Watch this video first. It will give you the recreated experience of sitting through something tedious while waiting to get the the point of the evening.
The idea to write this entry in the ol’ blogski came about earlier this week. We have a new account executive at the radio station named Kody who is going to be a great addition to the team. He wrote a script for A-Town Zesto and I produced it. It came out pretty decent, and it sounds like this:
This commercial was made possible in part by one of the great axioms of broadcasting: If you’re gonna steal, steal from yourself. Kody wrote the A-Town Zesto script, but I saw in it elements of something I had done six years ago:
This Kloch’s Liquor commercial was 60 seconds (that very rarely happens these days–:30 is the usual length). I like :60 spots because they give your story breathing room…you have time for jokes and asides, and you can give your sales message in two or three different ways.
This commercial won the Silver Award at the 2014 Nebraska Broadcasters Awards. This article, you see, is going to be about awards…I’ll try hard not to make it insufferable.
In 2009, our station manager was a fellow named Mike Fell. Mike strongly believed that stations should enter awards competitions. He insisted upon it. I had never entered such things for two reasons: Nobody before Mike Fell made a big deal out of it, and I honestly didn’t think anything I did was award-worthy.
The first thing we entered my work in was the 2009 Black Hills Advertising Federation awards. I was stunned to find that I had won two of them. We went to the dinner, picked up our little glass plaques. It was pretty darn nice! 2009 was the also the year I started entering things in the Nebraska Broadcasters Association Pinnacle Awards. The NBAs, incidentally, do not award entries by market size–it’s everybody against everybody. So whenever I could scamper away from that ceremony with an award Omaha or Lincoln didn’t get I felt a real sense of pride.
From 2009 to 2014 I won at least one NBA award every year except 2013. In 2015 I got skunked. Same in 2016. Same in 2017. Each year I got a little more desperate to play the system and a little more confused about the whole thing; I don’t think my work just stopped being any good…in fact I’ve done things since 2014 that mop the floor with stuff I previously won with.
Anyway, after three years of getting skunked I decided to stop submitting. My friend Kalin says I’m a sore loser and a big baby and other nice things a friend says to a friend. But here’s what I say.
When I won awards, I felt like I was an incredible success, and a point of pride for my company, my coworkers and my loved ones.
When I lost awards, I felt like a charlatan, a miserable failure who didn’t deserve to work in the radio business, or even own a radio.
And now that I don’t enter anymore? Well–either I suck eggs or I’m brilliant, who the hell knows? (I’m probably both at certain points.)
All of this will be addressed in my forthcoming autobiography, “I Need Psychological Help.” (It’s a working title.)
But I do look back fondly on those trips to Lincoln and Omaha and Rapid City….the memories far outshine the plaques.
