Episode Notes
Welcome to a new season of La Pizarra! We are launching season 9 with a phenomenal coach, director, audio engineer, demo producer, and Director of Talent Development for ACM–in their Automotive Division, Cliff Zellman. In part one of this interview, Cliff shares all the key details about the three tiers of automotive advertising, and how production companies work in this niche.
Cliff has been in the audio production industry for over 40 years. He’s also a musician, and he talked about how music was part of his path to success in audio production.
He worked for over 25 years at RadioVision as a partial creative director and developing all kinds of audio editing and creative work, which gave him plenty of tools to later develop his career in coaching, independent productions, and demo production. Although Cliff is very much focused on automotive, which he states can be “the holy grail of voiceover”, this talented producer also enjoys producing commercial and video game demos.
You can contact Cliff for coaching sessions and/or an automotive demo production at czellman10@gmail.com
Check out Cliff’s work and the talented people he’s worked with at www.amazingdemos.com
This episode, as well as most of season 9 was recorded on SquadCast, the best platform for podcasts or meetings with up to nine guests with professional sound and video quality. You can choose your membership level after trying it free for seven days at: https://squadcast.fm/?ref=lapizarra
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Transcript
Cliff Zellman: It is not easy to get into any tier. We’ll get into that again. National, SAG-AFTRA, probably; non-compete, probably. If you do a national F-150 spot, you sure as heck can’t do a Chevy spot, but you know what? Let’s cross that bridge when we get to it.
[music]
Announcer: La Pizarra (The slate), exploring creative minds in the entertainment industry. Here’s your host, Nicky Mondellini.
Nicky Mondellini: Hello, everyone. Welcome to season nine of La Pizarra. My name is Nicky Mondellini. I’m very happy that you’re joining us today. We’re kicking off this season with a phenomenal coach, audio engineer, and demo producer for commercials who specializes in the automotive field. His name is Cliff Zellman. Car commercials are a very special niche in the publicity world. If you’ve ever wondered how you can be the voice of an automotive brand, at a local, regional, or national scale, this is the episode for you.
Cliff is an established producer, director, audio engineer, editor, and director of talent development for ACM in their automotive division. He’s been in the production industry for about 40 years, so he’s produced, directed, and edited all types of projects, as you can imagine. He’s also a musician, so we’ll be talking about that aspect of his creative work, which has been a big part of his success in audio production.
Before we go on with the interview, I’d like to ask a small favor. Please give us a five-star rating on Apple Podcast, if that’s where you’re listening to us now, that will help others find this podcast. If you’re watching this on YouTube, don’t forget to like and subscribe and hit that little bell so that you get notified every time a new episode is published. Now, the moment you’ve all been waiting for. Here is Cliff Zellman. Hey Cliff, welcome to La Pizarra.
Cliff: Nicky, thank you so much. I really appreciate being here, and I’m really excited to do this.
Nicky: I’m excited too because a lot of people have asked me about automotive commercials, and I said, “Okay. Well, the best guy that I can have on the podcast is Cliff,” because not only do you know everything there is to know about automotive commercials, you know a lot about everything audio, of course, but I really enjoyed the X-Session when you gave it at One Voice in 2021. You opened my eyes as to what it is really to be the voice of an automotive brand, and at the three levels, right? Before we-
Cliff: Yes, ma’am.
Nicky: -get into all of that and the awesome audio or demo production that you do, I’d like to talk about your beginning, because you actually started as a musician, right? That bit by bit.
Cliff: Oh my, how far back?
Nicky: [laughs]
Cliff: We’ll just do the little highlight points, okay?
Nicky: Okay.
Cliff: For me, it really started off with being well aware of music. My father was a classical pianist-
Nicky: Oh.
Cliff: -and a jazz pianist. When I was an infant, so I was told, he slid me under the grand piano in my bassinet and would play for me.
Nicky: Wow.
Cliff: I loved it. I would imagine I’m looking up at the soundboard and hearing all this great improv jazz stuff. Fell in love with that. When he put me to sleep at night, when I was a baby, he would put me to sleep with a metronome.
Nicky: Wow. [laughs]
Cliff: For like a year, you tell me the beats per minute and I can pretty much tell you exactly what it is.
Nicky: Oh my goodness. That’s amazing.
