We're hitting the airwaves!

I guess the saying, "time is money" couldn't be proven more true than the rate that the radio industry works!

We went downtown this morning to record our radio ad with WLIT (previously supposed to be on WNUA, but with the help of our fantastic Clear Channel sales rep, Jeff, we determined WLIT was a better fit). And by the time we got home on the trusty brown line, our ad was mixed, edited, voodoo magic'ed and sitting in our inbox!

The whole experience was very exciting and just a bit nerve racking. We got there and Jeff whisked us away into a sound booth. There sitting across from us was Dave Hilton, a radio personality on WLIT who had a voice that flowed out of his mouth like maple syrupy goodness. He read the script out loud with suggestions as how to pace it and emphasize it and it made me fully appreciate why he does what he does and I do what I do. It's just a 30 second commercial, but his time and attention to making sure it sounded good put me just a little more at ease and you could definitely tell that after about the third time reading through it. He played it back to us and as Tony said, if my voice really did sound like that (after doing above-mentioned voodoo), he wouldn't ever have any troubles hearing me- I'm a soft talker if you didn't know that already. My lungs push words out about as far as my nose. I guess with all that equipment and mixing, even soft-talkers like me can sound normal! So after trying it a few times, we all determined it was good to go and we were off.

It will start running on Monday, April 13th and run for about 6 weeks. Wow, we've come a long way from harassing all of our friends to vote for us to having a real live radio ad. This is probably small potatoes to most businesses, but to Tony and I (and the unwavering Sheridan-the-cat), it's kind of a big deal. Thanks again everyone for helping make this happen!!

So without further ado... here it is.... probably not Dave Hilton quality syrupy goodness, but we're pretty happy with it!

We Won!

Well, Spilled Ink Press will be on the radio! We won the radio contest for free advertising! Thanks to everyone that voted for us, and to WNUA for the opportunity.

Now...how do you make a radio commercial?

This is not a drill... This is the ACTUAL CONTEST

>VOTE HERE<

So the video's are posted! Our shot at free radio advertising comes down to all of you out there in "radio land" (isn't that what cheesy DJ's say?) voting your little hearts out for us. I implore you, send this to your friends, your neighbors, your mom, your grandma... if they have an email address, sit them down and instruct them: VOTE FOR SPILLED INK PRESS!

Thank you, thankyouvrrymuch.

We're in a radio contest!

If there's one thing a small business could use, it's exposure. Advertising is so expensive, and even though you have to spend money to make money....there's not always extra money to spend. So when we heard a pretty big Chicago radio station was having a contest to give away around $20,000 of advertising time to local small businesses, we jumped at the chance.

To be honest we had kind of forgotten about it when we got the call. I mean, who figures they are going to win a radio contest? But it turns out we are one of 12 finalists. I think 4 of the 12 will each get the advertising on the station, which will end up being close to a month's worth of commercials. Obviously we could never afford this, since we debate whether or not to take out ads for a couple of hundred bucks, so this is an amazing opportunity.

So to win, we will need your help. Each of the 12 finalists recorded a video explaining who they are and what they do, and the videos will be posted on the station's (WNUA) website. Listeners will go to the site and vote for who they think is most deserving....sort of like American Idol for small business owners. The videos are not up yet, but when they are we would really appreciate it if all would take the time to vote for us.

Once the videos are up we will let you know. Thanks.