Yaman Coskun, Creative Director/Sales, Clear Channel, Washington, D.C./Baltimore
By Jerry Vigil
When you’re truly passionate about this business, it seems there’s no limit to what you can do. Yaman Coskun is a prime example. Bitten with the passion at age nine using a walkie-talkie as a “radio” transmitter, Yaman was “on the air.” His passion has fueled him through an illustrious career in radio including several successful years on the ad agency/prod house side of things. But it is radio that has most recently called him back as Clear Channel’s Creative Director of Sales for their Washington D.C./Baltimore cluster. Yaman shares highlights of his 20+ year career and focuses on his role with Clear Channel’s Creative Services Group and “Less Is More.” Be sure to check out Yaman’s demo on this month’s RAP CD!
JV: When and how did you start in this business?
Yaman: Well, we’re going to go way back, because the true start was when I was nine years old broadcasting live with a pair of walkie-talkies to my best friend’s house next door. By the time I was 15, my fascination with the radio evolved into more of an obsession as I turned my bedroom into a pretend studio utilizing every piece of audio equipment I could get my hands on. In other words, my story is no different then any other passionate radio producer you have ever interviewed. We all got into radio because at some point in our lives, in most cases between the ages of seven and 17, we fell in love with this incredible medium.
My professional involvement began in 1983. Living in Philadelphia I often made the time to drive up north on the New Jersey Turnpike just to be able to receive my favorite radio signal from New York. It was 98.7 KISS. I was absolutely blown away by a guy named Shep Pettibone who used to do remixes on that station. He would take songs that had been in the power rotation and remix them, giving them extended life while giving the station an untouchable exclusivity. They called them “master mixes.” They use to have this cool sweeper; this sexy voice would come on and go, “98.7 KISS, the Master Mix.” I would be so fascinated by it and would go home and try to imitate the same concept using the highly impressive, but primitive pause button on my Radio Shack Realistic cassette player.
Then one morning, scanning across my Philly FM dial, I hear this brand new station come on the air in Philly called KISS 99 FM. It later become Power 99 FM, a hot, sexy, fresh CHR station in Philly sounding very much like KISS 98.7 in New York. I’m like, “Great, now I can save gas because I don’t have to drive on the New Jersey turnpike to listen to them; we have our own!” For me it was just pure ecstasy and an opportunity to possibly become the Shep Pettibone of Philly.
Thanks to an extremely cool and open minded, hot, young, new, energetic PD who was running Power 99 FM, his name was Jeff Wyatt, this ambition of mine led Wyatt, who was familiar with what Shep Pettibone was doing in New York, to giving me my first shot at bringing about what became quite a hit in the ‘80s in Philly, “Yaman Supermixes.” Of course that’s when I came face-to-face with two new partners who would be with me for years to come replacing my Radio Shack pause button, and that’s Mr. Razorblade and Mrs. Splice Tape.
JV: At this point, you were just freelancing these mix shows for them?
Yaman: In the beginning yes, but then subsequent to me making a name for myself through these Yaman Supermix shows, I started doing club gigs for the radio station as a DJ and as a semi-personality — because I wasn’t an on-air personality. I was constantly told, “You can’t go on the air because you have an accent.” Unless you had a Hispanic accent, a foreign accent was not a thing that anybody could find a benefit in to put you on the air. I was the off-air personality making club appearances as the Supermixer. And that’s how I started making a living through radio at the expense of repeatedly being yelled at by my father that I am absolutely wasting my time until the wee hours of the morning playing with razor blades and splice tapes in the studio of a radio station that, for me, will have no future, no money, and I should take up something that is more responsible and more of a career. This was an ongoing dispute between my dad and me.
JV: What happened next?
Yaman: From there I basically was able to hone my skills as a radio producer because starting out as a remixer, and actually spending that much time in the studio, allowed me to assist the production department with little projects, little commercials here, a piece of copy there. Then when Jeff Wyatt moved on to Los Angeles to become a golden child of the ‘80s as he became the VP of programming for Emmis on the West Coast, I stayed behind as the assistant production director without that title. I was basically a part-time guy who would help do some of the imaging for Power 99FM as well as assisting with the commercial production.
