Hardware Show Radio and Podcast Production

The Two Fat Guys Didn’t Settle for Traditional Radio Advertising

Rick and Smokey first started their one hour Saturday show in the Spring of 2009 on an Indianapolis talk radio station, as a means to drive new customers into their brick and mortar hardware store. They were considering just running weekday advertisements out of the gate, but the cost wasn’t that much more to produce a weekly one hour weekend show.

Smokey drug Rick kicking and screaming to the microphone, but what helped Rick quickly acclimate was how our team helped organize the hour, laying out a structure both he and Smokey could see. Visualizing how their terrestrial and online radio show was organized cut down a lot of weekly preparation time and post audio production time. This made it much easier to manage within their day to day professional schedule.

Hear a Recent Episode of The Two Fat Guys Hardware Show: Packing 7 Years of Highlights into 1 Best of Show

Radio Was Their Only Advertising Tool

We helped personalize them to their audience with a constant refresh of audio imaging, creating new show intros and bumpers almost every week for 10 years. In the coming months they saw the results of their on air labor, seeing new foot traffic into their store daily. In their first couple of years, they experienced sales growth no other Ace Hardware store could match across several states in the Midwest. Their only advertising? Weekly radio.

We developed a plan to localize the show for other markets, while signing on regional and national advertisers, in tandem creating a structure to have localized commentary for hardware stores in other cities. Rick and Smokey can now say they have aired on over 13 terrestrial talk radio stations across the country and have logged six figures in online listeners through various podcast channels.

Bad On Air Time Slot Didn’t Deter Listener Growth

One example of their on air audience growth came in 2013. Before The Two Fat Guys Hardware Show started airing on WBAL 1090 and HD 97.9 on Sundays 7am to 8am – their cume listenership for that hour was sitting at 2,400. After just 16 weeks the cume listenership jumped to over 12,500.

They have grown from airing on one station and only focusing on driving new hardware store customers in 2009, to now double digit station airings, and multiple online audiences. We’re looking forward to launching a new branding campaign with a new series of podcast and video episodes this year.