RELENTLESS RADIO

 

Author:	Scott Stephenson
Published:	May, 2000

 

An athlete soaked to the bone with sweat, or something, slam-dunks a basketball while another pulls his pummeled body up off the boxing mat. Still another casts us a sideways smirk through a swollen and cut eye. After almost 60 seconds of a visual potpourri of similar montages we are entertained (maybe) and left wondering: "Ohhhhhhh-kay. And the spot was an ad for WHO?" Slow-motion, ethereal dreamscapes are intertwined with new-age music and extreme close-ups of couples caressing and/or cooing all over each other. The commercial is striking in its creative approach to visuals and sensory stimulation, and equally striking in its vapidness. Tagged on to the end, like an afterthought, is the logo of the cologne, supposedly implying that wearing it transports us into the fantasy world of those with perfect bodies and hair and everlasting romances. I, as much as anyone, appreciate and love a wildly creative approach to selling something. One of my favorite television spots was for Tabasco where an obviously Southern good-old-boy is comfortably rocking away on his front porch, slathering his pizza with Tabasco, and getting bitten by mosquitoes, which then fly away and explode from the obvious heat of the sauce. But the trap that we, as creative professionals, seem to be falling into more and more is trying to stretch the creative envelope simply for the sake of stretching the envelope and nothing more. Someone once said "All things in moderation, including moderation". Anything in excess can be detrimental and there is absolutely no reason that would not apply to creativity as well. When the delivery of the message is more memorable than the message, then we're doing our clients a disservice. Thankfully, radio advertising seems to have been a bit more immune to this maddening trend than television, but don't doubt for a minute that it's out there and creeping its ugly way into our medium. I actually find myself getting angry at commercials that are so intent on being avant-garde and cutting edge that you have no earthly idea what it is they're selling, or, at the very least, why you'd want to purchase it. Certainly it's true that it is imperative to cut through the clutter and elevate your spot to a level that attracts the listener's attention and delivers a memorable message that produces results. And it's equally true that a 60-second wall-to-wall monotone voice-over saying "Sale! Sale! Sale!" is going to result in more channel switching than anything. But it is our obligation to our clients to put our egotistical need to shout out "Hey! Look at how astoundingly creative and brilliant I am!!" second to making absolutely certain that we are helping the client sell their product or service. No matter how fancy the equipment is that we have at our disposal, no matter how enormous our music or sound effects library is, the effectiveness of our production always, ALWAYS returns to the basics. It's kind of like golf. It doesn't matter if you have the most expensive, high-tech clubs or the latest and greatest balls. If you don't have the basic swing down, you're still gonna stink. And we all know what the basics are: Basic #1: What, specifically, is the client's product or service? For example, he doesn't sell just furniture, he sells name-brand furniture at savings of up to 40 percent off department store prices. Oh yeah, and he delivers for free, too. Basic #2: Who would buy from your client and why? Quite honestly, just this past week I wrote a spot for a client that, frankly, I think probably shouldn't be advertising with us because our P1 doesn't fit the demographics of his target customer. The client's business specializes in window-tinting for vehicles and truck and SUV accessories. Our P1 is female, age 35-44, middle to upper-middle class and predominantly white. Most of these ladies drive minivans or Volvos and the impression that I got from the account executive who made the sale is that the client's primary customers were black males. I don't think he's going to see measurable results from advertising with us. It's imperative that we recognize who would buy from this vendor and why and design the spot, both the content and the creative, to appeal to that buyer. Basic #3: Get the key information into the spot without overloading it with too much unnecessary verbiage. Interestingly, television is heading in the opposite direction with giving us so little to digest that we're often left wondering what we just saw. Last night I saw a perfect example. For the first 30 seconds or so we see a rather slovenly, bedraggled young man slurping some kind of food from a plastic bowl. It's an extreme close-up and we're mildly disgusted by his eating habits which are, to say the least, somewhat messy. Finally the camera pulls back to reveal that the guy is eating while he's driving. There's an extraordinarily brief tag line that says something to the effect