I was presenting some fun holiday radio ads we wrote to one of our restaurant chain clients yesterday. We were all laughing and having a good time with it. I got to sing some silly songs. The account person joined in as one of the voices (and she did a great job, I might add). The client even said she had chills where we were finished presenting. We all were enjoying it so much, I was reminded how much fun doing good, creative radio can be. And that we rarely do it any more.
In this digital age, it's easy to forget how fun radio advertising can be, if you do it right. Doing it right, of course, is the key. Radio's taken a hit over the last few years. Some of this is radio's own fault. Promoting 30 or 40 minute commercial free blocks of music may work for listeners, but advertisers know that if you're going to jam all the commercials into a 5 – 8 minute break, people aren't hanging around that long; they're punching buttons to other stations. Plus, local radio programming is going the way of the local printed newspaper. More dissappears every month.
Many of our clients have stopped using radio all together. Radio's not the sexy medium, like TV, or the hot new trend, like digital. It's a medium that often gets forgotten. But, it's also an underutilized one. Just take a look at this chart.
The chart shows the percentage of media time the average adult spends on each medium (black bar) vs. the percentage of advertising budgets put against it (red bar). You can see that the Internet has the biggest gap, by far. But that's rapidly changing. The next biggest gap is radio. Adults spend 19% of their media time listening to radio, but only 9% of media budgets go towards radio. That makes radio an underutilized medium where a marketer with the right kind of creative could be dominant.
Again, the key is not making radio an afterthought, but actually spending your time and money wisely. You need to do breakthrough creative to break out of the clutter. So few advertisers are doing good radio, that when one does – many people stop and listen. How often do you stop and listen to a new Budweiser "Real Men of Genius" spot when it comes on – just because you want to hear what they've come up with now?I know I do. And that campaign's been running for about 10 years now.
We've done a lot of great radio over the years. I love it. It's a great medium for creating theater of the mind stuff that really sticks with people. It might just be time to recommend radio again. As long as you're willing to do something different. It helps if you can get placement as the first or last ad in the commercial break, too. What do you think? What's your favorite radio campaigns?
Mike McClure, ECD & Radio Lover
Radio well done is indeed a joy to the ears and still effective. Like you, I still love the Real Men of Genius spots! It’s too bad so much of the radio advertising we hear has no theater and is basically mindless. Good radio advertising is still one of the hardest things to write and sadly there are not many left that are good at it. even a terrible TV spot can still be saved somewhat by engaging visuals. Not so radio. Glad to see you promoting what is rapidly becoming a lost art!