Cliff: I was walking home from school, I was maybe in fifth grade, and it was trash day, and all the trash cans were pushed out into the alley. I see this guitar sticking out of a garbage can. Fifth grade. This is a find. I pull it out and the back is all destroyed. It was a victim of some domestic dispute. I grabbed the guitar, got on my bike, carried it, took it home, threw it in the garage, drove over to Baxter Northup Music, and bought a set of guitar strings from my allowance.
Came home, put glue all over the back, cardboard, and tried to reinforce it. Let it dry for an extra five minutes so I was sure it would really glue down and be nice and strong. Then I put the strings on and five minutes later the whole thing blew up because of the tension of the strings [unintelligible 00:04:26]
Nicky: Oh, yes.
Cliff: My parents felt bad for me. They took me to Fedco. If anybody listening to this grew up in the San Fernando Valley in the ’60s, ’70s, and maybe the ’80s, I don’t know, Fedco was a gigantic store that had everything. My parents bought me like a $70 electric guitar.
Nicky: Wow.
Cliff: Got a band together at like 10. The drummer played suitcases. Do you remember the old hangers, the wire hangers that had the rolled cardboard down at the bottom and you could pop it out and have these–
Nicky: Yes.
Cliff: Those were his drumsticks.
Nicky: Oh my goodness. [laughs]
Cliff: We were playing monkey songs. We were playing, but we were singing along with it. Time progressed, got more and more serious, got into bands at 14, 15, 16 years old, Cliffy’s Garage Band, inventing grunge back in the ’70s before grunge was ever invented. Then I got a album deal with an independent label in LA to produce what we call an EP. EPs back in the day was extended play records. It was basically like a single, but you had two songs on each side instead of one song on each side.
That was really cool because major acts would put out a bonus EP, you get an extra track on the Madonna album or whatever, but EPs were also great for demos. Instead of just giving somebody a cassette, you would press an EP, and you can put art on it and do all that stuff. We were pressing our first EP, pretty terrible stuff. I remember the lyrics were like, we’ve got the power, this is the hour, stuff that 15-year-olds write, 17-year-olds.
Halfway through the session, the sessions, the main engineer– It was a cheap studio. I think it was $50 an hour. Imagine a recording studio and an engineer for $50. [crosstalk] I think we’re talking 1975. He goes across the street to get a Pepsi, has a heart attack. He’s okay. Ambulances come. We go back in the lounge where the band’s like, “What are we going to do now? Cliff, could you engineer this?” I knew how to plug in guitar stuff. Most of the tracks were recorded already. I was watching him. I was sitting next to him as he was doing it. I ended up finishing the album. It was awful, but it was great at the same time because it was our first endeavor and we were doing it.
Nicky: Your beginning into the world of audio engineering as well.
Cliff: Yes, man, we pressed a record. We went down to the pressing plant, gave them, we watched the whole thing, they’re carving while they’re looking, great education. Probably cost us $600 for the whole thing, but it really got my spark for audio engineering. I’ve always wanted to engineer. Ever since I saw– I had a cousin a couple of years older than me that worked at Capitol Records. Every family party, she would bring records with a cutout corner to all the kids. I would stare at the album coverage. I’d see those old Stratocasters and all these old guitars. Well, they weren’t old then. I just fell in love with that stuff.
Enrolled in, thank you, grandma, who left me a little bit in the Zellman trust fund, paid for audio engineering school. I went three years, but concurrently on my third year, I got a job with a studio. Actually, a couple of years before that, I was working in the studio, but I was the receptionist, cleaning, emptying ashtrays, cleaning toilets and stuff, and vacuuming, which is very, very important. You learn how to work in that world. Whenever I stacked the refrigerator with the soft drinks, they were always lined up perfect, Coke’s here, Pepsi’s here, Sprite here, beer here, everything was lined up.
Eventually graduated where I could actually go into the studio and wrap cables. That was very low-level job at the studio, but it was a huge studio. During the day was like Hall and Oates. At night was England Dan and John Ford Coley, Fleetwood Mac, Alice Cooper, and Al Stewart. Toto’s first album was recorded there while I was in the tape library writing down how many tapes we need to buy. I’m listening to Lukather lay down the guitar solo to Hold the Line. I’m shaking.
