning sales and then spend the next twenty years repeating that six months over and over again. In the last three years, I’d like to think that I learned a lot about sales. And I keep learning. I haven’t learned all I need to know, but I think our sales staff understands that I’m really about making money and so are they. The big question is, how do we do it.
JV: Tell us a little about the Kitchener radio market.
Paul: The population of the central market area is bordering on 400,000. We’re an hour outside of Toronto, so we compete for listeners with all the Toronto stations. I’d say 50% of our market tuning is out of market.
JV: Who owns your stations, and how many stations in your cluster?
Paul: We’re owned by Chum Limited, and it’s just the two stations here in Kitchener.
JV: Steve, how about a little background on you?
Steve: I started back in ’81, the same as Paul. I started at CFTK in Terrace, British Columbia. Then it was to CKNX in Wingham, Ontario. Next stop was CHYM in Kitchener where Paul and I first worked together. There was CFNY in Toronto from ’89 to ‘93, CHML/Y95 in Hamilton from ’93 to ‘95, and then here in September of 1995, and I’ve been here since. Through just about all of that, my titles have been Creative Director and/or Creative Writer and Senior Writer, and now I’m Manager, Creative Services.
JV: How many people on your creative team?
Steve: We have four writers and two and half producers. And when you say creative team, it’s interesting—in the last few years we really have viewed the entire station as our creative team. Sales is part of our creative team, even our news department and our administrative staff, because they’re all really involved in that creative process. It’s rather unique the way it’s done here.
JV: Give us an example of how your team would put together a commercial. What’s the process?
Steve: I would say it’s almost backwards. We had a client last week where we were talking all about creative, and then the buy came at the very end. Once we have addressed how we’re going to speak to our client’s customers, then we talk about the buy. And the clients get it. I mean they started saying, “Gee, you’re doing it backwards,” and then by the end of the conversation they were saying that everybody else is doing it backwards. So often, you make the buy and then rush to get the creative on the air and hope it’s right. We’ve taken the opposite approach to it.
JV: So that approach is rare in Canada? It certainly is in the U.S.
Paul: Certainly. I think that we’re doing some real pioneering here. But as simple as this sounds, coming from a programming side, clients view advertising as a mystery. They don’t know what they’re buying, but they don’t have the courage to say that. And we stepped forward and said, “You know, if you’re message isn’t right, no matter how great a schedule or whatever, you may get some results, but you’re not going to get ultimate results. It does really come down to your message, and so let’s spend our time crafting the kind of message that is going to work to help your business grow in the long term, and then we’ll figure out the schedule after that.”
JV: Wow. And the clients are receptive to this new approach?
Paul: We’re not doing this with 100% of our clients, but as clients move in and we try to get them on a longer-term schedule, the ones that agree to the longer-term schedule are the ones that understand that it really is about their message. And by the way, a lot of the stuff that we’re doing is based on the principles of Roy Williams and his books. He’s very influential in terms of what we’re doing. We’ve had him up here in Canada twice, and both times we put a busload of clients on a pilgrimage down to see him in Toronto.
JV: So the process begins with discussing the creative with the client?
Steve: First we get as much information as we can. The sales reps go out, sometimes with the writers, to get as much information as we can, information about the client, but more importantly, about their target and how their customers act and react. There’s a lot of information gathering that goes on before we really sit down and start to work on the creative.
JV: Are the salespeople armed with a form that they fill in during this information gathering?
Steve: Yes, and then they take it farther than that as well. Those questions that we do ask are kind of soft starters for them. A lot of information comes from the questions after the questions.
JV: Then it’s back to the station with the information?
Steve: Yes, and then we brainstorm. We get the writers, a number of the sales team, and people throughout the building, and we start looking at the client’s target a little closer, looking at the product closer, looking at the current market situation and the future market situations—really taking a close look at a snapshot of where they are and where they want to be.
JV: How much time would you spend doing this brainstorming?
Steve: It’s 15 to 20 minutes to 3 or 4 hours depending on the process we’re using. Then we take it back to the creative team and will sometimes brainstorm there before we go to the writing process. And what’s kind of unique to this is when coming up with commercials and campaigns, we often look at the positioning statements that will help position the client better or re-position them in the market. That’s something the creative team will work out as a group. They’ll brainstorm for ideas. Then we’ll come up with a rationale, then we’ll come up with a series of scripts.
Paul: A written rationale.
