Advertising is War
Apr 12th, 2008 | By Justin Kaiser | Category: Be Creative!, Broadcast Sales
Advertising is war… End of Story…
Before television, when there was only radio, we as creative writers and producers did a fabulous job at describing a car enough to make someone want to buy it or at least, visit the showroom.
“Sell the sizzle”.
According to Marketing VP’s from Budweiser and Pepsi, the number one problem with radio is that agencies and station do not provide radio creative that sticks the message in the minds of their customers in a way that stay with them. To them, this is far more important than how many people hear the spot. They say radio creative is the key, along with making ads part of the content instead of an interruption. On the other hand, Business owners and CMO’s don’t want great sounding spots. They don’t want cutting-edge effects. They don’t want something trendy or shocking. They simply want the listener to remember the brand message with a desire to find out more, which in turn should sell product if their message is correct. If great-sounding spots do that, great. If, as in the case of “Head-On”, bad creative does that even better, that’s even better! The Saturn spots didn’t say a thing about the car that made me want to find out more. It did tell me I am wasting my time listening to radio since it won’t do the job…the same job they paid money to be on.
I think plenty of people are still happy with radio, and saying that it doesn’t work or that it’s less than the rest is counter-productive. Radio still works, bad radio doesn’t. It’s like the industry has become complacent in the shadow of other forms of entertainment. Radio people are throwing their hands up and saying “there’s nothing I can do”, yet they’re not stepping up their game like the pioneers did back when radio was just beginning. Think about how resourceful and resilient people had to be in the early years of radio – now we take it for granted. On-air people and the creative staff are why people listen to radio – you can get your music and ads anywhere from the internet to t.v. to satellite, etc.
Man I love you guys! Let’s roll in the grass!
photo credit: Midnight-digital
