Long, long ago in a radio industry far, far away, many broadcasters would make the semi-annual trip to Nashville, Tennessee, to produce their television creative with Film House. Curt Hahn, founder and CEO, and Senior VP Wayne Campbell are the forces behind radio’s most successful marketing company of all time.
Over the years, Film House has produced more than 20,000 TV spots for radio clients. And along the way, iconic campaigns like The DirectTV® Birthday Game as well as those that featured celebrity spokespeople like actress Teri Garr were seen on television stations across the U.S., Canada, and around the globe.
The concept of “setting occasions” was part of the strategy behind many Film House TV contest campaigns, driving awareness, as well as tune-in, for stations in every format imaginable.
During the early days of Classic Rock when branding and awareness were so important, campaigns like “All Kinds of Rock,” which was first produced for WCXR/Washington, D.C., generated top-of-mind recall, and more importantly buzz.
Back in the day, Film House produced slick, attention-getting TV campaigns for the biggest and glitziest broadcasters in New York and L.A., but also made their spots affordable for hundreds of stations in markets that ended in “ville” and “berg.”
While Film House had its radio heydays in the ’80s and ’90s, for those of us who fondly remember these campaigns, it seems like a lot longer ago than that. These days, when marketing dollars are at a premium (or nonexistent), and promotional budgets are the first to go during rounds of belt-tightening, remembering just how powerful a great TV campaign can be makes you wonder why the concept couldn’t be effective….again…especially in an environment where very few radio broadcasters ever take to the television airwaves.
Of course, it’s not just about running a campaign, but having creative that is memorable, strategic, and entertaining. Curt and Wayne are in the spotlight this week on “Radio’s Most Innovative,” telling the story behind one of radio’s greatest marketing successes, Film House.
JM: When and how did Film House get started, and what was the premise behind the company for radio?
CH: Film House started in my spare bedroom 39 years ago. We’d been around for five years before we produced our first TV commercial promoting a radio station. Within months, we’d worked with dozens of radio stations across the country (the very first was WUBE in Cincinnati), and we were smart enough to realize we were onto something. We focused all our energy on radio, and within four years we were producing 350 TV campaigns every year for stations around the world. We’ve produced over 20,000 TV spots for our radio clients to date. The premise was that TV was by far the most effective way to market a radio station, combined with the local nature of the radio business, which allowed us to produce a TV campaign for a station in one market like a Z100 or a WLTW and then create derivative versions of a successful campaign for similar stations in other markets.
JM: How did “The Birthday Game” come about and can you explain the mechanics?
CH: In the fall of 1985, we devoted countless hours brainstorming with our entire 40-something person staff with one goal: to create the most powerful TV campaign ever to promote a radio station. By the time we’d finished, we had a complete promotion – a whole series of TV spots with escalating huge guaranteed prizes, a complete manual for our client stations to follow to implement the contest, even an entire media plan with what point levels to buy in each day and daypart to maximize the impact of the TV spots.
>Email Recipients: Click here to watch the Z100 Great Coogly Moogly spot<
WC: The essence of “The Birthday Game” is that it is a contest that even non-contest players will play.
There’s a big, desirable prize, a specific point of entry (“Listen at 7:20 Thursday morning”) and there’s a really high perceived chance of actually winning. Most people think their odds of winning are 1 in 365. And someone DOES win every Thursday morning, and at a lot of other times throughout the day, because, in addition to the big prize at the point of entry, there’s also a very carefully designed recycling plan.
So you have this really enticing proposition, communicated to large numbers of people outside of the station’s existing cume through a cleverly planned TV buy, so people actually tune in – and when they do, they hear an exciting contest where someone actually wins the big prize. And these are really good radio stations, so when new cume comes to the station, a significant portion of that cume keeps listening, both for the lesser recycling prizes and for the good programming with amazing personalities like Scott Shannon, Mark and Brian, Rick Dees, Gerry House, Jay Thomas, Isaac Hayes, Chris Tarrant in London and the list goes on and on.
JM: What were the results?
CH: Hundreds of radio stations throughout North America and in the UK, Australia, New Zealand – even non-English language markets like Stockholm and Budapest – have had their best book ever running “The Birthday Game.” We’ve done “Birthday Game” spots in the studio, on the street, with celebrity guests, with listeners…you name it. And, of course, everything – those thousands of spots, the execution manual with the media and recycling plan – is copyrighted. Despite the cultural differences, it’s pretty hard to find a spot on the planet where people can’t get excited about a promotion where they feel like they have a really good chance of winning a big chunk of cash.
I’ve never gotten over the fact that Capital Radio in London – a great radio station, with a brilliant morning show and marketing gurus like Richard Park and David Briggs working behind the scenes in what is arguably one of the most creative advertising capitals of the world – have brought their breakfast show to Nashville many times to do T”he Birthday Game.”
