auto dealership:

I know, the station side of it ,
if some is paying $#,###. !!
and they want your mid day talent there,
u go!
-
but from the dealers side..whats the benefit ?
I know, "free advertising" but . . .
(if i hear, 97x) is there I will stop in
BUT NOT for the sales guy at the auto dealership. . .
but to say hey, its "me" - did u get my email,
(loved your show), etc... nice mix, last week
-
the car dealership gets ZERO from me,
-UNLESS- its the impression, that I get
from _'s dealership that they were friendly, etc..
and i will want to go there, first.
(then up to the sales team), but most people already
are "stuck" in their ways, not like i hear the morning guy,
"hey im working a sat, at _auto/dealership" . . . come on down,
(and) an hour later, your ssales rep is signing over the keys!!!

jus curious

They get exposure & traffic. You showed up. They might have a great deal and you buy today, or when you're seriously considering purchasing, you return to that dealer. What does an advertiser get out their advertising, other than a tax deduction, hopefully increased sales and/or new customers. And its not free advertising, the dealer should be paying a premium to have the station broadcasting from their place. (I'm sure others can and will expand on this post).

*I* showed up BUT it was because of the air talent
(drop of an aircheck cd) and tooo skeeez
cd's, and crap - - and maybe a free hot dog,
it could be a dealership , or a recycle facility for i care

Sometimes, at least in the past, bigger companies like automakers, apparel makers, sports equipment companies (the producers of products) would offer co-op advertising to local distributors and stores, and pay for half the advertising. Sometimes, given other circumstances being in play, that co-op ad outlay would make a 2-hour remote look like a good deal, especially if it was something that was thrown in by the station as part of a mammoth ad package.

I'm amazed in 2011 commercial radio remotes still exist.

For the most, a beat up station van shows up with rundown sound equipment, a cheesy pop up tent with a jock and intern wearing worn out station polo shirts. The breaks are either recorded or live over a crappy cell phone or marti.

"Stop on by, get a free hot dog. We're having a great time at ______."

OMG, cancel our weekend plans, we're heading over to _____! ;D

I forgot THE PRIZE WHEEL!

Spin to win a $5 off coupon, a bumper sticker, $10 off your next oil change or tickets to Wally's Water Park & Playground.

the remote is dead!
12 in a row nailed it in the above post.

same tired crap over and over

Then, why...in Spring and Summer and most of the fall...we all spend so much on the weekend
doing them? It's some welcome extra cash in talent fees at our place anyway.

And, yes...if done well and set up properly, listeners do respond.

It's all in how your sales and/or marketing people set it up.

djpaul said:

the remote is dead!
12 in a row nailed it in the above post.

same tired crap over and over

Click to expand...

Oh man, I couldn't agree more. Most remotes are utter hell and a waste of time and the client's money.

I have developed a mathematical formula:

The announcer's misery index at the remote is directly proportional to the number of times they
utter the phrase "where havin' a great time out here..."

I used to do a remote every Saturday morning at the local Ford dealership. Free hotdogs, balloons for the kids,
free popcorn. Every week it was the same- the same ten useless hillbilly families rolled in for their free lunch.
What made it worse was that the sales people would hide in their cubicles unless they were ordered to talk on the
radio by their boss.

Now at my own station, we won't do any type of remote broadcast unless we are part of a bigger event- a grand opening ribbon cutting or other special one-time occasion. And then we make sure the Chamber of commerce is there along with
as many local community people as we can think of. We also handle the PA work on site and become part of the
welcoming team for the client. We actually become part of a larger effort and broadcast an actual event.

Mark Bohach

Maybe it's the "Saturday morning" time that was part of the problem.

When I was a kid in the 50's I lived in a medium-sized town where almost every Friday and Saturday evenings there would be searchlights circling the night sky and a radio remote from each one. There were store openings and sales of all kinds including car dealerships, TV stores, seat covers, grocery stores and mall events. More often than not it was the T-40 stations who were present but sometimes one of the MOR or Country stations showed up. Sometimes more than one station would show up and there would be a "battle" of the jocks or their music or something to spice up the rivalry.

I now live in a metro area of 3+ million people and notice the few remotes that do happen are Saturday afternoons. Sometimes the stations have a booth at races or other events but don't seem to be as connected to commerce as they once were. And the stations that still show up are not the ones teens & 20-somethings could drag their parents to (like a car dealer).

I know times have changed and cities are bigger than they were then but it still seems like it would work given the right population size and proper demo.

What a lot of people forget about remotes is the concept of "incentive". If the incentive is
right, people will respond.

Case in the point (extreme, though it was): Back in the 80's, I was doing a Saturday afternoon remote on a 90 plus degree day on, yes, a used car lot. Nobody in their right mind would have been there, and for the first 45 minutes of the 2 hour remote, nobody was.

The owner of the dealership shows up. I'm thinking, "I'm dead. He's gonna want to know what kind of schlub jock I am because I'm on the air and no one's here." When I saw the owner, I was kind of apologetic. He asked why? I told him, I was hoping we'd sell him a car that day.

He said, "You want to sell a car? Hold on, I'll be right back." Off to the office he went. A few minutes later, he came back with a set of keys and took me over to this used car. He explained, yeah, it's a beater. But, he said his mechanic had checked it out and determined it was mechanically sound and would be a good car for, say, someone's kid who would be going off to college.

Then Mr. Dealer asked our station frequency. I told him 95.3. He said, "OK, on your next break tell people that the first person who comes in here with 95 dollars cash in hand can drive off with this car." I was dumbfounded, and asked if he was serious. He said yes.

So I said what he told me to say on the next break. Within 5 seconds, people were doing U-turns in the middle of the street to get into his lot! And enough traffic was generated from that stunt that they sold 2 more cars that afternoon.