That went on for a few years until I decided to pack it up, move to LA, and pursue an acting career for about an hour, during which I got a phone call from an old buddy named Frank Cerami who was sitting in a hotel room outside of Philly carting up music for a brand new radio station that was about to go on the air in Philadelphia named Q102. He asked me if I would be interested in coming back to Philly and joining him to assist him, as he was appointed to be the Music Director for Q102. And the passion and the state of delirium that I entered at the age of nine while broadcasting to my neighbors house prompted me to say goodbye to LA and return to Philly. I joined Frank Cerami as the Assistant Music Director at Q102 where we launched Q102 in 1989 under the direction of Mark Driscoll and later Program Director Elvis Duran, both of whom I worked under in what I would say were some of the most colorful years of my radio career.
JV: What was your next stop?
Yaman: Well, let me just pause here and tell you that if you have not been fired from a radio station, you truly are not in the career of radio; you’re just kind of having fun and haven’t totally been christened so to speak. Frank and I were fired along with 15 other people from Q102. That led to the next phase in our lives, which was After Midnight Productions, our own production company which we ran from his basement. Our specialty, your favorite and mine, nightclubs and car dealerships. They are the local revenue machines, at least a big percentage of it. So we focused on that for a while, and After Midnight Productions, literally from the basement of Frank’s house, rocketed to the top of a high rise in downtown Philly, evolving into a company called SoundByte. SoundByte became a radio production powerhouse handling local, and some national accounts, via strategic partnerships with some of the agencies in Philadelphia. I became the Creative Director and Senior Editor for SoundByte working closely with Frank, and it was a very educational experience.
Of course, and one point in this whole story I am telling you, I did have to say goodbye to my partners Mr. Razorblade and Mrs. Splice Tape, leaving them for a new hot chick named Pro Tools. The transition from tape to digital was made somewhere around 1991. Frank Cerami is a man with great vision, and he was probably one of the first people in the country to recognize the transition was about to be made permanently. He invested in a digital workstation called Pro Tools. Of course I was like, “What is this thing? What does it do? Why do I have to make the change?” Because as you all know, everyone hates change.
I hated it in the beginning and I couldn’t believe that we just invested like 16 billion dollars, which at the time seemed like the price tag of this digital workstation. It turned out he was a brilliant man for recognizing that it was about to become the wave of the future. I became quite proficient on it, and it helped me a great deal in expressing our creativity in ways we could never imagine when working at SoundByte.
JV: You were obviously a producer from way back when you were doing the mixes. SoundByte was a commercial production house. At what point did you start getting into copywriting?
Yaman: Right away. Copywriting really started at the basement when we were doing After Midnight Productions. It was more conceptualizing for me, and then Frank would help me refine the copy and we would do it collectively. It was always a good 50/50 partnership. Copywriting became a pivotal part of my duties at SoundByte, although I must admit more than 50% of the time copy was provided by the agency with whom we would work on a particular project.
JV: So a lot of what happened at SoundByte was bringing in talent and producing commercials?
Yaman: Exactly. One of the most important roles that I played in my position at SoundByte was to help orchestrate these sessions, direct the talent, and do some creative suggesting to the author of the script if one was coming from the agency. Those with open minds would welcome the collaboration. Somebody would come with a script, and I was lucky enough to have the privilege of having a discussion with the Creative Director of an agency and say, “Hey, what if we did this?” They would listen in most cases, lucky for me, and they would ultimately help enhance the end product. And that’s how we were able to find our niche in a major market like Philadelphia, not just being a production house where you just go in, there’s a guy pushing the faders and we just hand you the CD and say, “have a nice day” and collect the check. It was more of a creative collaboration where we were able to utilize our experience in radio and hopefully make that a resource for the client who’s using our services.
JV: What’s something you learned at SoundByte about coaching talent and directing sessions that you think the average producer in radio might not have the opportunity to learn?
Yaman: Well, some of the best movie directors are also actors. Despite the fact that I told you I wasn’t allowed to go on the air in my early years, I managed to sneak my way on and do some voice acting myself, becoming a signature voice for some of the clients in Philadelphia, particularly one called Egypt Nightclub, for ten years, and I’m still doing some work. Having said that, the more we understand and respect the talent, the more effective we become in getting the best out of them.
