Watch above or read below.

Matthew Burns:
Welcome to Crumbs for Giants. I don’t know why, Jack, whenever I talk to you, I need to do my radio announcer voice, but I really, really do. You guys will understand this in a second. When you hear Jack talk, that’s what he sounds like. He sounds like the best radio announcer voice ever.

Jack, before you talk, I did not tell you; I kept you in the dark. I’m going to have so much fun with this podcast, this YouTube channel, where I’m just going to tell you a topic and then you get to go all cantankerous on us and let us know exactly how you feel. That being said, you’re also frigging brilliant, and you’re going to come up with some really good reasons why. So the topic for the very first premier episode is, I want to talk about why offline media is so powerful still today.

Jack Heald:
Oh man.

Matthew Burns:
I know. Big topic.

Jack Heald:
What you should do is frame it a little bit. Go a little deeper than just merely offline media.

Matthew Burns:
Okay. Fair enough. All right. Big topic. So let’s talk about how the Wizard of Ads is known for loving radio. That’s a fair statement?

Jack Heald:
They are. Fair statement.

Matthew Burns:
Okay. It’s a fair statement. And we like the radio because you can’t choose to listen to it or not, really. I mean, yes, you can change a station. Yes, you can not be available when the radio ads are on, but if you’re within earshot of the radio, you can’t really miss hearing the ad. And if we do a really good job, which is on us to write really compelling and awesomely entertaining ads, well, then people want to listen to it and come back on a monthly basis to hear our new stuff.

But people say, “What about Sirius XM radio and streaming and this and blah, blah, blah?” And I want to kind of go back to, well, radio’s still the most powerful medium that we have in the moment.

Jack Heald:
Alright. So offline could be literally anything from the mailer that goes straight from the Postman’s hand into your trash can to “My God, I had a client who’s still running Yellow Pages ads. I didn’t even know Yellow Pages were being- Has he not heard of Google?” But yes, let’s limit it to mass media. So what was the question?

Matthew Burns:
Why is it still the best medium to use for marketing today?

Jack Heald:
Well, we start with the assumption that our clients do not have an unlimited advertising budget. Now, I would love to find one who did, but given the fact that they probably cannot just spend trillions of dollars on advertising, then we’re dealing with… We start with a financial limitation. And contrary to everything I have expected to have happen over the last 20 years, radio continues to outperform everything.

Matthew Burns:
Everything.

Jack Heald:
Everything. And I’m not qualifying that statement. We just saw a report in our last partners meeting from a study that was done, I think it closed in June of 2025. And it was an industry-agnostic and media-agnostic company that did the research. They just wanted to see what’s working and how much it costs. And radio is still outperforming every other form of advertising, period, and not by a little bit. And here’s the thing that… I’ll confess, I was a little surprised about number two. No, no, no. Nope. I was really surprised by number two. Number two is broadcast television.

Matthew Burns:
Television. I know.

Jack Heald:
Radio and broadcast TV. If you’ve got money that you want to spend on marketing, you won’t find a better buy than radio. And number two, although it’s four times more expensive than television, nothing else is close.

And I think back to… I’m sorry, I’m just jamming, but I think back to the late ’90s when the internet was starting to be the thing where people are going, “Oh, did you do it on the www.thingythingy.” And the promise that the early digital advertisers made us was, we’re going to be able to laser focus, razor-edge, pinpoint your ads so that you’ll be able to find exactly the people that you want to buy your product, and- Well, wait a second. Nobody won’t.

Matthew Burns:
Okay. Wait a second, though, Jack. To be fair, you can hyper-focus and talk to a very specific human in the world. You can get to that human.

Jack Heald:
Yeah, you can.

Matthew Burns:
The fallacy is that focusing, being able to hyper-target somebody, is actually going to make them want your shit. And I know, listen, and normally you’re the go-off-the-rails guy, but I’m going to say the problem is that at the time it works really… Honestly, digital marketing does work really well for some products. So these things that are spur of the moment decision making. But when you think of anything that has a long sales cycle or anything where there’s a decision that needs to be made with care, it’s like, “I’ve got to figure this out. Is it going to fit my budget? Am I going to do this? ” And when you gave the numbers, and I just want to lay this out, that report that we were shown wasn’t industry specific. It was media-specific.