Steve: Yes, a written rationale that we all can kind of wrap our head around, and the client can see where we’re going and why we’re going there, because really, the scripts are secondary; it’s more the direction we’re looking at first.
JV: How much time generally passes from the point at which the sales representative makes contact with the client for the first time to the point that you have something ready to go on the air and the schedule placed?
Paul: We try to be as fast as we can be. In a perfect world, seven days, because the clients can tend to lose the enthusiasm of the process if it drags out too long.
Steve: I would say anywhere from five to seven days to two to three weeks, and a lot of that just depends on the process we’re using and how many times we have to go back and ask questions and clarify things. And we want to get it right the first time because it is a long-term vision. It’s not something we’re going to do short term, but we still understand our limitations to getting the work on the air.
Paul: But I can tell you, clients see it as refreshing when I suggest to them that, “…it make take a little longer, but you know what, we don’t want to go to air with your money until we’ve got it right.” And everybody else is saying, “Can we get you on tomorrow?”
JV: How much of the business is direct, versus national agency stuff where the creative is delivered to you?
Paul: We’re about 70% local direct retail. But with some of those, if it’s a multi-outlet operation, they may have a small boutique agency working on their behalf. But I would say, depending on the month, it averages out to about 30% national, 70% local direct.
JV: About what percentage of that local business would you say is being produced in-house?
Paul: I would say of the 70% that’s local, 85% to 90% is produced here.
JV: Goodness. Steve, do you have any idea how many commercials you guys produce in the course of a week?
Steve: We’ve got tracking sheets, and I recall emailing one of our reps with this information recently. I believe over the course of a year, we averaged 94 to 97 total projects per week, but I don’t recall exactly how many of those were produced in house.
JV: Would you say 20 or 30 of them are scripts that you guys wrote and produced?
Steve: I would say more.
JV: You guys are really busy!
Paul: Surprisingly, as we move forward with this process, the clients are understanding that they don’t have to pull their spots every three weeks or every two weeks, or have four spots rotating in a week. They’re understanding that it’s difficult enough to get that message through to customers without having to change it all the time. In fact, some of those clients are using the same creative that they’ve used for months.
Steve: That’s the funny thing about this. Often we say to clients, “run it longer, run it longer.” Now we’re in a situation where we’re going back to clients a year later, begging them to change their creative because it’s finally time.
It’s been effective and it’s working, and it’s really an unusual situation that we have. They’re seeing the power of it, and they’re understanding frequency and the importance of repetition and having to say the same thing over and over again.
JV: Paul, you mentioned the influence of Roy Williams earlier. Is this something he taught you guys?
Paul: A lot of what Roy Williams talked about focused on the principles of human behavior and how human brains work and how messages are interpreted, received, allowed to get in, etc. And so one of his fundamental principles is if you can get in once, then burrow your way in and quit trying to change it every week because you’re getting bored with it.
JV: And that would apply to station promos as well, wouldn’t you agree?
Paul: Absolutely. But the difference is, you can create different ads within the same campaign which are basically saying the same thing. If they are comedy, you can change those things up more frequently, but the general thrust of the message should not change.
In other words, we had clients in the past who this week want to do something that’s comedy based, and then the next week they want to do something different. So they get furious and then the next week they want to do something different with a jingle, and then the next week they want to do this and that, etc.
Steve: I think that’s why our rationale is so critical to the process, because most of the commercials can change but the focus and direction of what we’re saying and the position that the client is occupying in the market doesn’t change.
JV: It seems that Canadian stations tend to have a lot of writers on staff as compared to U.S. stations in similar markets.
Paul: Not as many as you think. Our ownership allowed me to experiment with adding a fourth writer. We had two when I got here. We added Steve as the third, and now we’ve added a very seasoned writer as the fourth. And some CHUM stations are doing that as well, but the bulk of the industry still has a limited number of writers on staff. My brother is a Creative Director in Toronto, and there’s him and one other person. So it’s not that Canadian phenomenon as much as it’s a matter of, those that want to invest in the message… do it. Those that are selling spots and dots and schedules and BBM runs or Arbitron runs… don’t. I know in the States, there are a lot of salespeople writing their own creative. Is that true?
JV: Yes it is.
Paul: And some may be writing stuff that’ll never work on behalf of their customers. And if it doesn’t work, they look bad. But so does our medium.