What I learned is no different than what effective leaders learn in their day-to-day business operations to get optimum performance out of their employees. Encourage consistently. Direct clearly. Reward handsomely. Working with a voice actor is like buying an awesome house. You may have your pre-conceived notions and plans on how you will decorate the house, but a great house comes with its own built-in inspiration, and it will add wonders to your game plan, changing, adding, deleting, but ultimately enhancing your life overall.
So in directing sessions I have a specific plan and sound in my head when I go into them, but I embrace the creative wisdom an actor brings to the session, because ultimately it enhances the script and helps it become a great spot.
JV: How long did SoundByte last and what happened next?
Yaman: I was there for about four years, from the conception of After Midnight Productions. SoundByte is still there today, strong and powerful and doing a great job in Philly. In 1997 I got a phone call from Glenn Kalina who was the Program Director at Q102. While I was at SoundByte he asked if I would be interested in becoming the Creative Director for Q102 because their Creative Director was about to leave for Los Angeles. That same passion and state of delirium that I mentioned to you earlier that brought me from LA to Philly for a radio job also caused me to turn to Frank and say, “Hey man, looks to me like things are going great here. I can continue to do freelance jobs for you, but if you don’t mind I’d like to take this gig.” Not to mention the fact that of course Q102 had a special place in my heart, as I helped to launch it in the late ‘80’s. And the guy whose position I was about to replace was one of my mentors, David Jay. I learned a lot from him in terms of production techniques. It was a great opportunity and one I certainly did not want to pass up, so I said yes, and that’s when I became the Creative Director of Q102.
JV: How long were you at Q102 and what came next?
Yaman: Q102 continued to 2000 when I decided it was time for me to start my own business, which was called Yamanair. We all know about the unreliable waves of radio that come and go; the sense of security sometimes isn’t there 100%. So I thought now that I was a married man settling down and no longer being the kind of guy who could just fly by the seat of his pants, that maybe it was time for me to stabilize my life even more so by starting my own business. I felt confident that I had racked up enough ammo both creatively and otherwise to start my own business.
My intention was to make this strictly a radio commercial production business working the suburbs of Philadelphia. That was the intention, and that’s how it started. But it evolved into more of a full-service boutique. I hate to call it an agency because I have too much respect for the full-service ad agency; it’s too sophisticated and requires a lot of talent and a lot of savvy to run a major ad agency. So by no means was Yamanair an ad agency. It was sort of a small-business specialty boutique mainly focusing on radio.
It eventually evolved into Internet, billboards, direct mail, print, and a little bit of television. I was able to create a client base of maybe a dozen accounts, all local Philadelphia accounts, mostly in hospitality and some in retail. These were all regular accounts that utilized radio, print, direct mail, and a little bit of everything else. I kind of surrounded myself with a network of people who specialized in the areas I didn’t. For Internet I used an IT specialist. For print I hired a very talented graphic designer. For television I made a deal with a freelance crew. And for radio obviously I handled it myself. They say the smartest business people in the world are those who surround themselves with people who are smarter than them. I try to do that whenever possible to give the client the chance to get the kind of result they are looking for. Yamanair became quite exciting. I would say comfortably that it was the most exciting project I ever took on in my radio career.
JV: Why would you leave it then?
Yaman: We’re going to have to go back to that state of delirium again. That innocent, unadulterated, sheer passion that started at the age of nine once again came into play when a fascinating phone call came from Washington D.C. from a name you will know now that you’ve heard the story. It was Jeff Wyatt, the man who gave me my first shot in radio back in 1983. He was now the VP of Programming for Clear Channel Radio in the Washington D.C./Baltimore region. What he was proposing was more than just the position of Creative Services Director for a new CHR station that they had just launched. He also wanted me to bring with me the experience of running Yamanair and turn that into a resource for sales, becoming sort of, for lack of a better term, an in-house ad agency for Hot 99.5, imaging the station while serving the sales department on special projects.
That was a very exciting concept to me because with running your own business comes the challenge of gee, what next? What if I lose this account? Then I will have to do this and I will have to do that. As much fun as it is, the level of stress that comes with running your own business, especially within the first two or three years, is dramatic. So I was just ending the 14th or the 15th month of the Yamanair adventure and here comes this big pie in the sky from an old friend who I respect dearly. Here’s an opportunity for me to kind of reunite with a guy I have always wanted to work with again since the days of Power 99 FM, with a position that offers a great level of excitement, keeping one foot in imaging and one foot in sales. I am like, “Wow, this is ideal.”