JM: Why does it work? And what did research that stations conducted tell you?
WC: The Birthday Game works because of the unique combination of a highly desirable prize, a simple point of entry with a small time commitment (you’re invited to listen at a precise time versus “listen all day for your chance to win”) and a uniquely high perceived chance of winning because of the birthday mechanism.
Stations see it in the ratings, of course, but they also see all of the mentions from people saying they listen because of The Birthday Game; and it comes up frequently in focus groups, both for stations who use The Birthday Game and for stations trying to figure out why they lost so badly to a competitor doing The Birthday Game. And as Arbitron subscribers we could see for ourselves that it was working. The top line numbers for cume and share were dramatic and we could also drill down into the minutiae and see the cume bumps at the contest times.
One of the most astounding things I remember being told about the ratings success of the campaign was when Rhody Bosley – who was at Arbitron before entering the world of ratings analysis – told us he could tell when a station was doing the promotion just by looking at the hourly data. He’d be sitting there in Beltsville and say, “I can tell that station did The Birthday Game.”
JM: Could it work again – even with Pandora, SiriusXM, and cloud-based music playlists?
CH: It’s working still…and it can work better than ever today. This is a promotion that actually causes people to listen to a radio station. What could be more powerful in a PPM world?
And here’s something you probably don’t know: we’ve done “The Birthday Game” for other advertisers like TV stations (during sweeps) and shopping malls. That’s a trip, since people have to be present to win. Many shopping malls are dying, but when a mall runs “The Birthday Game,” they have to hire off-duty cops for crowd control and their parking lots (that are usually mostly empty) are overflowing. If you think “The Birthday Game” sounds exciting on the radio, you should see what happens when a packed mall full of pumped up shoppers is waiting to hopefully hear their birthday called!
JM: Consolidation begat marketing and promotional cutbacks nationwide. Looking back on the ‘90s, what’s your perspective on the net effect on radio?
WC: Radio has always been a commodity product. Lots of signals, lots of places to hear the hits, lots of good stations and personalities. And today you don’t even need a signal. For any commodity product, the role of great marketing is to elevate a brand to a position of dominance. The consolidators largely stopped marketing and the resulting decline in radio listenership started a decade before the iPod was introduced in 2001. It started with duopoly and listening levels have gone down ever since. A funny thing happens when you stop marketing – you become less and less relevant. Now we have a whole generation that didn’t grow up on radio. The medium as a whole looks a lot like Easy Listening did as a format when Soft AC came along – old, tired and dying, with demos no one cares about.
JM: What other radio campaigns – whether they were contests or concepts – are you exceptionally proud of?
CH: A lot of great campaigns come to mind: The Sing-A-Longs were phenomenal and I think the many spots we did with Teri Garr for WLTW, initially, and ultimately for a lot of Soft AC stations, were incredible – who would’ve thought a Soft AC could be the #1 billing station in the country? I’m a big Classic Rock fan, so the “Non-Stop Rock” spots with the guitar player that we did for KGON come to mind, as well as the Rocko the Clown spots, the All Kinds of Rock and Their Playlist/Our Playlist.
>Email recipients: Click here to watch the Teri Garr spot<
CH: Z100 is an irresistibly big story…helping Capital Radio in London get to a cume of 14 million is pretty heady stuff. But there are hundreds of stories of stations who used our TV campaigns to achieve the best ratings they’d ever had. We did a lot of great spots for Soft AC stations that never had the flash of “The Birthday Game” campaigns, but made fortunes for station owners. Ultimately, the only reason our radio clients run our campaigns is because they don’t cost them money – they make them money. A lot of money.
JM: And what’s the funniest story that you can share?
WC: Two come to mind and they both involve animals. We used to do a lot of spots with chimps, and we also have a great visual gag called the “flaming arrow.” We learned the hard way that the two don’t mix! Turns out, fear of fire is a pretty basic animal instinct. It took a while to get the monkey down from the lighting grid.
And then there’s the day we shot “The Birthday Game” for the Power Pig in Tampa. Jacor had just put the station on the air. It seemed like a natural to have three little pigs on the set in one of the weeks of the campaign. When we were planning the shooting sequence, we decided it would be best to save the pigs for last – after all, they’re pretty nasty little buggers.
Problem was, the scene with the pigs came around 10 o’clock at night. We had gotten the pigs from a local farmer and when we asked him to “bring on the pigs,” they just sat there like paperweights. They were sound asleep. We asked the farmer to wake them up. He patiently explained, “They’re pigs. They may be inside this studio, but they know the sun done went down hours ago. They’ll wake up when the sun comes back up; you can take that to the bank.” So we came up with a bit that worked with sleeping porkers.
JM: What’s Film House doing these days?