of "Because he's out there. Lexus safety." My wife and I looked at each other and said "Huh?????" I can only assume the spot had something to do with the safety of owning a Lexus, but that's a vague assumption. In my opinion, Lexus wasted money with an agency that was bound and determined to entertain us and, if time allowed, to also include something about the client. In radio, though, we face the opposite dilemma. Without fail the client wants everyone to know they're a family business (what does that really mean anyway?), that they're conveniently located, they won't be undersold, they've been in business for X number of years, they have the widest selection, oh and visit their website at: www-dot-johnnyandbillybobsbarbecue-dot-com-frontslash-gooberville-dot-net. (I honestly heard a website address not that dissimilar to this in a spot once!) Does the listener really care whether they're a family business or how long they've been in business? Probably not. And advertising guru Dan O'Day recently made an excellent point in his weekly e-mail newsletter regarding whether to include websites on spots. He says we should ask: "Is there a reason for your customer to visit your site?" If there is no new information available on the site that cannot be found in a print ad or in the phone book, and if it doesn't offer an incentive or perk that cannot be found elsewhere, then tagging on the website eats up valuable time in the spot that could be used for selling. Let's home in on the 2, or possibly 3 biggest advantages of your advertiser, for example: They have those hard-to-find imported Taiwanese lounge chairs unavailable anywhere else in the metro area, AND they have extended hours, open until 10 every night to make your shopping easier. So now your listeners have a reason to visit this place, let's tell them how to find it. And I'm not going to insult your intelligence telling you the rules regarding easy directions and repeated phone numbers. You know all that already. Our challenge as creative professionals is to balance the entertainment factor of our spots with the information factor. It's important to have both, because without either one you'll produce no results. Listeners are not going to listen to a spot simply because they're dying to hear your message, but if you entertain them so well that they miss the point, then what's the point?? The trick is to get their attention AND to know how to do it in a way that appeals to your target listeners. Since my target audience here at J93.3 is female, ages 35-44, producing a spot that 15 year-old males find humorous is going to be a lost cause. And it goes without saying that I must be very selective in the humor I might choose to use so as to not offend my core listener. Also, we need to remember that there are ways to grab the listener's interest other than just humor. Humor is highly subjective and it's much easier to fall flat on our faces attempting it than to score a universal bulls eye. Drama works well, too. For example, you're promoting the big Valentine's sale at the local diamond jewelers. Maybe a simple heartbeat that starts the spot and gradually picks up in tempo is your audio stimulus to perk up the listener's ears and draw him/her in. And once you've established your style and message within the spot, maintain consistency. A small-market station that occasionally sends us dubs of their original spots done for a local Volvo dealer did a wonderful job of capturing the essence of the dealership. Classy piano background cradling a sincere and relaxed read. But they always manage to destroy the mood they spend 50 seconds creating by adding on a rushed, high-energy tag promoting the latest sale. More often than not I have had to put my personal likes/dislikes and creative gems on the shelf to be able to deliver results for our clients. There are a lot of things I find hysterically funny that would be highly inappropriate for this station, its clients and our listeners. There are a lot of products or services that I have to create a spot for that I would never buy in a million years. But I always attempt to put myself in the buyer's shoes and ask myself "WHAT do they have that I might want to buy and WHY would I want to buy it from them?" Once you've answered those questions, the creative part is easy. About The Author After receiving his degree in communications from the University of New Orleans, Scott began his professional radio career at the local NPR affiliate. He moved on from there to Easy Listening (at a station which later flipped to all Disco), and later Big Band/Swing. In the 1980’s Scott began a transition to video production, working for BellSouth and then doing freelance. He returned to radio in 1996 as the Music Director at WMKJ in the Atlanta area. He has served as Creative Services Director at J93.3, (WVFJ) Atlanta. Scott currently works with Spastic Lizard Productions.  Scott and his wife, KC, have two children, and live in the Atlanta area.