So the biggest challenge was to turn to my wife and my two-month-old baby and say, “You guys want to relocate to D.C.?” And my two-month-old had absolutely no problem with it. We arrived in August of ’01.
JV: Were your responsibilities limited to just the one station? Clear Channel has quite a few stations in the market.
Yaman: Yes, just one station. The job was no different then a typical Imaging Director position for any CHR station. The only addition was that I would be assigned certain local direct accounts by the sales manager, and then I would work with the account manager and the client to help design a custom campaign for them.
JV: Then comes “Less Is More” and the Clear Channel Creative Services Group, which you were involved with. How did that come about?
Yaman: I would like to lead into it with my pre-exposure to it as a result of my work with Jim Cook. You have to understand something; after coming to Clear Channel in Washington D.C. there was something quite new in the imaging arena that was to me, in the beginning, very, very disturbing. And that was Jim Cook’s imaging site. I opposed it. I opposed the centralization of resources, and I couldn’t for the life of me understand why anyone would allow their pieces of art to just sit in the town center for people to just come and bastardize at their own leisure. I thought Jim Cook was the Anti-Christ. This is within the first 90 days of me taking the position here. But Jeff Wyatt, our Program Director of Hot 99.5 and the guy who hired me here, repeatedly asked me and encouraged me to utilize the site for work parts, and whenever possible, to contribute to it. So in the name of cooperation and keeping the peace and keeping my job, I reluctantly began to do that, and something quite fascinating happened as a result of doing it, an understanding of how it’s helping, and also the sense of fulfillment I got from contributing to it, which is all about paying it forward – the take a penny leave a penny concept. I began to really warm up to not only how it was benefiting my job, but the concept itself.
Then I had the pleasure of communicating with Jim Cook directly, and that was another fascinating revelation because it turned out that he was such a great guy. I’m new, kind of reentering the corporate world and I’m figuring, “Hey, if you’re in the corporate level you can’t possibly be a nice guy; you’re probably some mean bastard.” This guy turns out to be totally cool, totally down to earth, and a really nice guy. I thought, “Okay, fine, I will keep doing it.
To make a long story short, it turned into kind of a little partnership where Jim would, from time to time, get me involved in these big projects along with a team of other available talents from across Clear Channel and say, “Hey, here’s what we’re doing. Here’s a collective contest that’s coming up. Here’s blah, blah that’s coming up. Can you help us launch it, conceptualize it, and then divide it among yourselves as to who is going to do what?” So names like Eric Chase, Steve Sykes, myself and a few others would get on a conference call with Jim, and Jim would say, “Okay, here’s what we’re going to do, here are the copy points.” We would brainstorm for about 10 or 15 minutes and then we’d say, “Okay, Yaman will do the two promos and two beds, and Steve will do this, and Eric Chase will write this,” and that’s what we started doing.
That went on until September of ’04. Jim and I were in New York at a function we were attending together. I went up to Jim and I said, “I need five minutes with you privately.” “Sure, what’s up?” I said, “Listen, I have entertained this thought for a long time and I wanted to do this for a long time, and a couple of times I really came close, but it didn’t happen. But now I feel I’m ready to push this agenda forward and I want you to look at it.” I handed him a small presentation package on making what I was doing for the HOT 99.5 sales department in Washington D.C. a concept for the entire company — a creative service that would serve the sales department of Clear Channel radio stations across the country.
He browsed at it quickly, and Jim has a very poignant smile when he’s struck by an interesting thought. He had this smirk on his face, and I’m looking at him puzzled going, “What?” He said, “Don’t do anything about it. Don’t talk to anyone about it. I will talk to you more about this in a week because this is already in the works, this is already underway.”
What I was oblivious to, which I later found out, was that right as I was handing him that package, within that 24 hour period Jim had spoken to John Hogan about the launch of Less is More, and his phase two of Less is More was to create a services group. So Jim, naturally, was already light years ahead of me on the concept and had already initiated it, and John and Jim were already getting ready to launch it. Talk about being at the right place at the right time.