Yeah, it was buying media for clients. All the industries are working better on the radio and television. And I wanted to point out too, though, I mean, you and I have a client who is just going to TV right now. So he’s going to broadcast TV right now. Just so everybody has context, it is the beginning of August of 2025, and people are pulling back from offline media, which is crazy to me, but advertisers are pulling back, and it’s a great time to buy.

Jack Heald:
It’s a killer time to do this.

Matthew Burns:
But our client spends $0 on PPC. He’s on his way to being a $45 million client.

Jack Heald:
And he’s not spending on pay-per-click advertising. No, wait, that’s impossible.

Matthew Burns:
No, he does. He does LSA. So I’ll give him that he’s not completely digitally removed. But he’s not doing other pay per click.

Jack Heald:
For those who don’t know what we’re talking about, LSA. Google Local Services.

Matthew Burns:
Exactly. So if you’re in a town or city and you type in the service that you’re looking for, it’ll give you a list of the actual local companies that are around. So he is still using LSA, but he would like to never use digital marketing. He said it even in our meeting yesterday. So this is what I’m trying to get at. If you really, truly understand the power, now, it took us two years to get him onto the radio and start to see it. I mean, he’s been championing his growth. I mean, it’s probably the best client that we have in our realm, where he’s just all out to grow and move and make things happen. And he’s worked harder than most people.

But we also have smaller clients that are chugging along, and they’re seeing this nice increase over a couple of years, and they’re going, “Wait a second, I didn’t spend any more on my PPC, or I’m not spending any more on my digital, but I’m still moving.” I’m like, “Yeah, because it doesn’t actually grow you the way you think. More people need to know you.

Jack Heald:
Yeah, it’d be good to explain why it works that way. Here’s why radio is number one, TV number two, and everything else trailing so far behind you, they can’t even be seen, is in advertising. Radio, I can quote the numbers, and they’re so low that people won’t believe it, but you’re going to have to trust me. You can reach the average listener 150 times a year with a 60-second message in almost any big market in the country for a dollar.

Matthew Burns:
Or less.

Jack Heald:
Or less. And that’s not a dollar per impression. That’s 150 times you can give your message to them for a dollar. TV, you’re going to pay $4 to reach that same person 150 times with a 30-second commercial, but you’re going to reach them 150 times in a year. Nothing else on the planet is within sight of that.

Furthermore, the crazy insanity of digital is that the only people that digital ads show up to are either the people they piss off, who don’t want to see it because the ads suck, or the people who are specifically looking for a particular thing. And that’s a vanishingly small fraction of the people who will eventually buy from you. We’re closing in on 10 minutes here, but I continue to be a massive fan of offline media for the simple reason that it is so mind-blowingly effective for so mind-blowingly less money.
I don’t think it should work.

Matthew Burns:
That’s the cantankerous… [chuckling]

Jack Heald:
The day… It should be over with. But I thought that five years ago, 10 years ago, 15 years ago, 20 years ago.

Matthew Burns:
Yeah. But it holds true.

Jack Heald:
And I continue to be wrong.

Matthew Burns:
I’m glad that you got emotional there at the end. This is the thing, guys. We truly do believe in offline media, and we know that it works. This isn’t a question mark. That’s the reason why all the major players in the market are still using offline media. Airbnb, McDonald’s, Apple. Anybody who has any kind of stake in the game is never going to be a digital-first performer. They just won’t. They’re going to go to billboards. They’re going to put things in your mailbox.

These are the things that the big guys realize, and it’s the unfair advantage that they have because they’ve been around long enough, and they can spend money on the number crunching on where their best dollars are coming from. We know this stuff. Let us be your unfair advantage.

Jack Heald:
Well stated.

Matthew Burns:
Jack, number one, episode number one. I’m so happy. So, Crumbs for Giants, guys, if you want to see more of this kind of stuff or you’d like to be a part of this, drop something in the comments, let us know what you’d want to know about in advertising, marketing, or small business. If you’re a marketer and you’re looking for another way that makes more sense than the digital side, we’ve got some answers for you. Keep following. Jack, thanks, man.

Jack Heald:
Next time.

Matthew Burns:
Okay, bye.

Latest posts by Crumbs For Giants (see all)