DAN O’DAY TALKS ABOUT RADIO

This is the second of a 6-part series of Secrets of Radio Advertising.

One of the crucial differences between a radio commercial and a print or Web advertisement:

For the target audience, a radio commercial is a linear experience.

Listeners cannot jump around, looking for something of interest.

Listeners cannot decide to skip the boring beginning and go straight to the last 10 seconds of the message.

Listeners must listen — if they listen at all — in the precise order that the message is presented.

In a newspaper ad, your eyes can jump around; a newspaper ad is not necessarily a linear experience.

Neither, of course, is a well-designed Web page.

Your radio commercial must pull the targeted consumer along, and it must be structured in a way that immediately commands and then keeps the attention of that targeted consumer.

And that is why it is professional malpractice for anyone to simply take the client’s newspaper ad and put it on the air.

Here’s Bruce Scott from KOST-FM/Los Angeles (a Soft AC station).

Being a real personality on a music intensive radio station doesn’t necessarily require a lot of time.

But as Bruce demonstrates, it helps if you have a personality.

Here’s an example of a common radio advertising problem. Usually, though, you hear this in small-to-medium market, station-produced spots.

“What’s the problem, Dan? I thought that was mildly amusing.”

Here’s the problem:

What selling points can you recall immediately after hearing that advertisement?

“Target pharmacy”? Okay, good.

And what else?

You didn’t mention “Pharmacy Rewards,” whereby “you just enroll, fill 5 eligible prescriptions, and get 5% off a day of shopping.” (Huh??)

Or that “this October, one refill counts as two.” (I think they mean one refill counts as 2 of the 5 prescriptions needed to get 5% off a day of shopping.)

Or that you should “transfer your prescription to a Target pharmacy today.”

Why didn’t you remember the rest of that stuff? Because this commercial isn’t about “Target pharmacy” or “Pharmacy Rewards” or “saving 5%” or “transferring your prescriptions to Target.”

This radio commercial presents the story of two radio commercial announcers, one of whom keeps trying to deliver his lines while the other keeps interrupting.

That’s what you pictured. And what you picture is what you remember from a radio commercial.

She could’ve been excited about Target’s plenty of free parking or new credit card or new, lower prices, and it wouldn’t have changed the story or the pictures you mentally made.

Note: The voice actors were much better than the copy — especially the male announcer. Perhaps that’s because he was given a more realistic character to work with: a guy good-naturedly trying to do his job, rather than an announcer who is so ecstatic over Target’s Pharmacy Rewards that she fails to do her own.