Radio Magic: Repetition

Every man has a breaking point, and I’d just reached mine. It occurred on a recent Saturday evening just after 7 p.m. at the Outback Steakhouse in Grapevine, Tex. I was enjoying my usual Outback Special, medium well, and chatting with my wife when a television somewhere in the distance echoed the noxious sound: Sleep Experts.

Sleep Experts — as in, that stupid commercial that’s on every TV station and every radio station every five seconds. As in “I’m Christine Cook, president of Sleep Experts.” As in, the mattress store chain that seems to have a perpetual sale and that will always give you a “free box.” As in “I’m Christine Cook, and I’m going to invade your earspace every waking moment until you finally give in and buy a freaking mattress from me.” That Sleep Experts.

Judging by my wife’s non-reaction to my threat of violence toward a woman, the feeling must have been mutual. She just nodded and kept talking about her friend Kelli’s bad experience with a spoiled piece of chocolate. She also knew — based on her firsthand knowledge that I’m a skinny little wimp with big sarcastic mouth — that I probably wouldn’t follow through with my threat even if the opportunity ever actually presented itself.

But who wouldn’t want to take a swing at Christine? Her chain of 26 Dallas-Fort Worth-area mattress stores have only been open for five years, but she’s already crammed 30 years of advertising and branding into that short time frame. And even as an experienced marketing professional, Christine’s cheery voice and that annoying little jingle at the end of each commercial really grates on my nerves.

Etched into My Brain

Of course, the marketing professional part of me is also fascinated by Christine’s ability to make me want to hit a girl by simply etching her mug and slogan into my brain. I’m not exactly sure when my relationship with Christine started; I must admit I never became consciously aware of Sleep Experts until September last year. That’s when my schedule changed radically and I became a “morning guy.”

My son had just entered ninth grade, and as such, had an opportunity to be a part of an early morning Bible study class for high schoolers. The class started at 6:20, and I experienced firsthand what Robin Williams meant in Good Morning Vietnam when he said in the military the “Oh” in “Oh six-hundred hours,” stands for “Ooohh my gosh, it’s early!” This meant a whole new sleeping schedule for a guy who was used to burning the midnight oil four or five nights a week.

The new schedule went like this: Wake up at 5:35, flip on the radio, and hop in the shower. 5:45 — Shave, brush my teeth and gel what’s left of my hair while listening to the radio. 5:55 — Hop in the car, flip on the radio, pick up two other kids, and deliver them all to the church by 6:19. Then change the radio station and arrive at work by 6:31. Somewhere in there I get dressed.

On any given morning, between my shower, shave, and driving routine, I’d hear Mrs. Cook as many as three times on two different radio stations. One morning I swear they played “Everywhere” by Michelle Branch and followed it immediately with “Omnipresent” by Christine Cook. That’s when it struck me that Sleep Experts really was everywhere and had probably saturated the consciousness of tens or hundreds of thousands of potential mattress buyers across north Texas.

I can’t honestly tell you if Sleep Experts is any better than other mattress stores.

This isn’t an easy feat, of course. But it is certainly worthy of study and emulation by other marketers — including you. Marketing, when broken into its simplest elements, consists of just three steps: 1) have something good to say, 2) say it well, and 3) say it often. I can’t honestly tell you if Sleep Experts is any better than other mattress stores, and I can tell you with some certainty that there’s nothing special about the way Christine says what she says in all those annoying commercials. But on step 3 — saying it often — she gets a gold star on her forehead and line-leader privileges for a month.