Media UK

The Creative Challenge of Radio Advertising

Lee Climpson highlights the challenges of working in radio advertising...

Introduction

As with any advertising medium, the challenge is to make best use of the opportunity. There are two main challenges that are specific to radio, one with its roots in history, the other in the nature of sound.

The first is specific to commercial radio in the UK, and other markets where commercial radio is relatively young. It was only in the early nineties that commercial radio started to become a serious consideration for UK national advertisers. This is in contrast with radio markets in other countries where commercial radio has been around for a lot longer. The US., Spain, France and many others have had commercial radio for over 60 years, and study reveals two big differences between developed and developing radio markets. Firstly, in developed markets, the creative challenge is far less of an issue, and secondly, far greater use is made of radio by national advertisers, to the extent that radio enjoys 2 to 3 times higher revenue share than in developing markets.

We do not have the wealth of experience in commercial radio that we have in other mass media. The first specific challenge is therefore to become as skilful at sonic communication as we are at visual communication, without the benefit of a rich culture to draw on. Use of radio is still growing, so there is still a lot of pioneering work to be done to shape UK radio advertising culture as it develops.

The second challenge is in dealing with sound. Sound is far easier to take for granted than to think about too deeply. It is invisible and ephemeral. It leaves no trace. You cannot freeze-frame it and pin it to a wall. Visual ideas have the advantage of a physical dimension, on a screen, or on paper that we can take a step back from and examine at our leisure. This solidness makes it easier to externalise visual ideas. In the right hands, a few strokes of a crayon on paper are all that is needed to convey a visual idea. Just to draw a sketch of a sonic idea can take hours of studio time.

The intangible nature of sound makes it special. Imagining scenarios in sound uses different areas of the brain than imagining visual scenarios - the minds ear as opposed to the minds eye. Some people have a natural talent for it, but for most of us, grappling with the intangible involves a special effort of concentration. To get a handle on sound, most of us need to rationalise it, and this Media UK article will attempt to describe sound both in terms of what it consists of and how we perceive it.

In developing radio markets there are two specific creative challenges: 1) To break new ground - to develop, rather than draw from, a radio advertising culture, and 2) To deal with the conceptual and practical consequences of the intangible nature of sound.

The Challenge: Voice

For many listeners, voice is the essential element of radio. The need to hear other human voices is deeply engrained within us, and many people feel uncomfortable alone in a house unless the radio is on. Speech plays a central role in our personal lives, and in the life of society.

To get some perspective on the nature of communication by voice, we can compare spoken and written language. Although both are largely made up of words, and words can be looked up in a dictionary, spoken language has a vast range of variables, including intonation, stress, rhythm, volume, inflection, timbre, accent, pitch, all of which we add to our choice of words to convey not only what we want to say, but how we feel about it. Furthermore, every time we speak we reveal a lot about who we are.

Compare the amount of information you receive by listening to the audio with what you would have got from reading a simple transcript of the words, and the difference will be the potential of voice to communicate vividly and forcefully on an emotional level, while still conveying rational information. Failure to exploit that potential is failure to tap into the most potent element of voice.

Many radio briefs contain several points of rational information, which only voice can deliver. The resultant advertisements, crammed with rapid fire speech, remind one of early press ads crammed full of printed words. While such advertisements can work as a vehicle for announcements, more radio advertisers are now beginning to understand that by reducing the number of words in their ads and focussing on the quality of voice, they achieve more standout and can manage to communicate the emotional values at the heart of each brand's identity.

There are many different ways that decisions about use of voice can enhance brand communication. Celebrities have ready-formed associations, and use of their voices can confer those associations onto a brand. National accents can evoke the origin of imported goods, or a travel destination. Regional accents can infer qualities like thrift or common sense. Voice can convey social background, gender and approximate age, all of which can be used to match target audiences.

The use of multiple voices, children's voices, laughter, sighs and other non-verbal use of voice, drama and comedy, all fall under considerations relating to voice. Testimony and Vox pop work particularly well in a sound-only environment.

The Challenge: Music

Music is magic. How else can we describe it? Our moods, emotions, even our heart and breathing rates can be affected by it. To appreciate just how important music is to us, consider for a moment how many of the greatest buildings in the world are concert halls. Think of how much time and money we spend on live or recorded music, or the industry that goes into making musical instruments. Check how many hours a day people spend listening to music on the radio, and how so many people have a tendency to whistle or hum tunes when they find themselves in a quiet moment.

What music communicates and how music communicates are deep questions. It is difficult to discuss music using words, considering that music is a universal language that goes beyond words. How deeply we need to delve depends on what we wish to achieve. At the simple end of the scale there are such retail advertisers as Asda or PC World who use short, musical stabs, which do little more than identify. They stick in the mind and they stick out on the sonic horizon, driving up brand awareness, even though the music itself does little to convey brand values. This is not to say that such short stings cannot be clever, as Pentium prove, but that they do not need to be, particularly if driving brand awareness is the principal aim of a campaign.