As the madness was going on, Mr. Dealer (who was by then walking toward his car), looked at me and said, "You were worried that no one was listening?"

I've never forgotten that lesson. Too bad the people who buy and the people who sell remotes don't learn it.

to the last post-er,
You are awesome!

Car Dealer Remotes

12 In a Row said:

I'm amazed in 2011 commercial radio remotes still exist.

For the most, a beat up station van shows up with rundown sound equipment, a cheesy pop up tent with a jock and intern wearing worn out station polo shirts. The breaks are either recorded or live over a crappy cell phone or marti.

"Stop on by, get a free hot dog. We're having a great time at ______."

OMG, cancel our weekend plans, we're heading over to _____! ;D

Click to expand...

Car Dealer Remotes died when Car Dealers quit wanting to pay for, or take ANY risks at all. I can't tell you how many times I have come out of my own pocket to make a remote work. But you are right, the stations quit caring too. That's why I don't sell them anymore. Why waste my Saturday for something the client, and the station don't give a shit about?
This used to be why radio was a great fit for Car Dealers.......

Old post...but, why not?

Unregistered said:

<...>But you are right, the stations quit caring too. That's why I don't sell them anymore. Why waste my Saturday for something the client, and the station don't give a crap about?

Click to expand...

Interesting perspective.

Here in market number sixty-something, prior to the pandemic, there was at least one remote a month - somewhere in the valley.

That's certainly not to say they (the station or the dealership) weren't just going through the motions, but for a couple of hours on a Saturday from 1 until 3, they'd be there with hot dogs, soft drinks from a local bottler and the works.

I mentioned to my wife not long ago that the airwaves were pretty empty not long ago when it came to car dealer ads by the big-dogs here. The small guys that are used to spending a good chunk of coin for ads (both radio & TV) on many stations were still on, doin' their 'yelling & screaming' to come on down to buy a car.

I just saw one of the big guys with a TV ad yesterday afternoon during the local TV news. Wonder if the others would be joining them.

Radio remotes late in my career (pre 2015) were usually a complete waste of time and money for the client. “Hey come on in and test drive the new Camry” simply did not work. Ok, there may have been exceptions, but generally car remotes were giant busts. Perhaps that is why we don’t hear them much anymore. And yes, I understand the “top of mind” argument but I don’t buy it.

kwthom said:

Old post...but, why not?


Interesting perspective.

Here in market number sixty-something, prior to the pandemic, there was at least one remote a month - somewhere in the valley.

That's certainly not to say they (the station or the dealership) weren't just going through the motions, but for a couple of hours on a Saturday from 1 until 3, they'd be there with hot dogs, soft drinks from a local bottler and the works.

I mentioned to my wife not long ago that the airwaves were pretty empty not long ago when it came to car dealer ads by the big-dogs here. The small guys that are used to spending a good chunk of coin for ads (both radio & TV) on many stations were still on, doin' their 'yelling & screaming' to come on down to buy a car.

I just saw one of the big guys with a TV ad yesterday afternoon during the local TV news. Wonder if the others would be joining them.

Click to expand...

If you already didn't guess the location of my earlier post it was Tucson. A big sport for us in the 50's was to cruise around town from searchlight to searchlight looking for our favorite jocks (and hoping they had some swag to give away).

Interesting. This actually lasted well into the 90's. But today, not so much. Radio promotion today is not about "remotes", it is about direct marketing to noted listeners. The whole idea today is to not bring listeners to you, but you to bring your product to them, via website, app, etc. It is a much different world from just 20 years ago.

seatownmedia said:

Interesting. This actually lasted well into the 90's. But today, not so much. Radio promotion today is not about "remotes", it is about direct marketing to noted listeners. The whole idea today is to not bring listeners to you, but you to bring your product to them, via website, app, etc. It is a much different world from just 20 years ago.

Click to expand...

I think a few things have changed, including some listener/consumer habits, but also, and possibly most notably, is that most all stations are running much leaner on staff than they were back in that time period that you mention. I remember doing an all-day remote at a car dealership on a Saturday where the engineer drove the remote vehicle out and set everything up, the afternoon drive jock broadcast a few breaks an hour for a few hours, then the nighttime guy did a few hours and the entire thing had to be broken down and taken away because a competing station was doing a similar day of remotes the following day (Sunday). Then again, that same station was regularly doing things like "pool patrol" and "party patrol" on the weekends where they'd cruise around random neighborhoods looking for pool parties during the day, and you could call to advise the jocks you'd be hosting a party on weekend evenings, and jocks would pull up in the station vehicle, hand out a bunch of station swag like t-shirts and keychains, possibly do a live break from your place and then move on. There simply hasn't been the staff to do any of those types of things in a few decades now. Obviously lots of other things about the business like listener habits and ad income have changed greatly since then as well. That same station I'm talking about has been satellite-fed/automated since the early '00s.

Agreed, I entered radio in the late 70's. It was still the era of dj's mostly 24 hours a day, This continued into the 80's but slowly tapered off to just the daytimers with shifts. By the early 2000's, an all-nighter was rare. Today, perhaps a morning show is still live and local, but the rest of the day is VT'd. I understand the revenue issues that plague radio stations today. Too bad, because without up and commers like my early self the local talent will become non-existent for the most part.

seatownmedia said:

<...>Radio promotion today is not about "remotes", it is about direct marketing to noted listeners.

Click to expand...

My comment was referring to 'pre-pandemic' times. yes, in our small market, there were still the occasional Saturday morning remote.

Today? Nope, long gone - even in a market of this size.

Now, perhaps in a much smaller market, it may still exist. Only because the old-time radio station owner and the old-time car dealership general manager are brothers-in-law, or some such.