shots 159: R is for Radio

Neville Doyle, digital planning director at Colenso BBDO, explains how a medium that started almost 100 years ago has never been more relevant to today’s multi-screen, multitasking audience. So why is it so often overlooked? A copywriter’s dream, radio offers endless creative opportunities, unbound by budget restrictions, or even the laws of physics. What can’t you do when the only limit is your audience’s imaginations?

The creative challenges and opportunities of radio advertising are not hugely different to those that agencies faced when the first ads aired in 1928. The brief hasn’t changed: engage the audience, make them laugh, pique their interest, make them care. When you’ve one sense to work with, this can seem a daunting task and yet radio has the power to drive uniquely compelling branded opportunities.

One thing has changed since the first days of the medium, however; radio is now an often overlooked and under utilised channel.

The freedom to try something new

No matter how fantastic a creative team is at visuals, these skills are always going to pale in comparison with the creativity of the audience’s own imaginations. Radio should be seen as a dream channel for all copywriters; there’s no other channel that relies so heavily on the writer’s skill, their ability to craft a story. In many ways, radio ads are to TV ads what a book is to a film, allowing you to tell a story in a way that coaxes the listener to bring it to life in their own mind. Despite the lack of visuals, there is nothing beyond radio’s storytelling reach.

The 1987 ad Colour for Kodacolor Gold is a perfect example. It took the tricky brief of selling colour film on the radio and brought it to life through a perfect blend of voice casting (Jimmy Nail), witty writing and accompanying music. Having Stephen Fry reading out your brand signoff never hurts either. Would anyone try to sell such a visual product on radio these days? Maybe not, but this ad proved just how effective it can be.

At Colenso BBDO I work with Nick Worthington, one of those creative heavyweights you might only be fortunate enough to work with once in your career. Nick won the first of his many Yellow Pencils for a radio ad for Cadbury’s Boost (1994’s Any Length). When I asked him what radio advertising meant to him, his response was simple: “Creative freedom”. The chance to try things without the pressures that go hand in hand with bigger budget platforms.

With the affordability that radio provides – both in terms of creating the end product and also buying media – there’s scope for far greater levels of creative experimentation. Rather than putting multiple scripts and storyboards into round after round of testing, you can simply create and record a suite of options and test them out in the wild.

Radio is also free of a lot of the usual constraints of visual content. You can’t be asked to keep the product shot longer on screen, to devote more precious seconds to an end frame and, best of all, with radio no one can ask you to make the logo louder.

An old medium for a modern world

Multiscreen media consumption is now the norm rather than the exception. For many media channels there are legitimate questions to be raised about the effectiveness of advertising when consumers can so quickly turn to a second (or third) screen. Unlike channels that attempt to command most, if not all, of your attention, radio works far better as a supplemental activity to whatever else you may be doing.

In a world where having consumers’ undivided attention is now as likely as riding a unicorn to the office, this is a hugely undervalued strength. Consider that most of us can easily manage to drive a car and still take in every word on the radio, and you realise that this is a medium that we have all grown up learning to absorb while our primary attention is elsewhere. It may seem counter-intuitive, but one of the most ‘traditional’ channels has the potential to be a serious player in one of the most modern media consumption trends.

The opportunity for innovation

There is an increasing habit in the advertising world to try and find short-term, headline-grabbing uses for the latest digital platform, service or app. This never-ending rush to be first means that there are meaningful innovation opportunities being missed on platforms that offer far more scale and substance.

Radio is a perfect example of this. Last year, working with Pedigree in New Zealand, we created K9FM – the first radio station created specifically for dogs, with hours of unique content all aimed at man’s best friend. All of this was created with the intention of targeting dog owners through their dogs. It went on to become the first radio campaign in 32 years to be honoured by D&AD with a Black Pencil and, like so much of the best work, it tapped into a very simple but powerful behavioural insight. This truth was hiding in plain sight, in front of everyone that has ever grown up in a household with dogs and whose parents would leave on the radio when the dogs were home alone to keep them company. As with all great radio, however, what truly elevated the campaign was the quality of the writing – I defy anyone to listen to segments such as Talkies and Where is the ball? and not laugh out loud.

Elsewhere, Saatchi & Saatchi Stockholm’s SIRIous Safety Message for Toyota is another great example of creative thinking putting radio to good use. To help raise awareness of the dangers of using your phone while driving, these radio ads spoke directly to Siri, getting her to switch your phone to flight mode before reminding you it’s never safe to text/browse/call when behind the wheel.

Radio is often passed over in the creative pecking order, but the reality today is that it offers more power and flexibility than ever. With the onset of digital radio you have the ability to be incredibly targeted to specific niche interests or audiences, to create something that can live in the digital as well as the broadcast space.

If anyone ever tells you that a certain traditional media channel is past it or holds no real creative opportunities anymore, hopefully projects such as K9FM – which proves there is still creative magic to be found in the radio platform – will convince you to take a second look and make sure that something powerful isn’t hiding in plain sight (or sound), waiting to be found.