Nicky: Wow. Imagine that. My goodness.
Cliff: Then it just moved on from there. I got an offer from another studio as a full-fledged second engineer, which is a pretty good job at that young age, maybe 22, 23. Stayed with them for 13 years, worked my way up to the lead engineer. The chief engineer of a studio is called into action when the band or the actor, the talent, whoever, doesn’t bring in their own engineer. The big, big studios always brought in their own engineers, Bob Clearmountain, the big guys at the time. If a band came in and didn’t have an engineer but wanted to do stuff, I would do it.
That led to demos. That’s where they let me take over, because I’m the guy that’s been in the studio for a long time, so they think. I’m the guy that understands music and arrangement, all that stuff, dynamic range, or so they think. I started to grow in this position of, for lack of better term, telling people what to do. I got better and better at it by reading the room, reading what they were doing, being very attuned to the people that I was working with. Got into– In 1990, I started doing animation recording for Saban, DIC, and Disney, and I did a ton of Saturday morning cartoons. Carmen Sandiego, Sonic the Hedgehog, Little Mouse on the Prairie was really cute.
I was the guy throwing the faders. I was in LA at the time, born in LA. All this stuff up to now is all Los Angeles, San Fernando Valley, and Burbank. I fell in love with voice actors. Now, remember, this is 1990. All the people that are superstars and idols today were just coming into the studio. They were stand-up comics. They were guys working at the comedy store, skit comedians, coming in, lined up six in a row, have their own microphones. My job was to throw the faders because you can’t have two microphones on when one person is talking. [unintelligible 00:11:19] cancellation.
I saw the talent and the ad-lib skills, working with people like June Foray, where she would be silently reading one page as she’s speaking the page before. I’m like, “How can you read and speak at the same time and still be the incredible actress that she was?” Worked with some of the greats and it’s just like, “Oh my God.” It makes it fun now because when I go to VO Atlanta and I see Townsend Coleman or I see Rob, they’re old friends.
Fell in love with that. In 1995, there was a horrible earthquake in Los Angeles. ’94. I think it was February 13th at 4:05 in the morning. I had a two-year-old daughter. We were thinking about moving. We wanted to get out of LA. It wasn’t what it was back in the ’80s, ’70s, ’60s, and ’50s, I don’t remember, but I was three. My brother moved to Dallas and we would come and visit him all the time and just fell in love with it. Looking for a house after our place was just destroyed from the earthquake. We saw a house that was– I looked at the price and I thought it was the down payment.
This was just when LA was really starting to get expensive. You get a two-bedroom, one-bathroom house in the Valley for maybe $350,000, which is like free now, right? Back then it’s like, “There’s no way in the world I’m going to pay that. My dad bought this exact same house for $16,000. How am I going to spend–” We see this house in Dallas. Absolutely fell in love with it. We moved in. A month later, I get hooked up with RadioVision. Actually, a couple of months later. As soon as I moved to Dallas, I got a job to go to Taiwan to record an album. I’ve been to China half a dozen times teaching audio engineering. I studied Mandarin in college.
Nicky: Wow. So you know Mandarin.
Cliff: Bu hao. Well, I did. [Mandarin language]
Nicky: Okay.
Cliff: I don’t speak your language every day because I don’t have a lot of friends in Dallas that speak.
Nicky: I would imagine.
Cliff: You go to a Chinese restaurant, and you try to do it, you order a charcoaled broiled tractor.
Nicky: [laughs]
Cliff: “You sure you want that?” “Yes, yes.” Loved it though. Loved studying. Why Taiwan? Why did I bring that up? Oh, because we moved to Dallas, a brand new town, two-year-old baby, and then I leave for a month. My wife is not really happy about it. I gave her $10,000. I said, “Go have fun. I’ll see you in a month.” Ended up doing that six times. Loved to travel, especially work. I love work travel. When I came back, hooked up with a company called RadioVision.
RadioVision was a brand-new company. They were really focusing on what they wanted to do. They just didn’t want to be a production company. Initially, they thought, “Maybe we can do videos and country videos.” When I was in the meetings, I said, “Okay, that’s a great idea. We’ll do three a year and nobody will watch them. Videos are dying.” “How about automotive?” They’re talking about automotive. They had automotive background.