And that’s how my involvement with Creative Services Group happened. A week later Jim called and unveiled what was going on. This was about a week or two before Less Is More was announced to the public. He said, “In two weeks, John is going to do this. This is all confidential. After that we’re going to start something.” At the time they were calling it the Creative Resources Group which we later changed to Creative Services Group. Jim said, “I’d like you to be my right-hand guy.” At this point; I can barely hold the phone. I’m like lying on the floor with excitement. I can’t believe this is happening. This is just 100% pure ecstasy and I couldn’t believe I was blessed enough to be chosen for such a project. I remember stuttering and trying to articulate myself just to be able to say thank you. About a month later, I was one of the four executives launching the Creative Services Group with Jim Cook as the National Creative Coordinator and Senior Producer.
If 10 years ago someone predicted that the world’s leading radio company would put the “creative” on the front burner and launch a division like The CSG, I’d say “keep on dreamin’.” Now, I’m living the dream! All because of a couple of smart guys like John Hogan and Jim Cook. Together, they are curing the creative cancer radio was about to die of.
JV: What were some of your duties with the Creative Services Group?
Yaman: Upon launching the Creative Services Group with Jim we started traveling the country pretty much immediately, preaching the word, if you will, to radio stations because the Creative Services Group’s primary mission was to educate and empower our radio stations with the knowledge of effective creative and how to do it. I’m not going to go into the details of it because you’ve already conducted an interview with Jim Cook and your readers are probably aware of the primary missions of the group. But my role as the National Creative Coordinator was to be the liaison between the Creative Services Group and all Clear Channel radio producers. Part of what I did every day was to reach out to at least five or six or more producers, not by email or some generic approach, but by phone. I’d say, “Hey man, I’m Yaman, blah, blah, how’s it going? What are your challenges? How can we help? Here’s what I’m doing, can you help?” That part of the Creative Services Group, it being a cyber entity with a website that everyone was utilizing, was Spot Share, something that our Clear Channel radio producers were encouraged to submit spots to, exemplifying effective 15s and 30s with audio and script. So I would also solicit their assistance in submitting to Spot Share. That was one phase that I was doing. The other phase was to assist Jim Cook and his team with necessary production of sample campaigns as well as to design custom campaigns for specific accounts assigned to me by the Creative Services Group.
JV: What have you learned about meeting the challenge of Less Is More with regards to commercials, 15s and 30s? You’ve won lots of awards in the past with 60 second commercials; are you able to do that with 30s and 15s?
Yaman: The answer is a resounding yes, and not only is it a yes, but I can do it better. Most importantly, Creative Services Group did not just come on as this bunch of radio guys working in radio, talking about radio and saying, “Hey, we can do this better and let’s do it in 30s.” We did independent research that proved that shorter is better, and we also hired some incredible names with great marquee value to help us accomplish that. Roy Williams, Jack Trout, Dick Orkin and his Radio Ranch. These people showed us that anything we can do in a 60 we can do better in a 30 or even a 15, and they showed us how.
Everything that I have told you up until this point in terms of what I have done and how I have done it, after what I have learned through my adventure with the Creative Services Group and as a result of the exposure I had to these great names, I only knew half. What I am doing now, I am doing with so much more knowledge and with such a sound strategy that I am able to effectively write 30s and 15s and even 5s that have a single strategy that is engaging, because that’s what we have to do, and they’re working. And this is not my opinion or Jim Cook’s opinion or John Hogan’s opinion, this is most importantly consumers’ opinion.
JV: Give me an example of a five second spot that works.
Yaman: Creative Services Group recently put together a five second spot as an example for Afrin. You hear the guy say, in a strained, nose plugged-up sounding voice, “Afrin.” And then you hear two sprays from the bottle. And then you heard him breathe in and out clearly and go, “Ahh… Afrin.” In five seconds this unit was able to establish the problem, explain the dosage, show the resolution, and say its name, all in five seconds. Clearly, a 60, as Roy Williams says so eloquently, “is an infomercial.”
JV: You’re not part of the Creative Services Group at this point, which brings us to today. What are you doing now?
