All Direct Response Radio commercials burn out if you run them too often.  The signs are unmistakable. Weekly response flatlines no matter how many spots you run.  Productive flights must be run further and further apart.  But when you test new copy, you cannot beat your Control.

The Control has become The Brand. 

All response comes from This Week's Active Shoppers who are rarely more than 1.0% to 3.0% of any radio station's weekly cume.   Most of them need to hear your commercial only once or twice before they call or click - or tune you out.

Good creative can build awareness among Next Week's shoppers, and maybe even pick off a few of them.  But if you run too often you numb everyone's brain. 

There are three ways to predict Burnout well in advance, and four ways to prevent it altogether.

How to Predict Commercial Burnout.

At any given moment in time there are a discrete number of Steam Heat shoppers who are interested in a new job, personal injury lawyer, financial advisor, health insurance policy, or solution to their beloved pooch's protracted Misery...and who are willing to Buy Direct. 

You cannot bludgeon into submission people who have no use for your brand, only buy retail, or just don't like your ads.  You can predict burnout in advance using common sense and simple arithmetic.  

1. Predict Burnout using Common Sense.

How competitive is your category?  Do you offer a truly unique product or are you coat-tailing on others' success?  Does your copy sound just like everyone else's?  Are you the ninth guy in a row to offer the same "secret the credit card companies don't want you to know"?

If your copy is generic, the only real difference between you and everyone else is the tone, timbre and resonance of your announcer's voice.  Thin reed, eh? 

2. Predict Burnout with OEF.

Whenever you test new creative make the effort to track daily response against daily Target Audience Gross Impressions and derive your Optimum Effective Frequency Range.

Effective Frequency is the number of times half or more of a cume audience has heard your commercial.  I derive that number from station ratings and from tracking response during a 10-15 day Local Market Test.

3. Predict Burnout using G.

G = Gross Target Audience Impressions (in 000's) per Inquiry. 

G is an excellent leading indicator of burnout.  When G begins to rise (i.e. it takes more GI's to produce a call or click), you've likely saturated the available Active Shoppers in a station's Loyal Cume. Details.

When G rises, Burnout is Coming Soon.

How to Prevent Commercial Burnout

There are four ways to Prevent Burnout.  Three of them work.

4. Change Announcers.

The most commonly used remedy for burnout is to hire a new announcer.  Maybe a different basso profundo throaty VO reading the same Control Copy will make all the difference! It doesn't.

Perversely, you lose calls from people who were just about to pick up the phone when they hear the new guy - and get confused.  Is it a new thing?  For everyone else, after the novelty of the new pipes wears off you get the same rapid burnout.

A simple way to forestall announcer burnout is to run three or four different spots with different voices.  For some long term campaigns I may have 20 spots in rotation at all times.  See Dinovite & Dice on the Top 200 page.
 

3. Change Copy.

But what would you say?  Your Control has all the bullet points that will fit in a :60.  You approved the script!  Well, lots of people who hear it do not.  Maybe there's a lame excuse or "Yeah, but..." lurking in the hearts of people who hear your Approved Copy over and over again.

Your next round of creative should take that lame excuse off the table. If you take orders over the phone, your own in-bound telemarketers can help you do so.

Use a Brand Resistance Survey to
Identify a Common "Yeah, but..."

This no-cost research tool may tell you exactly what to do in your next round of commercials.  Click here or above for details.

2. Change your Media Plan.

OEF Flighting is the best way to pace your advertising at the same speed at which the supply of Active Shoppers refreshes itself in any station or program cume audience.

You want each flight of commercials to achieve entry EF and possibly exit EF.  You want to space those flights out according to the natural speed at which people move from Room Temperature to 100º in your category.  Read more on this in Direct Response Radio Flighting.

Steam Speed is the Direct Response Radio equivalent of "Purchase Cycle" in packaged goods lingo.  You can infer it from clues such as Drag, Re-Order Rate and competitive activity.

I started running the Dinovite Campaign on XM in March 2007.  Five or ten spots per channel every four weeks, depending on turnover and CPM.  G was about 1.450 per home page hit.  In April 2009, after two years, it had dropped to 1.415.

1. Call Me:

The fastest way to End Burnout Forever is to call me, Peter Burkhard, at 407 895 3092.

If your control has come to the end of its natural life, I can replace it with a campaign that cashes in on the brand awareness you've already bought and paid for.