The client had many testimonials on its site: some are video interviews of 2-4 minutes each and some are written testimonials. The challenge was taking these video clips and finding each person’s life-changing experience that altered the way they now think about food, eat, and live — in about 35 seconds. This essential copy was sandwiched between a short announcer introduction and a longer call to action.

By the way, Lap-Band is an abbreviation for a laparoscopic adjustable gastric band, which is a safe, cost-effective procedure that can be done in a doctor’s office in a few hours. The Lap-Band loops around your stomach to make it smaller, which greatly diminishes your appetite.

Listen to these commercials for real Lap-Band patients by a healthcare copywriting expert: Staci lost 47 pounds and Nancy lost 130 pounds.

He contacted many newspapers and got them placed in the San Francisco Chronicle, SF Gate.com, and the Arts Monthly Column of The New York Times, just to name a few.

Phil then asked me do some radio copywriting for :15, 30 and :60 commercials. The latter script is below. Finally, Ellen Young, a freelance media buyer and planner, purchased time on several radio stations (KCBS and KDFC).

To buy one ticket and get one free, click on www.cityboxoffice.com or call 415-392- 4400. To see video clips, visit their Facebook page.

Listen to the :60 KCBS Radio Commercial

:60 RADIO SCRIPT – ANNOUNCER VOICEOVER WITH MUSIC IN BACKGROUND.

So that her blind father can see, Shim Chung offers her life as a sacrifice, plunges into the sea dragon’s watery realm, and rises to become Queen.

Don’t miss this tale of a daughter’s devotion in a classical ballet filled with excitement, grace, and timeless beauty.

Presented by Snowy World and the internationally acclaimed Universal Ballet of Korea, “Shim Chung, The Blind Man’s Daughter”, is a critically praised fantasy ballet. Its lavish sets, traditional costumes, classical ballet, and Korean dancing will delight your entire family.

Join us for Universal Ballet of Korea’s “Shim Chung, The Blind Man’s Daughter” at San Francisco’s War Memorial Opera House on Friday, July 22^nd and Sunday, July 24^th.

To buy one ticket and get one free, visit city box office dot com or call 415.392.4400. That’s 415.392.4400.

Here are a few radio public service announcements produced recently to be played in cities where they’re touring to promote ticket sales and donations.

To enable the choir’s local audience to hear the children’s energetic voices, as well as to pomote ticket sales and donations, I scripted and pre-produced the audio music tracks for two :30 radio public service announcements. The local community or church can use these music beds to record their own commercials that are played on local stations to announce the venue name, date and phone number to buy tickets:

• :30 “ACC Tour” Radio Script (doc)
• :30 “ACC Tour” Pre-Produced Music Bed (mp3)
• :30 “ACC Tour/Gospel” Radio Script (doc)
• :30 “ACC Tour/Gospel” Pre-Produced Music Bed” (mp3)

Wearing a variety of hats — from straw hats for golf to knit caps for skiing to neoprene caps for scuba diving –– I’ve traveled through 40 US states and throughout the world to write:

• Quarterly enewsletters and Websites for Red Sail Sports from 2002 to 2009. This included  redsail.com, then separate sites for each of this largest resort based diving and watersports operator in Grand Cayman andAruba. For the latter, I had a spectacular visit filled with scuba diving, snorkeling, parasailing, lunch and sunset catamaran cruises, and more. Read Watersports Paradise Found.

• A year of monthly enewsletters and promotional emails for All Nippon Airways.

• Print ads for Frontier Airlines that helped an ad agency in Dallas win the account –– even after I left Texas and moved back to the West Coast.

• The initial website, three Annual Reports and miscellaneous brochures for Hawaii Air Ambulance.

• Shore brochures for Alaska, Mexico and the Caribbean for Princess Cruises.

• Weekly ads and radio commercials for a three-year span for Caesars Tahoe Resort Casino, Nevada, to promote its wide variety of stellar entertainers.

• Ads and outdoor boards for the Westin St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco. Download English Grill PDF.

• Fact Sheets and Guest Service Directories for Hilton.com.

• Ads for the Monterey Marriott in Northern California.

• Over 20 magazine articles as a freelance travel copywriter for Scuba Times, Alert Diver, Adventure Journal, Sport Diver Interactive, Dive Pacific Magazines, Asian Diver, Dive Travel, Undercurrent’s Traveling Diver’s Chapbook, Marin Independent Journal, S.F. Chronicle and L.A. Times about diving in Maui, the Turks & Caicos Islands, Australia, Kosrae (Micronesia), Baja California (Sea of Cortez), Aruba, Florida, The Bahamas, Monterey (CA), Belize, and other tropical, warm water destinations.