It was focused on local automotive. One owner dealerships. For the last 25 years, I was the partial creative director, because there really was no creative director. I made sure everything worked out nice. Audio, send out scripts, directing voice talent. They send it to me, cut it, edit it, throw it to video. They do the visuals, give it back to me. I put the sound effects on. I’ve probably done maybe 25,000 local spots.
In 2019, I said, 25 years is enough. I love you guys. I wouldn’t change one minute of my 25 years with RadioVision, but I don’t want to work this hard anymore. Everybody that was coming to me to talk about demos, talking about coaching, talking about production, individual clients outside of RadioVision that just wanted me to come and do their production started to raise higher than my interest in RadioVision. I know that sounds bad because I’m still extremely interested in RadioVision, but I was like, “Oh, I don’t want to not take that because I have to do this. I have to do that.”
I ended up working more than when I left RadioVision, but the difference is I’m working with who I want, when I want, I’m making my own schedule. Still very, very much focused on automotive. Although I love doing commercial demos and video game demos. Video games are actually probably right now my favorite because I get to write some little random scene that lasts for nine and a half seconds that doesn’t have to be anything but just a cool scene. Great fun and sound design and everything that goes with that. On that note, let’s talk about automotive and let’s talk about the three tiers of automotive because I think that’s something that a lot of people are going to come here to hear about.
Nicky: For sure.
Cliff: To get into automotive, and I’ve said this a thousand times, and if anybody’s seen me before, I apologize, but it’s worth driving home, done right, local automotive can be the holy grail of voiceover. You’ve got 10 to 12 automotive manufacturers putting out cars. You’ve got four, five, six different models for each manufacturer. Each vehicle needs an ad and each ad is only good for two weeks.
Incentives change, prices change. What are the incentives? Not $500 off like a lot of people think. An incentive in automotive in general is anything that makes you feel better about yourself for buying the car. I got to have 24-channel Bose stereo. I got to have 19-inch wheels. I got to have flames on the side. It’s going to make me feel like the guy I want to be or the girl I want to be. That’s the incentive. Those change. Free bed liner so on and so on. Then there’s terms. Terms change all the time. Terms are how much and how long. That’s really what it is. 0% financing for the life of the loan. No payments for 90 days, how much, how long. $399 a month for 72 months.
When all that stuff changes, the spots have to change because it’s really bad if a local dealership puts out an ad that’s expired. Now you say to yourself, “Well, why doesn’t the dealership just keep the ad going?” Because those incentives in those dealerships in general, I’m going to say that a lot because it’s a crazy industry, but in general, those incentives come from the manufacturers. The manufacturer, Ford, Chevy, INFINITI, they’re the ones that will give you 0% financing if financed through INFINITI Motor Acceptance Corporation, or they’ll give you no payments for 90 days if financed through some restrictions apply, see store for details, Tier 1 credit, blah, blah, blah, all this stuff.
When those incentives and terms expire, you can’t get them. However, you can always get something else. There’s always something. If my production company, which also runs the traffic, which means we buy the time for the media, for on-air, billboard, print, TV, if we run an ad accidentally, we can be fined. A lot of money per airing, per station. We’re very, very careful to make sure that our spots rotate. If we don’t have something in time, or we’re waiting for the manufacturers to give us the incentives, or we’re waiting for the dealership, the owner is in Aruba, which he always is anyways. The richest guy in your neighborhood is the guy that owns the car dealerships, no doubt about it.
If somebody does air a spot that’s expired and the customer goes, I’ll probably get a phone call. We’ll probably have to subsidize that. Why? Because we don’t want to stink. Don’t sue me. “All right. You know what? We’ll run it through our own finance and we’ll give you,” whatever the offer was, reluctantly, and yes, I’m going to get chewed out. That all boils back to why it’s the holy grail. You get 10, 15 spots, however many, you’ve got to redo them again. Is it easy to get into local automotive? Absolutely not. Oh, let’s go back and talk about the three. [crosstalk]
Nicky: Exactly. The three tiers, because people don’t know, and also how you get into each of those tiers. I guess national, me also being the voice of a car dealership or actually a brand, nationally, I know that is through agents, right?
Cliff: Well, yes and no, but let’s go back.
Nicky: Yes.
