A Brief Guide to Testimonial Radio Production.

(AKA: Word of Mouth Advertising... on Steroids.)

People do say the darndest things.  But they only say them once.  

Unlike actors who can do the same line over and over until they finally get it the way you want it, real people cannot and do not repeat themselves.  Knowing that is the key to producing great testimonials.

(If you've tried testimonials before and were dissatisfied with the results, perhaps you or your agency followed these Seven Steps to Ruining a Testimonial.)

Can twenty minutes on the phone with one satisfied customer yield a testimonial radio commercial that runs for a year in 22 markets and gets quoted by hundreds of new customers while it helps triple brand revenues?

LISTEN   (wma file)

     Click to The Radio Show for dozens of examples of how my testimonial radio commercials can turn your enthusiastic customers into your best salespersons.

     This article reveals some of the screening, preparation, interviewing, editing and live mix techniques I use to make each spot sound spontaneously un-written, unrehearsed, un-fooled-around-with by lawyers and, most important, Real.  

    Testimonial spots are NOT CHEAP, though.  It takes time and talent to interview people, coax out scintillating gush, transcribe their comments to "paper," pencil edit rough scripts, edit & mix in a little VO here and there.   If you do have the time and talent, though, the techniques I use may be useful to your own efforts.

Is Truth Really Stronger than Fiction? 

     Testimonials often work better than scripted slice-of-life commercials for the same reason Reality Television Shows often get better ratings than scripted sit-coms. Good testimonials are fun to listen to and are often more believable than straight VO announcer spots. The supply of interesting story lines is unlimited.  The more gusher spots you run, the more you appeal to Amiables, who are slow to buy anything first, and Expressives, who never listen to anything twice, unless it's fun.

     A good story line contains Early Misery, Conflict, Moment of Truth, Brand To The Rescue, Results, Elation, and Enthusiastic Endorsement.

     Listeners get involved with the story line. They sympathize. They relate. Then they hear about your brand. They continue to relate. They like you.  They call or click. What happens next is up to your website or inbound TMs.  In my experience a campaign of interesting testimonials sounds better, pulls better and resists burnout longer than any SINGLE-VO SOLID-READ CONTROL.  

     "Great!  Let's just call a few customers, let 'em talk into a mic, then run the tape."  Caution. 

    Real People are harder to control than announcers. Real People say unpredictable things; they don’t deliver slogans, phone numbers, or pre-approved legally-scrubbed copy points very well; they ramble a lot and often speak in strange regional accents. 

    If you try to make Real People ACT you will end up with testimonial spots that sound rehearsed, canned, stiff,  fake and - worst of all:  BOR-RING.

    Your lawyers may approve the verbiage.  No-one else will.

 

 

     

STEP ONE: SCREENING.

     Obviously you can’t get great gush from all your customers. Your first objective is to recruit willing interviewees who will in fact GUSH, not mumble or drone on.

     Not surprisingly, people who write a lot will also tend to talk a lot.  So check your mail for long-winded complimentary letters.  Or ask for them.  This fishing technique is worth doing just to maintain good customer relations.  

EMAIL RECRUITMENT 

     A month or so after every new customer buys your product, the company president should send this email. 

 

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Dear ____: 

A few weeks ago you bought a ______ from us. Would you be willing to tell us in your own words what you liked most about it and how it affected your life? We’re thinking about running some testimonial ads in the near future and would like to know how customers like you feel about our brand. Just click REPLY, jot down your thoughts, and click SEND. 

Thank you so much, 
Name

(If you don't want to give out your personal email address, set up a special account for replies.) 

 

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     You’ll get the best response from recent customers who feel strongly about your brand and who want to be in an ad. They will literally sit down at the computer and apply in writing for the job of selling you to the world. 

     Look for good story lines – the more unusual the Conflict & Misery leading up to Trial, the better. Look for antidotes to those pesky fears and dreads you want to defuse. Look for long rambling replies. People who write a lot will talk a lot. Your best on-air salesmen will be happy customers who give you the MOST GUSH. 

     STEP TWO: THE INTERVIEW

     Once you narrow your GUSH list down to five to ten people, call them up.  Thank them.  Set up a schedule for your calls.  Send it to everyone. Make sure you have landline phone numbers for participants.  

     I like to email them 10-15 questions I plan to ask.  They vary for each brand but they basically cover the gamut from "Tell us about yourself," to  "When did you try us first?" to "What have we done for you lately?"  Many people will write out formal answers in fairly stiff "professional" English. That's fine.  You want them prepared. Get landline phone numbers and "best times to call."  Send everyone a schedule.

    In my opinion, the best testimonial radio commercials come from interviewing prospects on the phone, NOT in a studio or in their homes or offices.  People are less likely to develop stage fright or be intimidated by you when they know they can always hang up. 

You'll want to record each interview digitally to make editing easy.  Hire a studio that can feed one or two phone lines into the database of a good digital editing platform such as ProTools. Your engineer should hear you and your interviewee and be able to adjust levels on the fly to get the best sound from the customer track.  I usually sit in my office on a conference call with my studio.  After each interview my engineer edits out my tracks and emails me MP3s of the gush.  I send them out for transcription or use Dragon to convert spoken words to text.

