Reading a transcript of a Korry’s radio ad just doesn’t do the spot justice. Take the martini anecdote. One can’t hear how the narrator (Korry’s owner Saul Korman) uses a high-pitched voice to mimic his wife’s. Nor does one get a sense of how Korman, 73, increases the speed of his diction when he announces his store’s Last Call Sale. Is he genuinely excited, or just running short on time?
One can only imagine a visitor to Toronto hearing Korman’s signature rambling radio spots for the first time. Take the above dispatch: Is the ad for a restaurant? A brand of gin? The St. Maarten Tourism Bureau? It’s only at the end one realizes the narrator is reminding listeners about his upscale clothing store located at 569 Danforth Ave.-an address Korry’s has occupied for more than half a century.
Korman first got hooked on “the power of radio” more than 20 years ago when he was booked as a guest on a Toronto radio program. He took an immediate liking to the medium and eventually hired a copywriter to concoct some ads. “But they were terrible, just awful,” recalls Korman.
Eventually, he decided to toss the scripts and speak off-the-cuff. Today Korman rambles on about everything except what’s happening at his store. “I’ve mentioned Danforth Avenue over and over,” says Korman, referring to the trendy neighbourhood of restaurants and shops surrounding his store. “They should name the street after me. I’m serious. I’ve done more for this street than anyone else.”
Korman can be heard on three Toronto AM stations-AM 640 (all news), CFRB (talk radio) and The Fan 590 (sports)-as well as the FM classic rock station Q107. His 42-year-old son, Michael, speaks to the younger generation on the alternative music station, CFNY. “I listened to Michael this morning,” says Korman. “He’s okay. He’ll get better.”
Korman’s radio ad budget is about 6% of his annual sales, and he averages about 35 spots per week. There’s nothing high tech about them either: He literally phones in the spots, stopwatch in hand, and never reads from a script. Does the exposure work? Korman thinks so. While he says he has a large and loyal clientele, “without the power of radio, we would not get new people. It’s like Coke and Pepsi-if Coke stopped advertising, pretty soon Pepsi would be number one,” he says. “What I’ve learned from marketing is that if you can create traffic in the store, you never know what you’re going to sell.”
Ed Strapagiel, executive vice-president of Kubas Consultants, a Tor-onto-based retail consulting firm, says Korry’s ads stand out from the pack for the simple reason they are so conversational when compared to de rigueur prefabricated radio creative. “His ads are straight from the gut-very grassroots stuff. I think he manages to pull off awareness and build his image because it all sounds so sincere and genuine.”
Terry O’Reilly, a partner with Tor-onto-based Pirate Radio and Television, is also a fan of the “stripped-down naked” approach to radio advertising.
“We once did a spot for Basil’s Pre-owned Warehouse,” recalls O’Reilly. “The guy we got to voice it was actually the owner of a greasy spoon restaurant around the corner from our office. I wanted it to sound like a wooden, non-professional store owner talking. It was one of our biggest successes. In another campaign for First Canadian Place I also got the store owners to voice the spots. It won all the awards that year.”
As for Korman’s spots, O’Reilly feels they are especially adept at connecting with the audience. “I think a listener feels way more of an emotional connection to Korry’s than he does for Tip Top Tailors,” O’Reilly says, referring to the men’s clothing chain. “The other side of the equation is he (Korman) is aligning himself so closely to the brand…Will that equity be gone when Saul’s no longer around?”
Back at Korry’s, it’s a Friday afternoon and Korman is getting ready to call it a day. Before he leaves, he pre-records his weekend spots, his trusty digital stopwatch firmly in hand. “When I walk around this store, I’m impressed. My two-for-one suits are the best deal in the city …” he begins.
Par for the course, Korman veers off on numerous tangents that have nothing to do with menswear. Yet, as always, he makes certain to end the spot with his trademark signature phrase, “Five-six-nine Danforth Avenue”-perhaps Toronto’s best-known retail address, thanks to “the power of radio.”
Saul Korman, Korry’s Toronto “The other day I had a meeting with Dino Jagtiani, a young man who is a chef at the St. Maarten–well, he won the culinary at the St. Maarten. You know what? He has a restaurant called Rare. And if you ever went into Temptation–and this is a great story–and order a martini, my wife yells, ‘Stop pouring it, stop pouring it! It’s too big!’ You have one martini, your teeth chatter. So as soon as I have the martini, Myrna drives the car back, back to the Maho Resort anyway. But in the meantime, wonderful food! There are so many. Johnny Under the Tree. I went with my friend, Doctor Jack Bocher. Ten bucks! We ate like kings! And you know, we can go on. The French side has many, many restaurants. I go to a place, La Croissant Tree on the French Harbour. And you know what else? Beer–75 cents! And you walk with it. Hey, where else you gonna get that? And great weather–I wear a tank top. But meantime–Last Call Sale at Korry’s! Everything’s been dropped more! Up to 75%! At five-six-nine Danforth Avenue.” |
There are always a few recurring elements in the radio ads for Vancouver-based Montecristo, a chain of three upscale jewelry stores. First, owner Pasquale Cusano takes a very relaxed approach when describing his chain’s high-end jewellery. Second, Cusano never talks about prices, noting that since he started Montecristo in 1978, he’s yet to hold a sale. And third, Cusano usually weaves a memorable metaphor into the mix. One classic example: Buying a fine piece of jewelry, Cusano once opined, is akin to “making love for the first time.”