Cliff: There’s three tiers of automotive, national, regional, and local. National plays all over the country. It’s the national event that’s going on with Toyota or Honda, sign and drive, whatever. Plays all over the country. Beautiful, they buy millions of dollars, make the spot. The voice-over talent often is a celebrity. Sometimes it’ll be Kiefer Sutherland, sometimes it’ll be Dennis Leary, whatever, but a good portion are just top-tier voice talent.
Where do these spots come from? In general, again, in general, they’re going to come from a higher-end talent agency, something along the lines of ACM or along the lines of DPN, name them. The ones we all want to be signed to, or it could very easily come from a director that you worked with three months ago, but that director that you worked three months ago where’d you get that job? It is not easy to get into any tier. We’ll get into that again. National, SAG-AFTRA, probably; non-compete, probably. If you do a national F-150 spot, you sure as heck can’t do a Chevy spot-
Nicky: Correct.
Cliff: -but you know what? Let’s cross that bridge when we get to it. From my mouth to God’s ears, Chevy and Ford are both arguing to get me on their spots, so consider is the compensation for one, two, three spots a year equal to working all over the country. Now, when you do national, you’re really waiting for your phone to ring or you’re waiting for that audition to come in, which is fine. A lot of people have great careers waiting for that audition to come in.
National, big deal. Lawyers, accountants, signatures, papers, airplanes, hotels, managers, all that stuff. If you’re into that world, great, wonderful. It’s the best, nothing wrong with it. Regional I’m going to skip over. We’re going to go to local and I’ll come back to regional in a second. A local automotive advertisement is usually a one-owner dealership. Now, he could have four or five different dealerships, but it’s one owner.
This one owner is usually the name of a group like World Class Automotive Group, but it’s owned by Ray Huffines or Randall Reed or Clay Cooley or something, so they can play by their own rules if they want. I say if they want if they’re not looking for money from the manufacturer to help them pay for their advertising. That’s called co-op. Every car on a dealership’s lot, they buy. It’s not like Chevy pulls up and says, “Hey, man, here’s 500 Chevys. Good luck. Call us when you–“
Nicky: They have to buy them, yes.
Cliff: They buy them. They own those cars. Clay Cooley calls up Honda and says, “Hey, man, I just spent $185 million on inventory, you’re going to help me sell it?” They say, “Sure. Will you do it our way?” “We say, “Sure.” Their way is the font, the logo, the placement of the logo, the incentives, the terms, and any necessary disclaimer, if it’s a radio spot or print disclaimer, if it’s a TV spot.
We’ll write the script according to their specifications, we’ll send it back to them, and we’ll get a stamp on it that says appliance approved. When the production company gets the compliance approved, we’re in the clear, baby. We’re good. All we’ve got to do is make sure that we don’t say 38-497 when we’re supposed to say 38-744 and we’re fine. The amount of responsibility for a voiceover talent doing local spots is zero. All you’ve got to do is a great read, make sure you say everything right, and your audio sounds good.
You don’t have to write anything, you don’t have to edit anything. If it comes over 34, 35 seconds for a 30-second spot, you read it the best you can. You send them an email saying, “I couldn’t get this under 30. I suggest you guys edit something.” “Oh, no, that’s bad for them.” No, it’s not. We’re used to it. Our writers go crazy. I get a 30-second spot, it times out to 47 seconds.
Nicky: Phew.
Cliff: This ain’t going to work. If I have to time compress this thing 25%, we’re going to be wasting the client’s money. She’s not going to understand what they’re saying.
Nicky: For sure, yes. Chipmunk voice almost.
Cliff: Yes. It really gets fast. Time compression doesn’t raise it-
Nicky: Yes.
Cliff: -it just squishes it.
Nicky: It squishes it to where it’s not really understandable.
Cliff: You can do 15% 0 to 0.85 compression ratio and you’re okay. It’s going to be fast, but it’s it still works. Anything more than that sounds very unnatural.
Nicky: Yes.
Cliff: We can do time compression by cutting each line and layering them, getting them on top of each other, then time compressing, which is why car spots they talk so fast. They’ve got to get four cars in there. They don’t have a lot of money, they want to pay you well, so they get four cars plus disclaimers, depending on where you are. If you’re in California, good Lord, that disclaimer could be half the spot. If you’re in Texas it’s, “See store for details.” You’re an adult, read the fine print. Buy it or not, you’re on your own.
