Cashing In On An Underdog

TED WILLIAMS--AMERICAN HERO

Unless you've been living under a rock during the past week, you've seen the video of Ted Williams and heard his Great American Second Act Horatio Alger story.

To recap: a former radio announcer and homeless, recovering addict in Ohio, Ted was videotaped by a Columbus Dispatch writer as he stood at an intersection with a cardboard sign.

The writer asked Ted to do some announcer patter. This wild-haired man in an army surplus field coat did some golden-throated VO, and later told his story about why he's panhandling on a street corner.

Since that video hit YouTube, Ted Williams has reconnected with his estranged 92-year old mother, has appeared on various major national news shows, and now has announcing jobs with the Cleveland Cavaliers, Kraft Foods and MSNBC.

So, what does this prove?

YOUTUBE VIDEO CERTAINLY DIDN'T KILL THE RADIO STAR

Ted's career crumbled all on its own.

A YouTube video helped to resurrect it.

But there are two things that this white-hot flare of an American second act proves.

One, nothing is quite as powerful a marketing tool as social media is right now.

And two: radio is just as potent and necessary as it ever was.

The social media angle is obvious.

What's that? You don't think YouTube is social media?

IT'S TIME TO WAKE UP AND SMELL THE RED BULL

The millions of views, the viewer commentary, the sharing and embedding features, the interactive nature of the YouTube structure--all of YouTube's design is geared towards making things social and viral.

This is one of the reasons YouTube has become an intensely potent tool in internet marketing. The right video gets around and spreads the word. On January 3, 2011, Ted Williams was rocketed from obscurity to national fame by a single YouTube video that was passed from person to person via email.

By January 5--two days later--despite my 15-year career in VO, Ted Williams was likely making considerably more money in voiceover than I do--and I already make more than the vast majority of VO performers. But you just can't argue with three enormous, long-running gigs landing in your lap literally overnight. (Some of us still have to audition.)

We won't flog the social media horse here. There are probably plenty of other people who can and will do it better than I.

But, what probably won't happen is this: nobody will address WHY this became so huge. Social media is the tool. And Americans' love of an underdog certainly figures into it.

But there a plenty of worthy souls standing on street corners with hand-lettered cardboard signs. Why THIS underdog as opposed to any other?

THE DEEP EMOTIONAL HOOKS THAT RADIO HAS IN THE PSYCHE

If there's one thing Americans love as much as an underdog story, it's radio.

Yes, the "experts" love to sing the swan song for radio. The End Is Near! Save yourselves!

Especially if you work in radio, you know how often this has happened.

But radio never dies.

In fact, in some places, 103 years after the first recognized radio broadcast, radio is as strong as ever.

That's because it continues to do what no other medium can.

Done properly, radio continues to ignite the imagination, engage the listener, and draw him into a world that is so much bigger than any TV screen or web page can ever be.

And to see a downtrodden man clawing his way back up from the bottom suddenly smiling and sounding like THAT GUY on the radio?

IT WAS EXPLOSIVE

Long before any radio people sent me the link to Ted Williams' video, I received it via a chemical & mechanical engineer who's the CEO of capital equipment manufacturing company.

This man is professionally as far from radio as one can get. He sent a link from the Wall Street Journal website.

And believe me, as a CEO, he's got better things to do than email little stories around the interwebs.

Yet it triggered something in him that made him decide he had to share it.

Guaranteed, however much this capital equipment tycoon might like to deny it, at the core of his decision was the emotionally evocative quality of radio and Ted Williams' embodiment of it.

DO YOU SELL RADIO?

If so, it's suddenly a great time to be in the game.

You now have a sales tool no other medium gets to brag about.

If you're trying to close a reticent prospect, ask them to consider this: why is the Ted Williams story worth millions of dollars to all the news media and VO employers who've jumped on the bandwagon?

It's about more than just an underdog story.

It's about what the underdog represents.

That underdog represents the power of radio.

The internet makes and dispenses with stars overnight.

But radio perseveres. It lives on. It builds castles in the sky. It tells tales from topographic oceans. It tells you that's the way it is. It tells the rest of the story.

Over a century since its inception, broadcast radio is alive and well.

Ted Williams proves it: Radio means business. Still.