If Roy Williams did nothing else, what he said, to anybody who wants to listen is, “the ear is the side door to the brain. It intrudes. Sound is what can make a permanent impression in the brain, and you guys that own radio stations have the key to the side door of the brain. You just happen to deal in the realm of audio.” Roy Williams does not sell radio as an entity. He just sees it as a vehicle that uses sound to get in the brain.
JV: You mentioned taking a couple of busloads of clients to see Roy Williams. How did they come out of those seminars?
Paul: They come out energized. For once somebody explained to them how advertising works and what mistakes people make with advertising. He has a very elaborate and well-focused presentation that is very compelling and very demystifying.
JV: Back to your writers for a moment. You said the fourth one was a pretty seasoned pro. Are all your writers fairly seasoned or do you bring some rookies in and train them?
Paul: Well Steve hasn’t allowed me to train anybody because he keeps getting great writers. They’re all 20-plus-year pros.
Steve: Yeah, we don’t have a junior writer. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. We’re just fortunate to have seasoned people.
JV: That’s great. Steve, with the amount of work your team is doing there, it would seem that meeting deadlines is probably one of your major challenges. Would you agree?
Steve: No, and I think because we’re looking so far out at the horizon that the deadline issue becomes less and less of a problem. Our clients are looking farther out. We’re looking farther out. You’re far more organized.
Paul: There’s probably more work at the front end, but as we get down the road a bit, it actually streamlines itself out.
Steve: It’s really an interesting environment in the department because our writers and producers are really satisfied at the end of the day. And I know it sounds corny, but we’re doing a good job and we’re doing the right thing. Instinctively, you know you’re doing the right thing. This process has allowed us to really do the right thing for our clients and generate sales for them. That’s the ultimate goal, and it’s really, really empowering and really, really exciting for the people that come in everyday. It’s a great environment to be in. It doesn’t seem like work, and the deadlines become less of a stress.
Paul: Let me put it this way. When I was on the programming side, my mandate and my time horizon was to build something that would last. It’s not about a quick hit to get a quick spike in one rating book as much as build the kind of product that will deliver the target audience over the long term. So programming is very much a long-term view. I don’t want the sucker to go in the toilet a year from now.
What I discovered on the sales side was that they have monthly budgets, quarterly budgets, annual budgets, and the whole system is designed with a short-term horizon. And what I discovered with our clients’ businesses is that they’re not on a short-term horizon. Sure, they want to make the till ring, but they want to be in business three years and five years and ten years from now. And so what we try to do is work with them and partner with them to look at how to develop their business over the long term rather than spike it this week with the sale, because a lot of them are still doing that.
JV: Are there things other than a trip to see Roy Williams that you do for your clients along this line?
Paul: Sure. Those that weren’t fortunate enough to get on the bus, we present them with copies of the book if they like to read. We have this videotape library. In other words, education of our clients is central to what we do. I myself have done presentations for clients that are a kind of a short, down and dirty version of it. If you don’t have time to read and if you don’t have time to sit, give me twenty minutes and we’ll go over the fundamentals of it.
JV: Paul, has Internet radio and satellite radio had much effect on the business of terrestrial radio there in Canada?
Paul: Sure. We have the same stuff you do, although there are some bigger issues with streaming signals that have to do with copyright laws and royalties and things like, which you guys are probably still dealing with down there. We abandoned streaming simply because while it gives you worldwide access, the performers want worldwide royalties, and the bunch of our income is based on central market delivery of audience.
As for satellite radio, they are available here, but they’re not focused here yet. They want to grow the American market first. But all that technology will be available here.
As far as any effect on Canadian radio, sure; it’s had an effect, although the statistics keepers will tell you that the amount of radio tuning hasn’t gone down. If it has, it’s marginal. We’re still in the neighborhood of twenty hours a week spent with radio, and the issue hasn’t really shown up in our ratings.
And having said that, while we’ve been doing this thing on the sales side, we’ve also been growing our products. We’ve seen a 40% increase in our audience delivery. So it’s not just about what we’re doing on the sales side. We still want to deliver numbers, certainly for our national people. So we’ve seen growth, and I’m not sure if it’s been hampered by some of those other technologies. But they’re out there. The consumer is using streaming audio. It’s using audio on demand. Direct TV gets into a lot of the households in Canada through the gray market, and they have a host of 100 audio channels on there as well. So it’s all there. I mean, there isn’t really a border between you and us. So anything you’ve got there, we’ve got here.