Local, you are marketing yourself 100%. Nobody’s going to help you. There’s not enough money in it to get other people involved. There’s plenty of money in it for you, but you start bringing in management fees, agent fees, another engineer to edit your spots, an accountant to keep track. You do everything yourself with Excel, a map on the wall. Maybe we can do a follow-up and we can talk about all that stuff, how to track your emails, creating a website that’s automotive-specific because guys that are looking for automotive don’t know what explainer videos, eLearning, and audiobooks are.
They listen to it, “I don’t know what he’s talking about. I’m not in healthcare. I want to hear car spots,” so you do something. It’s easy/automotive, throw your stuff up, that you don’t have to write a lot, we don’t want to read a lot. You’re marketing yourself to agencies, to production companies, not talent agents, and not managers, but to actual production companies that have editors, video editors, writers, and all that stuff.
The way you get on a roster with a talent agency is the same way you get on a roster with one of these ad agencies. You submit, they like you, you build a relationship. I always recommend for people not to start building relationships until you’ve got something to show.
Nicky: Yes, for sure.
Cliff: Because people in automotive, especially in Tier 3 automotive, they’re sergeants. They’re not real creative, flowery, huggy people. They’re, “You will make your mortgage this morning. You will go out and sell 40 cars,” drinking coffee and eating donuts, then they run through the paper like a football game and they go out and they try to sell cars. They’re great at motivating their sales team, but they don’t know how to write an ad. I’ll call them up and I’ll say, “Hey, Memorial Day’s coming up next month, what do you want to do?” I always get the same thing, “What did we do last year?”
Nicky: [laughs]
Cliff: Okay, pull up last year’s spot. Now it’s 37 instead of 32. Now it’s free this instead of that, change it out. What does that mean? That means you get to go in and do a drop-in. You’re on your own. It is not easy, but Nicky, I challenge you to give me any genre of voiceover that’s easy to get into at this point. It’s getting harder and harder and harder.
Nicky: Yes.
Cliff: One of the reasons automotive I feel is doable is that a lot of people are afraid of it. A lot of voice talent don’t know what it is. They think it’s, “Sunday. Sunday, Sunday, be there,” which, yes, there’s still some of that around, but since COVID and since all the craziness that’s going on in the world for at least the last two, two and a half years, we’re calming down a little bit. Women, man, watch TV. Women are 50% of the national spots.
Nicky: That didn’t used to happen. It was mostly guys doing all car commercials.
Cliff: Because the psychology on the lot was, and please forgive me for saying this, was, “Why don’t you bring your husband around, little lady, and we’ll cut ourselves a deal?” You know how I feel about that. I personally think women are far superior to men in every single aspect, except I can probably beat you up. Other than that, you guys win, hands down. Women are buying cars. Of the eight automotive manufacturers biggest in the United States, all eight of them are women creative directors, which is interesting.
Nicky: Yes.
Cliff: Because women ask me, “Do women actually do car spots?” I say, “Not only do they do them, but you’re reading for women creative directors.” Now, that’s on the national scene, but it trickles down. You get a local INFINITI dealership, or Cadillac dealership, or Jaguar dealership, they don’t want to sound like Friday, Sunday, Sunday, Sunday.
Nicky: Exactly.
Cliff: “A beautiful place to lease or buy a beautiful car. Casa de Cadillac.” We emulate that sound as well. Now, what is it about automotive that separates it from anything else? Nothing. It’s just you’re talking about four tires and a steering wheel. Yet, you’re still a dad. You’re still the old guy. You’re still grandpa thrilled that the first day your granddaughter drove was in a Volvo. You’re the student that just got out of college. I’m really smart, but I’m really broke. Go buy a Kia. Our family needs to be bigger.
Now the I’m a soccer mom type delivery is dying out, and I’m grateful because I don’t like that. I call them hi, honey, I’m home spots. “Hi, honey, I’m home. What are you doing?” “I’m checking out the new prices.” “Oh, great idea. Sounds like a great addition to our–” I hate that stuff. Now it’s just more narrative. It would be like, “Looking for 17 drink holders to satisfy the soccer team?” Instead of, “I’m a mom and I’m so glad I have.” We’re talking and it’s more narrative. Of course, there’s disclaimers, and there always will be, because a lot of those dealerships are very superstitious. They think it worked in the past, is that they don’t want to take too many chances.