    If you're well-organized you can easily interview 15 or so people a day.   Schedule them on the half-hour hour and allow 20 to 30 minutes for each interview.  

    Begin each interview with a little "off the record" chit chat, then "roll tape" and launch into your questions.  Go through them as quickly as possible.  Take notes.  Jot down any good phrases or comments. Don't ask your questions in the same order they appear in your email.  Mix things up.  Keep the chat lively.

    Try to get your respondent to tell the STORY of how they got to the brand, how it worked, and what happened then.  If you've run an internal Brand Resistance Survey among your TMs and know exactly which "Yeah, buts..." you have to defuse, ask your respondent to discuss how they "got over it."

    Once you get to the end of the questions, ask your engineer to "shut off the tape."  MAKE SURE HE DOESN'T.

    Now that you're "off the air," and your respondents are no longer "acting," ask them to tell you a little more about anything that stood out.  Review your notes.  You'll find that once they stop "reading" their scripts, your best gushers will give you their best material IF they think the tape has stopped.

[You rarely ask anybody to "Say that again," or cough up your corporate themeline because they won't.  And if they do, they'll sound like vegetables (frozen, canned, strained).  The "off the record" ploy gets around that problem rather adroitly.]

STEP THREE: PENCIL EDITS.

     Make arrangements with a local stenographer or transcription service to transcribe the verbatim comments of all your respondents.  Most will work from CDs or audio-cassettes, and will take 3 or 4 days to deliver written copies of a half dozen or so interviews.  You might be able to use Dragon, or some other voice-to-text software, too.

1. I like to copy word.doc files into a template that puts a 

2. number at the beginning of each line.  When I go through 

3. the text, I'll see a story line, product description, and gushing

4. endorsement - BUT IN THE WRONG ORDER. Use a highlighter 

5. on the really good stuff.  Copy the best lines, including 

6. their numbers into separate ROUGH COPY files for each spot.

STEP FOUR: DIGITAL EDIT & MIX.

    You'll need to leave some room for the announcer, of course.  The common approach is to let the announcer say his piece and run the testimonials as support.  If you want to increase the impression of spontaneity, line up the really good stuff with some spaces left in between for the VO to "conduct the interview."  

    Write as little VO copy as you can.  Just enough to nudge the conversation along and to deliver the vitals - brand name, legalese, themeline, phone number or other CTA. The less the VO says, the better.   

    LISTEN (mp3 format)

    Send your pencil edits and a copy of the full transcription to your engineer a day or two before your mix date.  He can pull your selects and assemble them on his time rather than yours. Listen to an "uncut" version of each testimonial, then gradually start to eliminate unnecessary words.  Don't get rid of all the "ums" and "ers" and flubs, though. Errors are Real.  

    Only actors (and corporate chieftains at stockholder's meetings) speak flawlessly. 

    Once your responders' words are assembled with the proper spaces between takes, your VO can record his or her script live.  There are two mix modes that work fairly well.

    If you want to feature one testimonial only, mix the spot to sound like the VO is in the radio station studio and the customer is on the phone.  Just like you recorded it.  Just like a call-in talk show. LIVE = REAL.

    If you want to include more than one testimonial, you don't have to sound live. Go ahead and add some music, sound effects, etc.  Mix it up!

LISTEN  (mp3 format)

This type of multiple-testimonial format  works fairly well to promote IT'S HAPPENING NOW EVENTS (such as retail sales, free seminars, etc.) Multiple voices create excitement. Single voices create brand credibility. 

   Is a Voice-Over even necessary?  Recently I cut a 15-voice fusillade spot with a click-to CTA that was nothing but gush.  From February to August, 2006, this spot, and one other like it, ran on ABC and a couple state-wide networks and quadrupled on-line revenues.  

LISTEN  (mp3 format)

STEP FIVE: TRAFFIC.

    Give each spot a unique 8-character traffic number (e.g. "68GH19DE").  Audio slate the spots with number and title.  Make MP3 files. Email to your station reps, along with traffic instructions as to when you want each spot to run.  Plug your titles into your Results Tracking Spreadsheet and wait for the phone to ring.    


I usually like to run two to four spots in rotation during a test or rollout flight.  If your media buy  delivers a frequency of 3, theoretically the average person will hear each spot once.  That's three different customers extolling your brand in a week or less.

"Gee, people must really like this stuff!"

    Three testimonial radio commercials will cost more to produce than one FREE STATION-PRODUCED NEWS-ANNOUNCER SOLID-COPY SPOT.  Will they work better?

    The best way to find out is to run both in separate markets or on totally discrete stations and track results using GM/C.  Call 407 895 3092 for details.

But we're getting into media planning and tracking issues, and you just wanted to know how to make testimonial radio commercials.

Well, now you have the recipe.   

Go whip up your first Perfect Soufflé!

Or, if you're not pleased with your own audio-culinary results, call me.

(407) 895 3092.