Giving Radio Creativity a Better Airing

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 30 seconds, 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.