{"id":8051,"date":"2010-12-06T00:01:16","date_gmt":"2010-12-06T08:01:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/danoday.com\/blog\/?p=8051"},"modified":"2010-12-05T21:30:34","modified_gmt":"2010-12-06T05:30:34","slug":"radio-commercial-glen-ivy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/danoday.com\/blog\/2010\/12\/radio-commercial-glen-ivy\/","title":{"rendered":"MONDAY RADIO COMMERCIAL SMACKDOWN: When The Announcer Doesn’t Breathe, The Audience Suffocates"},"content":{"rendered":"

Recently in this space a very successful voice over artist complained<\/a> about the currently common practice of removing virtually every breath from a radio commercial, in order to squeeze in more words.<\/p>\n

Here’s an example. As an experiment, after you hit the “play” button look away from your computer monitor and listen to this spot…just once.<\/p>\n

\n

<\/embed><\/object><\/p>\n

Okay, how many selling points can you recall?<\/p>\n

I’d try to help you out by listing them all for you, but they went by so fast that it would take 10 minutes of stopping and resuming for me to compile that list.<\/p>\n

Why Is It Stupid To Remove All The Breaths From A Commercial?<\/h3>\n

For however many thousands of years that human beings have communicated via speech, they’ve also…<\/p>\n

…breathed.<\/p>\n

For the entire history of humankind, speech has included pauses for breath. Not vocalizing for half a second while inhaling is not<\/strong> “dead air.” It is an integral part of speech itself.<\/p>\n

So Why Is This Stupid Practice So Common?<\/h3>\n

A commercial such as this one requires that every breath be removed to make room for the far too many words that inhabit the copy. In other words:<\/p>\n

Bad copywriting.<\/p>\n

Yes, I will be the first to point out that often the Incompetent Account Executive insists that the copywriter include Far Too Many details, which requires Far Too Many words.<\/p>\n

The radio salesperson, in turn, would like to blame the client:<\/p>\n

“The client insisted!”<\/em><\/p>\n

Sorry, in this case the buck stops with the account exec. It’s the account exec’s job to educate the client. The account exec supposedly<\/em> is the radio advertising expert.<\/p>\n

In reality, of course, most account execs have been taught how to sell radio advertising but know virtually nothing about the fundamentals of good radio copywriting. That includes, alas, the legions of account execs who are required to write their own copy…even though they don’t know how.<\/p>\n

“But the customer is always right!”<\/em><\/p>\n

No, of course not. Often the customer is wrong, and professionals don’t let clients throw their money away because they’re too frightened of the clients to educate them.<\/p>\n

This particular commercial probably is the result of an account exec who doesn’t know enough to be able to educate the client and<\/strong> of a poor copywriter. (They might, in fact, be the same person.)<\/p>\n

You need listen only four seconds into the spot to recognize bad copywriting: They give a call to action (going to their website) before they give listeners a reason<\/strong> for taking that action.<\/p>\n

Pretty basic, huh? Obvious, even?<\/p>\n

But apparently beyond the professional education of the person who wrote the copy and<\/strong> of the management that allowed such a mess to go on the air.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Recently in this space a very successful voice over artist complained about the currently common practice of removing virtually every breath from a radio commercial, in order to squeeze in more words. Here’s an example. As an experiment, after you hit the “play” button look away from your computer monitor and listen to this spot…just […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-8051","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized"},"yoast_head":"\nMONDAY RADIO COMMERCIAL SMACKDOWN: When The Announcer Doesn't Breathe, The Audience Suffocates - DAN O\u2019DAY TALKS ABOUT RADIO<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/danoday.com\/blog\/2010\/12\/radio-commercial-glen-ivy\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"MONDAY RADIO COMMERCIAL SMACKDOWN: When The Announcer Doesn't Breathe, The Audience Suffocates - DAN O\u2019DAY TALKS ABOUT RADIO\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Recently in this space a very successful voice over artist complained about the currently common practice of removing virtually every breath from a radio commercial, in order to squeeze in more words. 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