A very long time ago, I used to play one of United Health Care’s radio commercials as an example of effective radio advertising.
A long time ago.
A radio commercial should have a single Core Message — the one thing you want the targeted listener to hear, to understand, and to remember.
Go ahead, see if you can identify the Core Message of this spot….
What’s the one thing they’re trying to communicate? Some possibilities….
* “Pacific Care of California is now United Health Care of California.”
— But then the guy says it’s been that way for “quite a while now.” So…Why does this spot begin with his giving us information that isn’t new or timely?
* “The name is different, and that’s all.” So….Maybe it’s to make sure Pacific Care of California customers know the name of their health insurance provider has changed?
* “There are a lot of good people who are standing behind that name…” So…The goal of this radio ad is to make United Health Care of California employees feel good about their jobs or their employer?
* “If your company doesn’t currently offer a United Health Care health plan, ask for one.” Oh. So this spot is an effort to get people to lobby their employers on behalf of United Health Care of California?
* “Learn more about United Health Care” at their website. Ah! The goal is to drive traffic to their website…because so many listeners want “to learn more about United Health Fare.”
You heard the commercial, right? What was its message?
Comments on this entry are closed.
….to be glad to live in Canada and have free basic health care because these private for profit health care institutions are confusing the hell out of me…..
what was the name of the company again? I know they mentioned it over and over in the beginning, but 50seconds later, that was all sorts of lost…
….to be glad to live in Australia where we have 30second commercials… 🙂
Classic case of a spot written by the client . Clearly they did not trust the “creative” people with whom they were working wither because there was a lawyer or other non-creative in the room, or their sales people did a poor job of making sure the client understands that radio producers shouldn’t write insurance policies, and insurance people shouldn’t write radio commercials. “We’re different but we’re the same” WAS the intended central message at the mid-beginning after they got through all that blah blah at the front… but then like a shotgun blast, it scattered and scattered until there was no real target at the other end.
I think the point Dan is making (his core message) is that IT DOESN’T HAVE ONE…. that’s the problem. It’s too bad there are not measurable controls in broadcast advertising like there are in most direct response advertising. It would be fun to kick the crap out of this one.