At the subtle end of the scale consider the extent to which British Airways' identity has become linked with their music over the last decade, and what that means to the flying public. To take the bold step of committing so strongly to a complex piece of music involves careful preparation, analysing what the music needs to communicate, and to whom.

Between the extremes lie a host of applications, including musical metaphors and mood music. Many of the features of voice find their parallel in music. Music can be specific to different demographics, particularly age; it can evoke specific countries or regions. There is also the issue of whether to use famous music and borrow its existing associations, or to choose or commission music that the campaign itself will make famous.

"A Mars a Day Helps You Work Rest & Play" and "Now hands that do dishes can feel soft as your face...", or "Only the crumbliest flakiest chocolate..." not only deliver a rational message but name a brand. Specially written songs, however, do not simply convey a rational message, but make some kind of brand statement through the form and style of the music. They therefore stand astride the line between the rational and the non-rational, where concepts meet feelings, and convey both simultaneously.

This dual effect can also be achieved by using somebody else's song, as in "Ain't no mountain high enough" for DHL, or Allied Dunbar's use of "Let's Face the Music & Dance", both of which feed on the lyrics of the original song for a rational message and on the overall feel of the song for branding. A way of borrowing well-known songs while controlling what they say is to adapt the lyrics, as in the old 'Vitalite' TV work to the tune of 'The Israelites'.

Through all the uses of borrowed music, the most consistently observable is the objective of combining the development of an affinity with the target demographic with the communication of at least one brand attribute. "It's My Life" for Tampax, or "Leftfield" for the Guinness Surfer Ad are good examples.

With longevity and repetition brands become more and more closely associated with a piece of music, so that for Cadbury's Flake, Kleenex or Carphone Warehouse their music has considerable value as a brand property. When we go as far as Coca-Cola, the brand becomes so closely associated with its music that we can call it a brand anthem. Perhaps the best example was Coke's adoption of the New Seekers' song "I'd like to Teach the World to Sing"; changing the last two verse lines to "I'd like to buy the world a Coke - To keep it company"

Before looking more closely at the use of such anthems, there is another use of music that needs mentioning, and it is pure evocation. Music can be incredibly evocative, and therefore of tremendous use to advertisers with a strong aspirational element in their advertising. For travel advertising, for example, music can evoke destination, as shown by TV soundtracks for a number of various Tourist Boards. The music on old 'Bounty' TV treatments was an important element of their desert island dreamscape.

One product category that has excelled in the use of music is cars. Peugeot have an excellent track record with such memorable themes as 'Take my Breath Away' or M-People's 'Hero'.

Renault have also invested heavily in music, and used to own the distinction of having used one single theme across the majority of cars in their range - Johnny & Mary, by Robert Palmer. Renault cut over 150 different versions of the theme for use across radio and television in different European and international markets. Renault aimed different models at different demographic groups and yet wanted to umbrella brand all their models as Renaults. Music enables them to do just that, thanks to its flexibility. Pop, jazz or classical versions of the theme all home in on their target demographics, but all are clearly identifiable as the Renault theme. This attribute of music borders on the spooky. The extent to which a musical theme can be corrupted and yet remain recognisable is truly amazing. Compare music's flexibility with visual images. A visual logo can often only tolerate minor amendments before it starts losing its identity.

Other advertisers to have used a theme with numerous variations include Martini, who kept the same music alive over several decades, McDonald's, One2One and of course Coca-Cola. It goes almost without saying that Renault, MacDonald's, Martini, One2One and Coca Cola have all used their music across cinema, TV and radio.

The Challenge: Sound Effects

Every location at every time has a specific profile in sound. The background sounds we hear, filter and usually ignore contain vast amounts of information about where we are, and what is happening around us. They also create an atmosphere, and indeed are usually referred to as atmospheric sounds, or 'atmos' for short. Sound studios usually have shelfloads of them. Only the other day here at Silk Sound, we were listening to 'A departure lounge at Shanghai Airport', and 'Medium wind with some gusts and eerie whistle', then there was 'heavy sea with big rollers onto shingle beach'.

These sounds are intensely evocative. Listen to a pub atmos and you can see yourself in a pub, and feel its atmosphere. Likewise for a beach, a shopping centre, a tropical rain forest or a traffic jam.

Then things can happen. Against the background sound of a traffic jam, we might hear the sound of someone tapping on a car's side window, followed by the sound of the window going down, 3 gunshots, screaming, a motorbike pulling up, the murderer getting on the back of the bike which then speeds off.

How can we tell a murder has taken place, when nobody has seen anything happen? The answer is of course that our hearing and vision are so closely linked in our minds that we can hear with our eyes and see with our ears. Past associations and a little imagination fill in the gaps. This phenomenon in radio listening is often called 'Theatre of the Mind', and is similar in some ways to the way we visualise when reading books.

In the above scenario, the shorter noises, like the gunshots or the motorbike pulling away, are different in their function from general background sounds, and are called spot effects. Spot effects can illustrate key associations with a product, like the fizz in a Pepsi ad, the clink and pour in Malibu, or the sizzling rashers in Danish Bacon ads, while atmos sets the scene.

One of radio's great attributes is that it can enjoy the freedom of the cartoonist in creating huge or impossible scenarios while retaining a photographic-type realism. Combining sound effects with voice can produce graphic visual images.

One of the most potent uses of SFX for an advertiser will arise if action is an essential element of the product proposal, as in the case of many films, videos and computer games. Sound brings action alive - try watching an action film with the volume turned down. Then try listening to the adapted Jurassic Park extract, which relies almost entirely on sound effects, or the Star Wars mini-radio play that combines voice, music, and sound effects. If the motivation for seeing or buying action films and action games is excitement, then radio can convey more of the product appeal than press ads, which can only describe action.

The Challenge: The Creative Mix

Most radio listening is a secondary activity, with listeners switching between active listening and passive hearing. Successful radio advertising therefore needs to either draw someone from hearing to listening or use sonic branding to drive brand awareness regardless.

Conceptual campaigns such as KitKat (Have a break have a…), Weetabix (Withabix, Withoutabix) and Strongbow (Live to Loaf) have clear concepts revealed through a particular scenario best suited to the particular medium. On radio conceptual ads demand active listening and consistency comes from the concept allowing a variety of scenarios at relatively low cost keeping the brand fresh and relevant.

The Hamlet Cigar campaign demonstrated how concepts can run for years. It’s a fair assumption that if tobacco advertising hadn’t been banned on the radio in the UK, we’d still be enjoying the Hamlet concept today. Hamlets' use of Bach's Air on a G-String crossed over into the Classical, acting as a sonic logo which increased the percentage of impacts purchased that drove brand awareness.

Visual logos serve a similar purpose. When leafing through a magazine or newspaper your eyes may linger on a page only long enough to register a blue oval logo and a picture of a car, but that is enough for you to have registered Ford.

Logos, visual or sonic, generate brand awareness even when the body of the ad is not consumed. They work in visual media even when people are only leafing through a publication or driving past a poster, they work in broadcast media, TV as well as radio, even when people are not listening actively, and the broadcast sound is just part of the background noise.

Sonic logos therefore need to satisfy the criteria of visual logos, as they become an intrinsic part of a brand's overall identity. Logos must do two things simultaneously. Firstly they must identify, and secondly they must communicate something about the brand, or at least be compatible with brand values.

Communicating brand values in a sonic logo is a question of deciding which values to portray with which sounds. So in the same way that clients and agency would sit down to discuss a visual logo with such questions as 'What colours? What shape? What typeface?', the questions become 'Music? If so, what music? What kind of voice? Do we want to use a distinctive sound effect?'

Current and recent sonic logos include Direct Line Insurance, Pentium Processors, DHL, Coca-Cola, British Airways, Renault, Asda, Go, Carphone Warehouse, PC World, Martini, Bachelor's Soups, and among those that are part of our sonic heritage but have never been on radio there is Cap'n Bird's Eye, Cadbury's Flake, or even Fry's Turkish Delight.

All the examples above satisfy the dual criteria of recognition and meaning. The Hamlet, Direct Line & Pentium sonic logos all identify their brands and simultaneously communicate brand values. The peacefulness of Bach's Air on a G-String corresponded to Hamlet's promise of the soothing effect of their product; Direct Line's bugle call implies speed and urgency in dealing with emergencies; Pentium's techno-sound plays a rising musical theme implying technology for the future, or future growth and improvement.

Radio works across a spectrum of states of receptiveness, ranging from front of mind rational communication to subliminal associations. At the rational end of the spectrum you could put presenter announcements like 'We have just heard there are no trains running anywhere on the Central Line', and straight announcement-style advertisements.

At the subliminal end of the spectrum put all of the music, station idents and Coca-Cola advertisements, most of which don't ask to be listened to at all. They are happy just to pump away in the background, getting plays just like top ten hits. And what do we find ourselves humming? Top ten hits and 'always Coca-Cola'. We hardly ever 'listen' to a Coca-Cola ad.

Radio is part of the sound track of our everyday lives, and Coca Cola is part of radio, as are all radio advertisements. One day the UK advertising industry will be as subtle at making brands part of our sonic environment as they have been in making them part of our visual environment. The starting point is thinking of developing a sonic logo as part of a sonic identity in the same way that visual logos are developed as part of a brand's visual identity.

Conclusion

• We dip in and out of active listening to the radio.
• We continue to hear the radio even when not listening actively.
• Sonic logos trigger brand recognition even when we are not listening actively and the body of the ad is not consumed.
• Sonic logos therefore increase the percentage of impacts that generate brand recognition.
• All logos must both identify and communicate, or at least be compatible with brand values.
• To identify they need to be distinctive.
• To communicate brand values choices must be made to get the right voice and/or the right music and/or the right sound effects.