jump to navigation

What’s Wrong With Radio Advertising in the UAE? February 8, 2006

Posted by Farrukh Naeem at copywriterjournalist.com in : Uncategorized , trackback

In the recently announced Campaign ME awards for advertising creativity in the region, the judges picked just one winner in the Radio category even though there were three awards up for grabs.

This is what Elizabeth Drachman’s feature in the February issue of Communicate reveals:

Radio ads go for as little as 150 dirhams and agencies don’t get a cut, so creatives don’t go out of their way to make interesting ads.

While a low budget might fail to excite agency bosses, it might not necessarily be the reason for a bad creative product. Some of the best work is done pro bono by creatives in ad agencies for social service campaigns and NGOs.

But in radio, there no scope of hiding behind a full-bleed picture taken from a stock book. Radio doesn’t allow the “looks-great-means-nothing” variety of ads. If the script isn’t good, the ad is dead. Even if you use Marlon Brando.

Also, radio ads which do well internationally use humour. And wit. And language nuances. And local dialects. Or speaking animals. It would take quite a few brave clients and sharp copywriters to try these adventures before we can tune in to some serious fun on radio.

I have personally written and rewritten radio ads with adventurous situations only to unwillingly come back to “what the client wants” - the whole damned sales pitch in a boring conversation. Or worse, an announcement.

Oh, the voice of a popular movie star was fun to use though for one of the radio spots I wrote some time back. Too bad we didn’t enter it in the awards. Otherwise, I’d have a Gold Award in these dirty little hands right about now.

(SFX: Trumpet on full volume)

(MVO: Evil laughter to fade)

Comments»

1. Ayaz - February 12, 2006

2 things:

1: This thing about “what the client wants” is very cliche.. imean it doesnt make sense.. we have clients who are willing .. these days i mean .. and a lot depends on the Account handler .. you cant expect to give the client 3 printouts .. ask him to choose what he likes and then say that i couldnt sell it coz the client didnt want to take a risk so he opted for the safe option…Hello!! has some one heard of something called a build up / rationale… i thnk if we talk logic ..clients will understand..

2: Provided your compaign idea is deep enough… i think its easy .. and i mean really easy for someone to .. convert that in to radio.. imagine .. if you were to .. do an ad for burjuman… on radio today .. i am sure the CD can just crack one in 5 minutes coz he / she would know exactly what the brand personality is .. the tone of voice .. the language burjuman speaks . .and what kind of conversation it will have .. and getting the brief .. translated in to a radio spot .. is not too difficult then..

Anyways .. there is one more thing though that i thought you should mention … u thought radio was bad coz there was only one .. .award.. what about internet.. there were 7 entries if i am right .. and none of them made it.. and yeah TV .. man the ones that won .. sucked.. i think if these ads were sent to Cannes.. even the courier company would reject them.. ..

2. farrukh - February 13, 2006

Hi Ayaz,

Now you know why I don’t send my stuff to the awards. I’ll win it all. Mwahaha.

Ok, on a serious note, although awards help creatives get bigger salaries and fancy designations (associate regional interplanetary creative watchamacallhim) when clients are choosing agencies, the awards the agency has stuck on its walls don’t come even in the top 5 things they consider.

And I have this haunting feeling that agencies know this too.