This is the kind of junk that some stations use either to:
* Build up a package
or
* Sell every second they can squeeze out of their broadcast time
or
* Both.
The overall impact is what radio promotion wiz Paige Nienaber (when talking about most station remotes) likens to “a mugging”: You’re listening for the music or the traffic report or the news when suddenly something hits you over the head… and then it’s over before you even know what happened.
Reading, Not Selling
It’s delivered in a monotone by someone who simply is reading copy. No offense intended to her. She’s just doing what she’s been told is her job: “Read this.”
Too bad no one told her, “Sell this.” Or even “Communicate this.”
And, of course, being forced to cram so many words into such a small time frame almost always handicaps the voiceover performance.
The Goal of A Commercial’s Opening Line
In any commercial, the opening line should attract the attention of the target audience. That’s even more important in such a brief spot. But this one begins with pure confusion.
There are 3 possible targets for this commercial:
1. Members of Alaska Airlines’ frequent flyer program
2. People who fly those routes. Whichever those routes are. You listened to it once? Okay, you tell me: What routes are they talking about?
“But Dan, that’s not fair! You’re ignoring the value of repetition in a radio campaign.”
Sorry, someone not hearing your commercial 100 times is no more valuable than not hearing it just once.
3. People who fly those routes but are not yet members of Alaska Airlines’ frequent flyer program
Which of the those 3 is the actual target audience? Who knows? Who cares? Beginning a commercial with those words won’t attract anyone’s attention.
Too Much
Too much information. Too many words. Too confusing. Too fast.
Too bad.
This is the kind of crap that trains listeners not to to listen to radio commercials and causes advertisers to say, “I tried radio, and it didn’t work.”
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Maybe it’s just my computer, but the audio comes across a little jumbled.
@ Nick:
When you say “a little jumbled,” what do you mean? Are you able to understand the commercial, or does it sound like audio gibberish? Are you able to hear the other audio bits in other posts on this blog?
It’s better now. I couldn’t make out any of the words; I would just hear little “blips” of sound over the course of 12 seconds. The other clips were working fine at the time.
Sorry for the alarm,
Nick
What a shame that Nick can now hear every scintillating word of a truly horrific spot.
As for me I heard all the words clearly at the first playing. But like 90% of the radio spots I hear (and sometime have to read) – none of the verbiage sunk into my grey matter or made any impression other than; ‘What a bunch of crap.’
Harlan
The purpose of that spot is to reinforce the longer commercials people also were hearing for the airline on the same station at the time.
Right, that’s the theory (or the sales pitch). But the reality is: If no one listens to the :10 “reinforcer,” it doesn’t reinforce anything.
It’s like saying, “True, your billboard is obscured by trees and no one can see it. But that’s okay, because the purpose of the billboard is to reinforce your newspaper ad.”
With all the clutter fighting for our attention, one of the jobs of any commercial — or any message at all, for that matter — is to convince the listener that “this is important to you and worth hearing.” Our brains naturally want to filter out everything that DOESN’T apply to us. Therefore, it’s extremely difficult to have an effective 10 or 15 second commercial. Even if I’m actually paying attention to the whole spot, I’m still not sure in the end if it even applies to me, so the likelihood that I’ll act on it is zero.
Your mileage may vary … but I doubt it.
Rich
I agree with the comments about the spot being too “wordy”…I actually caught myself tuning out.
I do, however, have to disagree with the monotone criticism. The spot sounded to me as if the woman was portraying a flight attendant making anouncements on the plane. They could have played that aspect up a bit more (sound fx and whatnot) and sold the atmosphere a bit more. I can honestly only say what I would have done differently. I definitely would have cut all of the “blah blah” crap. I’m a K.I.S.S. method fan. I figure if I get bored doing the spot/listening to it (and I’m getting paid to do it/be interested), Joe Schmoe’s gonna flip the station.