Radio is one of my top-three favorite media. (The others are billboards and guerrilla if you wanted to know.)
Radio is the most rich and freeing media in the entire advertising landscape.
It’s also the most abused.
In this month’s installment of the 5ives, I’ll address five attributes that make this a killer medium and five ways that people are killing it. I hope with every ounce of my creative being, that some of you will absorb what I have to say and help me save radio from ruin.
Love: Radio is Versatile
Hate: Everything Sounds the Same
Radio is sometimes called “theater of the mind” because it allows the listener to use his or her imagination. I can write an ad that describes running up Mt. Everest being chased by a car filled with circus clowns. With only a handful of audio effects, I can make the listener imagine the most absurd scenarios. No amount of Photoshop or video CGI would reproduce the image as beautifully as someone would see it in their head. Within that 30 second or minute-long time frame, the canvas is completely wide open.
And somehow every ads sounds the same: A heavy beat with the station’s DJ talking really enthusiastically about what you’re selling.
What a waste.
Do this instead: Write a script that doesn’t have music. Replace the music bed with ambient noise. This will force you to think about the story. The more you think about the narrative, the less tempted you’ll be to resort to radio’s overused gimmicks.
Love: Radio is Relatively Inexpensive
Hate: It Sounds Cheap
TV is an expensive medium. It’s not uncommon to spend $1,000 (or more) for a 30-second spot.
Direct mail is an expensive medium. It’s not uncommon to pay $1 (or more) for the printing and postage of each piece. And that doesn’t include the time creating it.
I would love to have half the budget to produce a radio spot. A good audio engineer could make the clown cars racing up Mt. Everest sound totally realistic in a day. Sadly, most audio engineers – especially those who work at the radio station, get less than an hour to turn out an ad. Could you imagine telling a TV crew to set up, record and edit a commercial in an hour?
Ads on the radio often sound mass produced because they are.
I’m not blaming the engineers who work at the radio station. It’s not their fault. They’re expected to work fast to get the spot done, get it approved and get it on the air.
Do this instead: Set aside a small budget for production. Some radio stations will charge for additional studio time, but it’s worth it. You might not get as many spots as you would with the assembly line production, but the ads you do run will have a much stronger impact. In that same vein, try to use different talent than the DJs. Chances are the DJ on the Top 40 station will read a large portion of the ads that will run on that station. No matter how hard they try to disguise their voice, you can tell. Again, it might cost extra, but it’s worth it if people stop and listen to your spot.
Love: Radio has White Space
Hate: Volume Means Excitement
How many print ads do you see that are completely covered in text? I mean covered in text to the point where you can’t tell where the article ends and the ad begins.
Most ads have some sort of layout. Instead of going border to border with text, graphic designers will leave some white space to focus your eye on the content.
Believe it or not, you can do the same thing on radio. White space in print is silence on radio.
Silence is powerful. Most radio today is non-stop sound. DJs can get fired if there is too much space or what they call “dead air.” But you’re not a DJ, you’re a brand. You have to get attention. If your ad comes in full-throttle with a music bed and high energy dialogue, how can you separate yourself from the last song? Worse yet, what if the song before your ad was really sad? You don’t want a tear-jerking tune to immediately run into your ultra-happy, feel-good spot. Silence is a border, a buffer and a way to tell the audience that something new is about to happen.
Do this instead: Put planned breaths or breaks into your script before you time it. I haven’t mentioned it before, but you should be timing each script you write by reading it out loud. Write out a script that you believe to be about 30 seconds. When you go to read it, start your clock and look away from your watch. Take a big breath and read your script like you were telling it to a friend. Pause naturally. Smile. When you’ve finished reading the script, look back and stop the clock.
If you’re like me, you’ll probably be about 10 seconds over. Now here’s where it gets important. If you went over, don’t try to re-time it. You’ll just try to read it faster. Instead, cut words out of your script. Cut and cut and cut. After you’ve cut out about a third of your script, re-read it again. Start the clock. Look away. Breathe. Begin. Finish. Stop the clock. If your new time is between 24-28 seconds, good work. Don’t add any more.
Love: Radio is Everywhere
Hate: Blending in to Background Noise will not make you Stand Out
Radio is background noise a lot of the time. We don’t huddle around the speakers like they did 75 years ago. So what?
How many people still huddle around the TV like they used to? I know when I watch TV, I’m usually cruising the Internet or messing around on my phone.
Just because the general programming might be a secondary activity, doesn’t mean your ad has to fall into that trap.
Do this instead: Use the handful of tricks you’ve read about so far. Tell an elaborate story. Produce a script with sound effects. Drop the music bed. Use a different voice. Start with silence and build throughout. That 30 seconds is your time. You paid for it. Make it work for you.
Love: Radio is a Powerful Brand Tool
Hate: Radio is an Afterthought
I’ve been in meetings where clients say, “We want to do this and this and this and I think we’ll do some radio too.” The contract is signed. The cool, creative idea manifests. The campaign development gets underway. The major media goes into production. When it comes time for radio the client comes back and says, “can we just use the audio from the TV spot?”
The answer is no.
I don’t care if someone tells you yes.
The answer is no.
Saying that you can take the audio from a TV spot and apply it to radio is like saying you can take the sign off a park bench and staple it to a billboard.
Moreover, radio should be included throughout the entire creative development process. Once you’ve made the decision to invest in radio, be sure that the campaign creation includes a way of transferring the concept to that platform.
Maybe your campaign features a handful of words with cool fonts and nothing else. That’s a great visual. It’s clean. It’s strong. But to transfer six words over to radio makes for a really short spot. Instead, the ad will use a similar tone – what the announcer sounds like, the background effects, whatever – to match the campaign and tell the same story. But it will be a tinge different. Plan for it.
Do this instead: When planning the creative for a campaign, put radio second behind TV. With TV, you’ll know what budget you have to execute the story. With radio, you’ll know what your spot should be describing. If you put radio first, there might be things you can’t recreate in other media. If you put radio last, it might not match the other media in the way you’d like.
Whatever you do, don’t rush radio.
The biggest downside to the majority of radio spots on the air today is that they all share a style. It’s no different than the tried and true radio format which is (I feel) hurting the media itself. You can drive from one market to the next and know immediately what that station is without hearing a song. You can pick out a country station by the way the radio personalities talk. You can pick out a car ad before the announcer starts to talk (though it’s challenging because every car ad usually misses the whole concept of white space).
Use that downside as your upside.
Realize that radio is a powerful, underutilized media. You have the ability to make the media work for you. Take a stand and stand out.