CH: We’re in our 34th year of producing TV commercials to promote radio stations, but that’s a relatively small part of our business. We’ve produced three feature films since 2004 and they’ve all been shown around the world in theaters and on services like HBO in Europe and Lifetime domestically. We have two feature documentaries in the works: Lead Belly: Life, Legend, Legacy is almost finished and Scouting for Diamonds is in production now. It tells the stories of baseball’s unsung heroes – the scouts who signed stars like Willie Mays, Derek Jeter, and Wade Boggs – and is scheduled to be released the week before opening day next spring.
For the last 17 years, we’ve been the largest producer of films for the U.S. Government – over $50 million worth. And our newest division has the most potential of anything we’ve ever done: Film House Real Estate is pioneering a worldwide revolution in marketing luxury homes by using mini-movies – complete with story lines, actors, musical scores, and even aerial cinematography – that are set in the properties to create an emotional connection with potential buyers. We’ve produced mini-movies for listings from Maine to Honolulu.
All in all, Film House has brought over $150 million worth of film production to Nashville. That’s created a lot of good paying jobs and helped put Nashville on the map as a creative center for more than music. We’ve now filmed in 49 states and 15 countries, recently adding Saudi Arabia to the list.
JM: Are there marketing/branding campaigns for any business or brand that you really think are great?
WC: I think GEICO consistently does a good job of marketing a commodity product. Just when you think they’ve run out of steam, they come up with something like the pig riding in a van. And I love the Priceline spots with Shatner. Great, compelling marketing for a company in a crowded category of largely parity products and they are just dominating. The lessons for radio for either of these brands are obvious.
JM: What advice would you give to would-be innovators who have an idea that they’re trying to bring to market?
WC: Don’t underestimate what it will take to get your product noticed. You can have the most innovative idea in the world, but if you don’t have the money to make people know it’s out there, you may never get where you want to go. There’s lots of innovation on the Internet and with social media, but I honestly don’t believe anything has come along that can take the place of good, old-fashioned media advertising. It’s not cheap, but for a credible product, it can get the word out like nothing else can.
Thanks to Mike Stern for writing this week’s “RMI.”
INNOVATION QUOTE OF THE WEEK
Do you know what my favorite renewable fuel is? An ecosystem for innovation.
Thomas Friedman, Journalist
More of Radio’s Most Innovative
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Jacobs Media has consistently walked the walk in the digital space, providing insights and guidance through its well-read national Techsurveys.
In 2008, jacapps was launched - a mobile apps company that has designed and built more than 1,300 apps for both the Apple and Android platforms. In 2013, the DASH Conference was created - a mashup of radio and automotive, designed to foster better understanding of the "connected car" and its impact.
Along with providing the creative and intellectual direction for the company, Fred consults many of Jacobs Media's commercial and public radio clients, in addition to media brands looking to thrive in the rapidly changing tech environment.
Fred was inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame in 2018.
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So, how many stations are doing the Birthday Game now? And what ratings success has the promotion produced now that we have this new rating system?
If the Birthday Game produces that much more income for stations than it costs, all the more reason that tight-fisted companies would be using it, repeatedly.
A tried-and-true killer promotion – that generates massive revenue for cash-strapped stations – should be running in almost every market RIGHT NOW!
So, why isn’t it?
It’s a chicken/egg thing, Dimitri. And sometimes all it takes is one station that isn’t afraid to step out – and the rest follow.
I would submit that there may be another fly in the ointment. If a station today did the Birthday Game and it worked, producing a spike in the ratings, would it be able to monetize those atmospheric numbers?
Thanks very much to you and Mike Stern for writing this article. I was proud to be part of the Film House marketing team for four years, and learned a tremendous amount about branding, research, production and the creative process from Curt, Wayne and the many other talented staffers there.
One thing worth noting was that the Birthday Game wasn’t meant for every station that was interested in it. In fact, it wasn’t even offered to them if the station wasn’t already well-programmed and prepared to make the significant investment of time, effort and, yes, money to enable it to work its magic. As a result, the campaign’s batting average in terms of generating success was off the charts.
Jeff, thanks for the kind note and for the insights behind the Birthday Game. Your team was smart to be selective about which stations had the heft and resources to handle this mega-promotion. By only offering it to the best brands, you were able to build a great track record of success.
Of course The Birthday Game will work for Radio today. Listeners will always want to win cash and The Birthday Game is still the easiest way to do that. The problem is groups that own multiple stations in the same market have decided that they would largely be stealing share from their other owned stations. This ignores the fact that The Birthday Game actually lures people to the station who aren’t even currently listening to any radio station. And if you’re a stand-alone station you’re in the perfect position to dramatically re-write the ratings in your favor.
Curt, good points all. I think there are times that broadcasters lose sight of the value of brand/listener building in the haze of cluster considerations. And you’re correct that the chances of audience expansion are excellent with a big tent marketing campaign like The Birthday Game. Thanks for chiming in.