I have worked with some incredible
broadcasting legends during the twenty-five plus years that I toiled in the
business. Some of the names you would
recognize from their work on air and then there were the others that worked
behind the scenes who were just as important as those on the air that people turned
on their radios to listen to. One of those “behind the scenes” people who made
an impression on me is a salesman in Port Huron
by the name of Al Tyrell. A big bear of
a man, Al Tyrell was an old school kind of salesman who didn’t have to convince
you to advertise on his radio station by carrying in a bunch of rating books
with numbers that you could twist and turn to say anything you want. Nope, when Al Tyrell came into your business
– he convinced you to buy advertising on his station because it worked and he
made sure that it did.
The main reason that the radio
advertising that Al Tyrell sold worked so well was because of Al Tyrell. Before Al stepped in front of a microphone,
with that “voice from God” that he has, he would sit at his desk and personally
write the commercial for his client. He didn’t use a computer or have a
secretary transcribe his words – he wrote it in long hand with a pencil on yellow
legal pad.
And when it comes to writing
commercials – Al didn’t have to follow some stylebook on how to write radio
commercials or attend some advertising seminar where the “ones who know pass on
the knowledge to those who don’t” – Al just knew what it took to make an
effective radio commercial and he did it.
He knew it in his gut what to say and said it. Plus, Al had an amazing gift for knowing how
to deliver the message his advertisers wanted you to hear without a lot of
fluff and minus the bullshit. Once
written – the advertisers’ message was delivered not by some screaming insincere
announcer or a pimply-faced kid just out of broadcast school, but by a caring
voice you could trust – Al Tyrell.
When it came to selling radio
advertising in Port Huron – there
aren’t too many people who could come close to Al Tyrell in terms of sales. There were no big or small accounts to Al Tyrell,
because he treated all of his clients alike – whether it was some big agency
account that bought in thousands of dollars a week or that one client that
advertised for a week or two once a year.
I would venture a guess that Al
would probably be pounding the streets selling radio advertising today, but
radio changed and it’s almost like people like Al were pushed out…not because
they didn’t produce – it’s they didn’t do it “the company way”.
Salespeople like Al Tyrell don’t
come around every day. They don’t yearn
to climb the corporate ladder at some radio station – they just want to do
their job – which is to sell. Management
knows that someone like Al Tyrell is going to write a lot of orders and bring a
lot of money into the station – but there’s something about management that wants
someone like Al to be just like everyone else – where not only do they expect
you to sell – but they have you busy writing reports and projections that are
nothing more than just paper for some department head to push around to justify
their existence. I think it’s safe to
say that near the end of Al’s career as a radio salesperson, he was more than a
little frustrated with all of the paperwork that he had to do – paperwork that took
time away from him doing the job of selling and paperwork that he knew didn’t
add any more money to his monthly sales figures.
It’s been a little more than seven
years or since Al retired from selling radio in Port Huron ,
Michigan
