By Mark Alison
I am a sucker for great radio commercials. I remember one from years ago that was created to sell the power of radio. The announcer described a guy puffing on a cigar and filling the car with white aromatic smoke. It was written so well that I could not help but smell it, even though it existed only in my head. He stopped mid sentence, paused, and said, “If you can smell the cigar, you know the power of radio.” I thought, “That’s the kind of radio spots I want to write.”
They say that radio is the theatre of the mind. I say it is the best medium to capture our imagination, even more so than TV. Great radio spots, like a good book, allow us to build the picture that suits us and make it very personal. You may ask how radio can capture us in thirty seconds. Consider how long it takes you to recognize the music of Debussy’s Clair de Lune or for younger readers the opening three seconds of the Star Wars theme. (Can you hear it in your head?) How long does it take to be captured by the unmistakable voice of Sam Elliott when he is promoting “Dodge Ram,” or James Earl Jones, whether or not he is voicing Darth Vader? The point is, the commercial presentation touches us before the content does. If we like the presentation, chances are we will listen to the message too.
When season 11 American Idol winner Phillip Phillips sang the song, “Home” starting with the line “Hold-on to me as we go,” with the memorable guitar riff written by Greg Holden and Drew Pearson, how many radio commercials did you hear soon after with a similar sounding guitar riff?
Music/sound effects, voice, and presentation, either together or independently make radio commercials work. It doesn’t require Sam Elliott’s voice or movie music but it does require the right voice and/or the right music working to fit the script. So with the right presentation we have ignited the imagination. Now it is up to the script to communicate the message.
A great script is written much like a musical composition. Depending on the tone of the pitch there can be phrases, pauses and even a crescendo. It’s not that we don’t hear the screaming HURRY, HURRY, HURRY ads. We just don’t listen to them. When you are paying big bucks for radio time, you sure hope people listen to your commercials.
Great radio commercials have a central theme and the message revolves around that theme like the second hand revolves around the center point of the clock face. Every thing relates back to the central theme. Conversely, Listing Type commercials that have the announcer reading off a laundry list of things available in a store should be reserved for the newspaper. Who can remember past seven items anyway? That’s why a phone number has only seven digits.
Here are FIVE things to avoid when creating a radio commercial:
1 The radio commercial with the old 60’s style jingle package. The best message in the world is lost when the “old-timey” jingles open and close the spot using an “insert name here” jingle do-nut. Radio stations love to sell these, dare I call them, “music” packages. My advice- Nix the jingle. Rewrite the spot. Remember the presentation comes before the message.
2 The “client” voice over commercial. Of course people will tell you they heard you on the radio but no one will tell you how really bad you sounded next to the really well done commercial. Especially in the South. My advice – Leave the voice over to a pro.
3 The commercial written and delivered in third person. This is the one that uses the term “They” for the client’s name. Example – “So give Joe’s Car Center a call. THEY are helpful with all types of blah blah.” My advice – If you can’t endorse it first person, it is probably not worth endorsing. Do-over.
4 The 60 sec commercial that should have been 30 seconds. Radio stations often sell time in 60 sec. blocks so the client feels obligated to use the whole minute. I have actually heard one 30 sec. commercial repeated twice to fill the minute using the connecting copy line “as we said” to segue the same boring announcement. I couldn’t change stations fast enough. Note to self: Whatever spot came next was missed by me. My advice – If you must use the 60 but have nothing to say, play music for 30 seconds… but not the jingle (see #1).
5 The radio commercial featuring small children as the talent. Kids are great on TV because they are so animated and their actions help convey the words they say. Not on radio. They are simply hard to understand. They sound like an untrained, diminutive voice that is neither cute nor convincing. My advice – Hire an adult child voice actor if you need a child voice or better yet, don’t do it.
There are exceptions to these rules of course. The question is, when radio commercials are aired in blocks of three to five minutes at a time and yours is stuck in the middle of them, how memorable do you want it to be?