JV: Perhaps there’s no border in that sense, but there seems to be more emphasis on the client and the creativity at many Canadian stations than at most U.S. stations, particularly at the management level.
Paul: I think a lot of that is a function of what I see as the American model with consolidation and the whole notion of synergy and consolidation, etc. It has created a scenario where unfortunately the creative has suffered, and you have sausage makers. The salespeople are out there and are bringing the orders back. Then they’re writing the commercials, they’re going into production, they’re voicing the commercials themselves sometimes. And so they’re trying to get something on the air that isn’t the best possible thing for the client, but because of economic reasons, they’re doing it that way. That’s maybe not fair, but that’s what I see more often than not.
Whereas, because of the health of the Canadian economy, perhaps we haven’t gotten there yet where the economic pressures are such that we have that happening. I mean, a market like Toronto for all intense and purposes has eighteen signals. A market like Toronto in the States has 50 plus. What’s the population of Detroit? Three or four million? Toronto’s greater metropolitan area is 3 ½ million. How many signals in Detroit? Maybe 30 or 40? Toronto has only 18.
JV: Why is that?
Paul: Our “FCC,” if you will, has seen fit to license fewer frequencies along the way than your FCC. Now, as we get into issues of the spectrum opening up and digital and so on, it’s different. But they viewed those frequencies as scarce resources, and so they only license X number. It’s a historical phenomenon more than anything else.
And so when you only have 16 players and maybe 8 owners, each of them is doing okay. So they’re not looking to cut it back to one writer and one producer and having salespeople writing stuff, etc. Now, your bottom lines might be better.
JV: That makes perfect sense. Steve, what toys does Paul give you guys to play with?
Steve: We work on Pro Tools out of one and a half studios.
JV: All that work in one and half studios? They must be running around the clock.
Steve: Almost. We have two full-time shifts. The first one starts at 7 in the morning and the studio is going until about 11:00 or 11:30 at night. But it’s not as hectic and hairy as you might think. You really have the time and the space to develop the product we need to develop. It doesn’t sound like a lot but that’s really not an issue, the time.
JV: Producing a ton of quality commercials takes a ton of voice talent. Do you have resources outside your in-house talent?
Steve: We’ve got tremendous talent in-house, but it’s great to be able to go outside and give different flavors to different campaigns with outside voices. And the technology in this industry allows us to do that. I would say we probably have a voice talent bank of 30 to 35 people right now, not including in-house talent.
JV: That’s great. And Paul, he’s not biting too much into your budget for all those voices, is he?
Paul: Not yet. But you know what, clients are beginning to understand. When we say to them in a meeting, “this might require using a fresh voice that isn’t heard on the station; we don’t make money on the voice, but they need to get paid,” they’re okay with picking up the tab for the extra voice. And it is a direct cost. There’s no mark up. We’re literally just paying the talents. The client’s writing us a check and we’re writing a check to the talent.
Steve: We use it to enhance their product, not to generate revenue on our side.
JV: Gentlemen, you’re doing a great service for radio! How about some parting thoughts from each of you?
Paul: It’s about the client. It’s about developing an effective message to help that client grow their business, and if that happens, we have partners moving forward, and they’re willing to stick with us and work with us, and it’s as simple as that. How do we do that? That’s what separates us from everybody else, I think.
We tell our clients that the number one mistake advertises make—and this is right out of Roy Williams—is the desire for instance gratification, that somehow you put a quarter in the gumball machine and turn the knob and out comes the results. We ask our clients not to think that way, and if that’s what we’re asking them to do, why is it that we think that way? Why are we looking for a quick hit. There is no easy way to get to where we’re going. It’s a long, difficult, time-consuming process; but in the end, if it helps our clients grow their business, I think it’s worth it. Some may not. Some may not see it as being worth it. Others may get out there and get it. Our salespeople are representatives of our company and our approach in the way we want to do business, and if they start to cut corners and all they’re really doing is reaching into somebody’s pocket to try to pick their pocket, it’s not looking good on us.
JV: Steve, what does a Production/Creative Manager need to do to get their department on the right track?
Steve: I would say get together with your Sales Manager first. When you all share the same vision of generating results for your customers, it all falls into place, and you all help each other grow. I think that’s the critical part of it. And that’s why I like Paul being here. What he’s brought to the station is a vision, and we all get it, and we all understand it, and we all see the power of it. And all the decisions you make after that become very simple.