I want you to do something that radio listeners don’t:
Listen to this commercial from the beginning.
Listen closely to the entire commercial.
Okay, you interrupted whatever you were doing to actively listen to that spot.
Hey, look behind you! Isn’t that…?
Sorry. Hope I didn’t momentarily cause you to stop thinking about that commercial.
So, you interrupted whatever you were doing to actively listen to that spot.
Of all the informational elements the advertiser wanted to communicate, how many can you recall?
Someone Needs to Tell Ace Hardware…
1. The opening line of a radio advertisement is the commercial for the commercial. It’s your one chance to grab the attention of your targeted listener.
“Ready for another luxurious offer?”
“You know I am!”
“Good! Because it’s more fabulous savings…”
Because this spot was trying to sell — wait for it — paint, presumably the targeted listener is someone who buys paint and patronizes Ace Hardware.
Forty-seven per cent of the spot passed before any listener possibly could know what it was about.
Listeners tuned out the “commercial for the commercial” and thereby missed the entire sales message.
2. In a dialogue spot (even when it’s two announcers blandly reading their lines), at least one of the characters should represent the target audience. Listeners should be able to identify with at least one of the people delivering the sales message.
Which of those two people did you identify with?
I haven’t seen the consumer research, but I’m guessing neither of those women represents the typical Ace Hardware Store customer.
3. A dialogue spot had better have a really good reason for putting music underneath it. This one didn’t. (“The client has a jingle” isn’t a good enough reason.)
The music did help to obscure the announcer’s monotone delivery of the details of what they actually were trying to sell. So perhaps some good came of it.
But maybe I’m not giving the advertiser enough credit.
Perhaps the co-op money from the three vendors exceeded the cost of the spot buy, and Ace Hardware made money by pocketing the difference.
If not, then somebody made money by producing a negative R.O.I. on the client’s radio budget.