Yaman: As a result of the Creative Services Group being formed and what I did for the group, they came up with sort of a pilot program, a beta position that they decided to test in the Washington D.C./Baltimore region. They asked me if I would be interested in being the Creative Director for Sales. So, my umbilical cord, as is every Clear Channel radio producer’s umbilical cord in this company, is attached to the Creative Services Group, but my position is now exclusively for the Washington D.C./Baltimore area as the Creative Director of Sales. I’m sort of like a mini CSG for Clear Channel radio Washington D.C. I’m responsible for eight of the Clear Channel stations here. This position is being used as a template based on its success rate with the desire to roll it out to other markets. And I have been very lucky to be surrounded by a team of talented and dedicated producers in this market. That becomes critical when you are enforcing the protection of our product’s creative integrity with clients, sales and agencies. I thank daily my partners Darrin Marshall, Bernie Lucas, Jim McKenna, Shock, Mike Kelly and Keith MacDonald for upholding and embracing the importance of quality creative regardless of the amount of revenue attached to it.
JV: Part of what you do in this new position is train salespeople. What do salespeople need to learn that you teach them?
Yaman: Well, Einstein said, “The great ideas are often met with violent opposition from mediocre minds.” What’s happening is that sales, especially older school sales along with their older clients who have been doing 60s in their own way for a number of years, naturally and inevitably oppose change, just like I opposed change going from the razorblade to Pro Tools as well as coming to Clear Channel and seeing this imaging site where I thought Cook was the Anti-Christ. It’s inevitable that no matter how progressive we think we are, we resist change. So what I am able to do here with weekly workshops is take what the CSG does in its workshops nationally, abbreviate it into a three-hour workshop, and localize it for them to understand and participate in a healthy and effective manner, explaining to them ultimately that they are marketing partners, and the most important thing that they are selling is not cost per points or ratings or other sales related, number related stuff that I don’t even get, but it’s the message. The message is the most important thing that they provide for their clients. And for them to be able to do that they have to be able to have authority. And authority comes with knowledge. And when you transfer that knowledge to your client, you’re transferring confidence. And the only way they can do that is if they become the perfect waiter. What I mean by that is the perfect waiter is the one who knows exactly who is home in the kitchen, explains the specials of the day with incredible passion, and gives the customer the impression that wow, is this the waiter or is this the chef? I can’t tell. It sounds like he can go ahead and cook.
So, we’re not asking salespeople to become cooks or chefs, we just want them to know exactly what goes on in the kitchen so they can speak with great confidence to their clients. The more confidence you have, the less interference you will get, creatively speaking, from the client, and the more effectively we can do our jobs to provide a client with great, effective, creative campaigns that will get results.
In fact, we have website that I designed at www.WBTAradio.com/DC that reflects openly and explains clearly what I have been doing here, because other than training and consulting our sales staff, I am also assigned a number of accounts based on their financial priorities to help them improve their creative and get results. We can talk about how important creative is, but if the creative is not translating into revenue, then we are just artists, and we can’t just be artists. That’s not good enough. We have to be persuaders. That’s who we are. In the past I was proud of the fact that I was a great producer who would also write. Now I have to be proud of the fact that I’m a great writer who can also produce. That’s mainly what I am doing here. I am working to ensure that the creative I do translates to revenue, that I am writing effectively, cleverly, and not just writing for the sake of being creative, but rather I’m an effective persuader who takes the clients marketing objective and turns it into an engaging, emotional, selling proposition for the consumer.
JV: Any advice for inspiring creatives who want to take their work to the next level?
Yaman: Learn how to write effectively. If they are working for Clear Channel they don’t have to worry about anything because everything is here. If they are not, I would send them to the Wizard Academy. I can’t think of anyone who is more knowledgeable or more effective in his teachings than Roy. It’s just phenomenal, and he is on the money with everything.
JV: What’s down the road for you?
Yaman: Well, if I enter into another state of delirium and recapture the passion of my nine-year-old self, I may resurrect Yamanair, but I don’t see that happening anytime soon because up to date the most exciting, the most fulfilling project I have ever taken on, the one that I am the most passionate for, is the one I am doing now. When I am able to hold these workshops and watch the salespeople convert, and when I see these clients eyes light up as they see the creative, or more importantly see the results from that creative, that is just an outrageous incredible reward for me. And I’m loving it. This is a long-term commitment I have made. This is a task I have taken on, and I have no intentions of turning my back on it or leaving it half-assed until it is fully and effectively complete.