In a radio ad, you have five seconds to get someone’s attention so they can decide if you have anything interesting to say. This book is a practical tool for people in many fields who write radio commercials, by choice or necessity.
You Have Five Seconds will help you write effective ads for local radio. You may be:
- A radio salesperson, production manager, DJ, or other radio station employee;
- An ad agency copywriter;
- A freelance writer with clients that need radio spots;
- An advertiser -- the business paying for the airtime -- who wants a positive image for their business and who wants more control over the company’s advertising;
- A professional voice talent who also writes spots;
- A student from one of many fields, including advertising, marketing, business, PR, communication, broadcasting, journalism, and strays from other areas.
Local radio doesn’t have the big budgets or marketing tools of national radio campaigns. A local business buying airtime on a local station needs to generate a response
now. Matt Judge brings his experience in writing for radio to help you do just that.
Matt Judge has been in the business world in many capacities since 1985. Matt is a graduate of Indiana University and the La Jolla Academy of Advertising Arts. His career started as a ghost writer for several books by a big-name author. The writing thing was working pretty well, so this later morphed into writing for radio. This meant starting the day writing the jokes for the morning show, then writing the commercials for the local advertisers. It was here he realized that there was nothing on the market to help people write local spots well, so he wrote this book in... wait for it... 1989. Several publishers responded the same way: "This is really good, but we don't know how to sell it." So, the manuscript went into a box. He later found it, updated it to include things like web sites and cell phones, and finally published the book in 2025, 36 years after writing it. Matt's later careers include an import-export business, event management, industrial sales, and software sales. His long list of clients includes the Formula One race, major corporations in several countries, multiple Super Bowls, and much more. He is a history geek, a truly average musician, and a language nerd. His work has taken him to more than 30 countries. Matt is a frequent conference and luncheon speaker to professionals in many fields.