“My ads are not read from a script,” notes the native of Florence, Italy, who also publishes Nuvo magazine. “I simply go into the studio and somebody asks me questions and I respond. It’s all from the heart.”
Cusano first started advertising on radio in 1982. Originally, they were scripted spots recited by a CKNW broadcaster. But soon a sales rep for another Vancouver radio station began courting Cusano, and one day brought the station’s creative director along to come up with some ideas for new ads. After chatting with Cusano, the creative director determined Cusano should be doing his own spots. “I thought he was crazy,” Cusano recalls. “But he could see I have this real passion for jewelry and, based on that, he thought I’d be the perfect spokesman.”
Cusano eventually consented to doing spots in the form of a Q&A interview. “It was all genuine and sincere with no music in the background,” he says. “Montecristo is all about branding. We educate people-about style, about what you should be looking for when you are buying a handcrafted $30,000 diamond ring. I’m not selling anything. It’s a conversation.”
The ads did stand out from the highly polished creative on the airwaves at the time, even though Cusano admits “if you stand back and listen to the commercials, some of them didn’t make sense.” Still, radio listeners took notice and people began recognizing Cusano in public based on the sound of his voice alone.
These days, ads for Montecristo run on CHQM, JACK-FM, The Team 1040 and News 1130. On average, one ad runs on each station per day. Aside from his radio spots, Cusano also runs some newspaper ads, primarily for high-end watches. Overall, he says his annual marketing budget ranges from $250,000 to $350,000. Cusano declines to disclose his annual sales, although he notes that the average Montecristo sales transaction is close to $10,000.
While he doesn’t have hard evidence that his radio advertising works, he has a gut feeling that his on-air conversations are paying dividends. “People are always coming into the store and saying, ‘Who’s the one we hear on the radio all the time?’
Pasquale Narrator: “For close to a century, Rolex has strived to combine beauty and performance in all their watch collections. It’s this dedication to quality that makes Pasquale Cusano and Montecristo proud to sell one of the premier watches in the world–Rolex.” Pasquale Cusano: “I’m not sure if you are aware, but…Daytona…it’s the most sought-after watch in the world. People are prepared to pay premium and put their name on a waiting list to actually want to own a Daytona, specifically a steel Daytona. And I do not know of any other brand that has been able to achieve the success and desire within the consumer as much as what Rolex has done.” Narrator: “Experience quality jewellery at Montecristo in Oakridge Centre; on Victoria near Forty-First; and on West Hastings at Hornby.” |
Winnipeggers didn’t quite know what to make of David Keam’s radio spots-complete with “bedtime stories” and the booming tag line, “Yooooooou’ll find us!-when they debuted in 1992. That was the year Keam, a former delivery driver, opened a 1,500-square-foot store he describes as a “hole in the wall” to sell mattresses.
In truth, some of the reaction was exceedingly negative. Dozens of listeners phoned the radio station and threatened to stop tuning in unless Keam’s spots were given the boot. Keam reckons some consumers didn’t like being informed-ad nauseam-that they had been overpaying for mattresses until Best Sleep Centre came along.
“You’ve got some punk kid from the middle of nowhere saying that Sears is not giving you 50% off and that Sears is probably the most expensive place to buy a mattress,” says Keam. “Nobody wants to hear that if they’ve been buying from Sears all their lives.”
Fortunately, the radio station didn’t cave to listener complaints, and Keam eventually crafted a new spot that consisted entirely of irate callers to the radio station harping on about his annoying advertising spots.
These days, Keam runs six to nine spots a day on three Winnipeg stations, spending about $150,000 a year on radio (and a similar amount on TV). “Generally speaking, I’m the spokesman in my ads because if I don’t know my own business, nobody does.”
It helps that Keam is downright passionate about bedding. After all, people spend about a third of their lives lying on mattresses. “There’s no more important piece of furniture in your house,” enthuses Keam.
Manitobans seem to have bought into the mattress tutorials. Despite going up against daunting national competitors like Sleep Country Canada and Sears, Best Sleep Centre is now a chain of six stores.
“We still get people saying, ‘We hate your radio ads,’ ” Keam says. “(But) they tell us that when they’re in the store shopping.”
David Keam “Hello, I’m David Keam, president of the Best Sleep Centre Inc. And if you’ve got a minute, I’ve got bedtime story number 12 of the Year 2006. One of our competitors told a potential customer they would take a second-hand twin XL electric bed in trade if they wanted a new Queen electric bed. I’m assuming the customer had phoned and asked if we would do the same and we said no because the trade-in was used. The price of the competitor’s ordinary queen electric was $4,800 with $1,200 trade-in value. Sounds great. On the day the electric queen was to be delivered, the company phoned to say they would be late. So, acting on a whim, the customer came into our store just to find out if they were making a good deal. |
To their amazement, our price for a better product was less money than the competitoröeven if they kept their secondhand trade-in. They could sell it themselves for about $1,000, saving even more! Even risking the loss of their $450 deposit, they cancelled and bought from Best Sleep Centre. Moral of the story: Don’t accept big stories from big competitors. Yooooooou’ll find us!”
David Menziesis a freelance writer in Toronto