Nicky: Got it.
Cliff: I can wean them away a little bit during my direction. If I just do a little bit at a time, before you know it, they’re talking to me like a friend. Another thing about the big difference between national automotive and local automotive is national automotive, when you’re reading, it’s extremely vehicle-centric. You’re talking about the car. National automotive, all the great things this car can do for you. When you’re talking about local, you’re talking about the dealership. I’ve done ads where “You can buy a Toyota Camry anywhere you want. It’s a great car, but the difference is customer service.”
That’s a card we play. We have more, we have better, we have nicer. “At Sewell INFINITI, you’ll find people that you can relate to. You’ll also find cars that you’ll also–” You get the idea, kind of thing.
Nicky: Yes, because they compete between themselves. Local dealerships, you go to one place and you can tell them, “Hey, you know what? I found this $2,000 cheaper in that other dealership.” Now you get them fighting with each other.
Cliff: You know what they’ll say to you? Bring us your purchase order.
Nicky: [laughs]
Cliff: You can’t just walk in and say, “Hey, Cliffy Chevrolet they’re only asking 38, you’re asking 42.” They’ll say, “You know what? Bring us the purchase order.” Because you can do that. You go to a dealership, say, “I want this car, how much? Blah, blah, blah, give me a printout. I’m going to go compare.” They say, “Go ahead.” They’ll do it for you.
Nicky: Okay.
Cliff: It’s like a lawyer that has to reveal all the stuff that they know in their case to the other lawyer.
Nicky: Yes.
Cliff: They’ll say, let me see the printout, or let me see this. They’ll do that. Sometimes competing dealerships will have a giant lot of sales, “Finally, the answer will be solved. Chevy versus Ford. This weekend [unintelligible 00:34:03] the two giant dealerships, ding, ding, ding.” It’s boxing. It’s fun. Local is fun because you get to take on the personality of the community. If you’ve got an audition for a dealership in Nashville, do your homework. Go listen to Nashville local news. Find out how people talk. You don’t have to have the accent necessarily, but just the demeanor.
You have to come across as the person that has coached every kid in the community in soccer for the last 15 years. You know everybody. Come the weekend, they’ll say, “Hey, we’re here. Is Nicky here?” “Hey, everybody, this is Nicky. I’m down on the lot this weekend and we’re having hamburgers and hot dogs. Looking good, Julio.” They want to come in and see you, even though this is all done in your studio with street sound effects, horn honks, and kids crying sound effects. Make it sound real. We call them simulive. Simulated live broadcasting.
Nicky: That’s a cool name.
Cliff: Dealerships love it because it can make it sound like there’s something always going on at their dealership. Finding the names of the automotive production companies, I’ve talked to people before I even started demo with somebody, I said, “You got to come up with 50 names. I need 50 leads.”
Nicky: Wow.
Cliff: Some of them come back in three days and say, “Dude, I could only find four.” The next conversation I have 15 minutes later is, “How many did you want?” “50.” “I got 80.” It’s really up to the person. I have a combined list of over 400 production companies that do daily automotive. Before anybody that I work with I give that list to, they got to give me 50. I’ve got to make sure that this is going to work for you. That’s really the most important thing for me with the demo. If I work on a demo, write, do all this stuff, and work for 2 weeks, 10 hours a day on it, I don’t want it sitting on your desktop. I want you working it.
You send out introductory emails that are very, very short. Charting, putting all of these leads that you’re getting on LinkedIn, go to the magnifying glass, type in automotive, automotive advertising, automotive television, automotive media, television automotive, television auto, any-
Nicky: Any combination of words.
Cliff: -combination of those two words, see who’s posting. More important, see who’s answering. Because with one post, you can have 10 or 15 different replies.
Nicky: Thank you so much for listening. We’ve reached the end of part one of this interview. Don’t forget to join us next week for the conclusion and part two of this episode. In the meantime, if you found anything of value and you think of someone who might benefit from this information, go ahead and share it with them. Don’t forget to like and subscribe so you never have to miss an episode. I’ll see you soon.
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