Giving Radio Creativity a Better Airing

By Mike Bersin

Why are so many radio ads so poor - and so few really stunning? Mike Bersin offers a few hints for creatives - and their clients.

Is the creative potential of radio being fully exploited in regional radio? Well, it is by some. And it's not by others. But the good news for all of us is that more and more clients and agencies are not only using radio but using it imaginatively and effectively.

Yet the Style A radio ad, a 30s piece of library music with 35 seconds of wink-in-the-voice copy struggling for survival, can still often be the frontier beyond which some advertisers never feel comfortable exploring.

And, like an ageing heavyweight boxer, the punchy aggressive read, radio's answer to TV's MAN IN THE JACKET HARANGUING US FROM HIS WAREHOUSE, is still a contender.

Incoherent with detail, unlovely and unloved, it's there because it works, of course. But for every product? Is that the best we can do?

Which brings me to the point. If those kinds of commercial work, what more might we do? What do we actually think radio is for?

Writing Radio Is Very Difficult

But not if you can do it. As far as I can tell, writing truly world-class radio commercials is a talent given to few people: about the same number as are capable of writing truly brilliant world-class press, TV or any other kind of advertising. Writing EFFECTIVE commercials, on the other hand, doesn't seem to be any more difficult (or easier, for that matter) for radio than any other medium. Please don't be put off radio because somebody tells you it's hard to do it well.

Success Starts With The Brief

Less is more. Like one of those giant forty-eight-sheet thingies, radio has a limited amount of time to make an impact. Most posters have a very small amount of factual copy, but convey an enormous wealth of information through a powerful illustration.

Radio can do just as powerful a job if the brief is simple, clear-cut and direct enough. As soon as we begin merely to cut and paste copy to get it to fit a slot, we're about to spend a lot of the client's money saying they're no different from their competitors.

Don't Shout, I Can Hear You: 1

They call them listeners because they listen. A lot of people worry about the need to attract attention to their commercial, yet a key piece of radio research tells us that listeners absorb a significant amount of information from radio commercials even though they may appear to be preoccupied with some other activity. One of the biggest factors about this absorption is the relevance to the listener of the message or the product.

Another key piece of research shows that the most memorable style of radio advertising is 'mood/fantasy' - something which engages the listener's imagination rather than merely vibrating their eardrums.

Don't Shout, I Can Hear You: 2

How much psychological distance do you want between yourself and the listener? As with the cinema, where the apparent distance between you and the action depends on the kind of shot, close-up, longshot etc, the intimacy you get with the listener depends on the volume and tone you use. Speak softly and the radio is right next to them. Shout and your message is immediately distanced. Which do you find more seductive: your partner nibbling your earlobe or barking orders from the other side of the room? (Incidentally, if it's the latter, I have a phone number in Bolton which might interest you - but you're still in a minority.)

Telling Isn't Selling: 1

If advertising's role is to dramatise a benefit, radio can do it as well as any medium. But it helps create powerful advertising if we have a clear, focused idea of what that benefit is. If we as creators of advertising don't have a clear idea of our message, how can the people we're seeking to persuade? A lot of regional advertising can be product and price- based, and if people don't know why they should spend less of something, there's no hope for them. But we can still dramatise the message: don't tell people, show them in some dramatic and memorable way.

Telling Isn't Selling: 2

How often does the style of the ad directly contradict the message? The dull commercial for the exciting new concept? The fashion ad with no style? The commercial for the financial institution with whom your money is as safe as houses, except the details go a little too fast for you to catch the small print? Don't tell them, show them.

Radio Is Like A Door-To-Door Salesman

No, really, it is. When a door-to-door salesman calls, he is invariably an interruption. Dragged away from what you would rather be doing, if the salesman is rude, aggressive or unsavoury, you'll literally shut him out. But if he has a winning smile and a friendly line in patter, you'll probably give him a sympathetic, if sceptical ear. Ditto when you're dragged away from your radio programme to hear a commercial. If it's got a nice personality you're much more likely to feel warmly disposed to it. Is not the personality of the advertising the personality of the company?

Creativity Is Cheaper

At a time when there were a dozen window companies advertising on one of our stations, the smallest one with the smallest budget got the lion's share of business because they were the only advertiser with any imagination in their advertising. Domination doesn't necessarily mean buying up all the space in the medium, it can mean taking all the relevant space in the listener's memory.

Invest In The Future

With many products, very few people are actually in the market at precisely the time of advertising. In newspapers, this generally means no more than turning the page on an irrelevant ad. On radio, it means either entertaining a potential future customer with a compelling commercial which makes him think well of you as someone to do business with, or really hacking him off with something both irrelevant and boring. I know which I'd sooner do.

Don't Look In The Mirror

How much advertising, in any medium, is all about the client and his business? The people with the money are the punters - and the most effective radio advertising of which I'm aware starts with an appreciation not of the product, but of the reasons when, how and why the customer will buy the product.

Those wonderful people, the public, care neither for your business nor mine. The only thing they care about are their own needs. Don't take up any more of your valuable time telling them anything more about yourself than you need to get them to buy from you.

Tell The Truth

Bit radical, this. Then again, truth is one of those funny things that most people can recognise, and sometimes only in the obverse sense, in that they can tell when you're lying. Quite often what makes a radio commercial particularly powerful is that it's based on some truth of human behaviour. It's also sometimes a handy way to arrive at a creative solution to look at the truth of how people buy and use a product and to demonstrate that. Then again, sometimes it isn't....

If the Answer Is 30s What Was The Question?

Thirty seconds is a great average length for a radio commercial. But what's wrong with making the ad as short as possible but as long as it needs to be? What's wrong with three 10s ads every other ad in the break? Or a different commercial for morning, noon and night? Or one for talking to the paying parents, and one to the decision making child?

You Can't Show Pictures On Radio

Very few things are bought because of the way they look, but because of the way people feel about them. If you don't believe me, try and persuade yourself you'd buy a car that looked exactly like a BMW but was made by Trabant. Radio is very good at conveying emotional information. Also one of the potential pitfalls of the visual media is their literalness: you HAVE to show a picture. In a holiday brochure, if you don't show a picture of the hotel, people assume it hasn't been finished yet. If you show an artist's impression they assume it hasn't been started, and if you show a photograph they think it looks like all the other hotels. Which of course, it does. Not a problem on radio.

You Can't Do Branding On Radio

In the strictest sense, that you cannot actually, really, physically show a picture on radio, no you can't. But you can convey brand values in any medium. Twyford's do it in porcelain and Richard Branson conveys his brand values through the media-mix of facial hair and woolly jumpers.

Radio conveys brand values too. You cannot make a commercial that doesn't give the listener an image of the company you're advertising. How much better to give them the image you planned rather than the one you got by default.

That's Enough Of That, Mike

Well, you know all this stuff anyway. I just wanted you to know that I knew it too. The thing is, all advertising works, we all just want to make it work better. If not everybody is taking full advantage of the creative potential of radio, it may just be that their expectations are too low. Like most things, you only get out of radio what you put in. So - demand more from radio, expect more from radio and care more about your radio advertising. If you're disappointed, I'll borrow a hat and hire someone to eat it.

Reprinted by kind permission of the author.

Comments

Cambo Khemra
Good I always want radio production script.

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