About Jerry Lee
INSIDERADIO ARTICLE: 12/21/18
Jerry Lee: Absolutely Committed To Improving Spot Creative
Jerry Lee has a mission. “Over the next 20 years, I am going to get every radio station in the country to use great commercials. I am absolutely committed to making this happen.” The veteran broadcaster—who shocked the industry by selling his independently owned WBEB (101.1) Philadelphia this last year—remains true to the business, with the belief that most radio commercials could be a lot better.
As Lee told Inside Radio in an exclusive one on one in July, despite turning the page after dominating Philly radio as the only major standalone FM amid a sea of consolidators—with his sale of the station to Entercom Communications—Lee said he intends to work “feverishly” on his engaging commercials business Spot Q Services, and won’t rest until the quality of radio spot creative improves industry-wide.
In the Radio Advertising Bureau “Radio On Main Street” podcast, he shared with president and CEO Erica Farber tales from his early days—when “you could go to the FCC and get a license for nothing. Nobody wanted an FM station, because you couldn’t make money from it.”
Fast forward 55 years, and part of his lasting mark on WBEB is his dedication to research, marketing and promotion. “It’s very simple. We’ve got to be out in front of the public and keep taking chances on ways to increase the audience. To me it’s a no- brainer. You have to do good research. That’s critical.”
The focus of his conversation with Farber, though, came down to his devout belief that commercials must improve on the radio airwaves. “It’s hard to believe that people just don’t get the message,” he said, citing an Advertising Research Foundation study that found that among 5,000 advertising campaigns, 75% of their effectiveness was derived from how good creative the messaging is. “Nothing else counts if 75% of the effectiveness is the creative,” Lee added.
“And the industry just can’t get that, they can’t understand it—which is obviously very frustrating to me. But I’m going to win. I am going to convince everyone in the end, that this is where the money is,” Lee insisted. With his business, “we’ve got it down to a science. I can take a salesperson in a small market who writes his own copy and I can teach this so called copywriter to produce really good commercials,” he posits.
Lee isn’t done. He added, “68% of commercials are dead on arrival. They are a waste of money for the client.” He then points to the Chicago, which he says is the worst market in the country “for having bad commercials… we can solve that. It’s not brain surgery.”
Lee added, “I am absolutely committed to making this happen. This is my last hurrah. I am in phenomenal health, I walk 15,000 steps every day and over the next 20 years, I am going to get every radio station in the country to use great commercials. That’s my parting gift to the radio industry.”
LISTEN TO THE PODCAST BELOW:
