Let the personal experience create the image on radio

They say it’s good to talk …but can I make plea to all creatives and clients in our region.

Please, please, please, can we stop making dialogue ads for radio that use ridiculously manipulated conversation moments to list a whole load of product benefits or competitive edge but have no creative idea or consumer benefit.

This form of radio might occasionally have a role but as far as I can tell it seems to have become the ubiquitous and only format used here, and it will destroy a great medium.

Don’t get me wrong, conversation works well on radio. Breakfast DJs often work as double acts and the interaction and spontaneity created makes for great entertainment. I would suggest this is because its spontaneous and unique and is absolutely current, not simply because it’s a conversation.

A poor child lamenting his missing father and apparently death is now optional! Or a sad couple negotiating their dining arrangements against buying new cars frankly gets irritating, especially after the umpteenth broadcast in a day.

Radio can be a great creative vehicle, particularly because listeners get to use their imaginations. Invariably when they do this they imagine things relevant to themselves. This is a huge advantage for the medium as rather than filtering out ads as not relevant because ‘that doesn’t look like my house, my car, my children’ etc, they make it personal and entirely self-relevant. It’s their experience that creates the image. Let me give you a great example from a while ago. Kodak wanted to convey the product advantage of their photographic film versus the competition. In the radio ad the spokesman explained that he was going to show the difference on radio through the use of music. He described a picture of the Grand Canyon at sunset. He then played the theme to big country on a Kazoo to demonstrate “ordinary film” . He then played the same music using a full orchestra to demonstrate Kodak film. Awareness and sales rocketed.

In post research we asked 1000 people who had heard the ad to describe the photograph. They all said the Grand Canyon at sunset. Hundred per cent of them also then added a cowboy riding into the sunset. No cowboy had been mentioned. If you would like to discuss this …let’s talk.