•  Newspaper ads and radio spots for the Westin San Francisco Airport Hotel. Download Benchmark Grill PDF,

• I’m also the managing editor for www.vagablond.com, a luxury ezine for travel, shopping, food and wine, where I’ve posted over 1,400 articles since 2005. Some of my favorite articles include:

• Kool, Klassy Kimpton: Hotel Monaco Denver

• Show Me The Monks’ Key: Kruisheren Hotel, Maastricht, The Netherlands

• South Beach Cool Meets St. Barts Calm: Ku´Luxury Hybrid Hotel, Anguilla

• This Is The Winter Of Our Discounts Sent: Europe on Sale, Expedia.com

• Love Your Boutique Hotel? Buy It at Kimpton Style Program

• The Paws That Refreshes: Pet Friendly Hotels

• Where To Get Drunk In Disneyland: Club 33

• Dinner And A Thousand Stars: Canyonlands by Night & Day, Moab, UT

• Cathay Pacific Airways; First Class In A Class By Itself

• The Bride Wore A White Wetsuit: Caribbean Weddings, Cozumel, Mexico

Read more of my Vagablond.com posts.

I wrote these spots for a client in the Midwest through an agency on the East Coast, which proves I don’t have to live in your town to write, direct and produce great radio copywriting for you:

1) Lasik-1 Jingle: Country Version”
Lasik-1: Country.mp3

2) Lasik-1 Jingle: Rock Version”
Lasik-1: Rock.mp3

3) “Lasik-1 Jingle: Easy Listening Version”
Lasik-1: Easy Listening.mp3

Here are a few of the “as produced” MP3s for my favorite radio scripts for clients as diverse as:

— Caesars Tahoe Resort Casino featuring Ken Nordine of “WordJazz” fame to describe “The Caesars Odyssey” promotion within “The Glory, The Grandeur, And The Games” theme.

— Greyhound Lines with a :60 jingle for their casino service to Reno, Lake Tahoe and Atlantic City.

— Farmers Direct Auto Insurance with a humorous twist to a serious subject.

— Foremost Foods Cottage Cheese with Paul Frees (former voice of Scrooge McDuck, Capt. Crunch, Boris Badenov, and many other animated cartoon characters).

— And Barron Mortgage Company with one of their mortgage brokers telling a few humorous success stories.

Listen to these :60 Radio Commercial MP3s now.

Here are my favorite ads, ad banners, and radio commercial that I created as a San Francisco copywriter and direct marketing copywriter for Bank of America.

1) Bank of America — As an Associate Creative Director at Grey Advertising, San Francisco copywriter, I wrote this campaign of three newspaper ads for BofA’s Home Loan division. The ads were to have run for six weeks. But after only two, the client asked the agency to stop running them because the phone lines were swamped with a surplus of calls. Offering BofA’s lowest rates and the first ever refinancing adjustable rate home loans were also contributing factors to their success.
Download Ad #1 PDF
Download Ad #2 PDF
Download Ad #3 PDF

2) Bank of America/Nation’s Bank Animated Banners – For Carat Interactive Ad Agency, I wrote a bunch of banners for BofA after it became Nation’s Bank. (Of course, it’s now called Bank of America once again.) See the banners — scroll down to bottom of page.

3) Bank of America Priority Plus Home Loan :60 Radio Commercial and Newspaper Ad — This commercial needed to demonstrate that the bank was committed to approving applicants for adjustable rate home loans in only three business days, rather than weeks. So I found the world’s fastest talker in New York City, flew her to SF for a recording session, and hired a male voice actor as her “translator” for this script. You really can hear every word she says if you listen carefully. “PLAY NOW” to hear the “Priority Plus Fast Home Loans” MP3.
Download Priority Plus Home Loan Ad PDF.

For their news promotions, we would receive the news story scripts on a Monday each week. By Tuesday, we’d have created three newspaper ads with copy and layout, plus a radio script with three different tags.

This account forced me to think creatively, strategically and efficiently!

Here are four completed commercials of the dozens of radio scripts that I wrote for NewsCenter 4.

Advertising copywriting, I believe, should be entertaining with humorous headlines. So here are two I wrote that I still like, many years later. The first was a recipe ad that ran in Good Housekeeping and other women’s magazine. For it, we dressed a model up like the Mona Lisa, so the headline was “Presenting Mona Lindsay’s Olive Meatloaf.” The bacon-and-olive meatloaf recipe tasted much better than it looked.

The second ad ran in football programs in the Bay Area (49ers, Raiders, Cal & Stanford) because the Lindsay Olive sales team would take their clients to the games. For this one, we created the fun Lindsay Olive “Half-Time-At-The-Football-Game” Game. Download the ad PDF.

For Lindsay, I also wrote and produced some hilarious radio commercials that won lots of major awards. The first was a Jewish Olive talking about his son. The second was a “nebbishy” olive who was very homely.

Listen to these two :60 MP3 Lindsay Olive radio commercials now.