Radio - A Cranial Mystery?

There are very few arguments about the following points. This, because there are fewer discussions about them.

Here's one of those points: Radio, Television and other electronic media are, essentially, the same medium!

Indeed, this element is about what happens to an audience's cranial regions when they are accessed by electronic media - radio, television and computer-like devices. 

Neurologists-with-money-to-burn and their lab-rat, undergraduate students have demonstrated - time and again - that the brain-activity of someone who is exposed to radio and/or television commercials is the same, but different when the same audience is exposed to Print-ads or or engaged in other, real-life experiences like: when being recruited for "significant research studies where you can make a wonderful contribution to science and humanity."

Given those, the differences between radio and television are, actually, quite slight - but significant. 1.) Television supplies visual images directly to the audience where radio constructs those images internally. 2.) Television has limited target-audience opportunities. 3.) Radio stations have loyal audiences that are available regularly, and 4.) Radio is a whole lot cheaper. Cheaper to produce Creative and cheaper to reach an audience and for longer periods of time.

For the most part, however, advertisers and radio-people treat their medium as "Newspaper-Of-The-Air"! They create commercials that are more like newspaper ads that are just read out loud.

As has been demonstrated consistently, electronic media work best when emotions are engaged with content being secondary. In other words: supplying pure information about a product or service through electronic media is a huge waste of time and resources and the least efficient way of influencing an audience!

The In-The-Glue Advertiser

It's over 40 years later - forty years of being in the business of voicing, writing and producing ads for radio advertisers. And the vast majority of ads in which I have participated have been generated or, at least, influenced by the advertisers themselves. Consequently, the vast majority of those ads have been an enormous waste of advertising dollars. Most did truly suck... and sucketh large.

Still, it can be argued: those innocuous, irritating 30 or 60 seconds of "buy or die" puffery and "yell and sell" bombast have had some affect, otherwise the advertisers would have quit using the medium. Yet, many advertisers have, in fact, backed away from Radio.

This blog is being produced as a resource for advertisers and producers of advertising, as well.

Ours is an industry utterly mired in tradition. As early as this very morning, I was called into two different Toronto studios by agencies to voice some spots. Both of these spots could have been written in 1964 - the year I first started in Radio. The copy was the same. The approach was the same. Only the prices were larger and the technology was digital rather than analogue. Otherwise... same-same. And that - from an insider's perspective - is just too damn weird!

That's a hell of a comment considering the knowledge that has been made available that addresses so many other elements, models, strategies and nuances in the business of communicating. These elements, however, have yet to permeate Radio Advertising.

Radio advertisers are also running on tradition. They make demands of their writers that were being made 40 years ago; they resent having to use the medium and yet they still feel compelled to come up with the Ideas. Writers, producers and sales reps simply take the path of least resistance and are compliant.

Indeed, advertisers are stuck... as are the writers, producers and sales reps.

I put it to any interested parties: while price/product radio advertising is the easiest to sell and produce, it is also the most inefficient of options.

I look forward to frank discussions and considered opinions on these and related matters as this blog develops.