BenAnyan.com

I love helping out SMEs, but it’s hard work. Hair-pulling work. Count 1-10 before answering work. What makes it worth though, is when there is willingness to understand. I recently did some work for a client who came back with his fourth round of reverts. As I took time to explain best practices, I saw how this could be beneficial to others considering radio as a media touch-point.

Morale of the story: knowing how to defend your work in terms of client’s business objectives is as important as the work itself.

Hi Maame,

Thanks for the feedback. I’ll begin by re-visiting the conversation about channel strategy.

In the context of increasing awareness and consideration for our product, radio is effective as a ‘conversation starter’. Meaning ultimately, our radio has done well if it rouses enough interest to get our audience to take the next action; ie: read more about us (our product) on our website and contact us.

To achieve this, our radio must be informative but entertaining. We must focus on one thing (at best) or three things (at max) to build our communication hierarchy around. We must refrain from piling a benefit list into a 30” commercial; it will become too difficult to decipher or recall.

In our specific context, COVID-19 has presented a unique opportunity where conversations are already on going about the need for businesses to relook at how they operate. Even successful business execs who may have been complacent before, will now be receptive to messaging about how to optimize their business in a post-pandemic context. This is great!

The radio option 1 more strongly plays on this in a conversational but direct way right from the start. It then introduces our product along with two key benefits as a response to the point we’ve raised in the intro. We use the remaining time to give our contact details for this conversation to continue.

In terms of communication hierarchy, (which manifests in time allotted and position in the comms) it’s;

1.    The season-relevant intro that establishes the need and hooks our audience.

2.    Our contact details that give them a way to take this up and therefore makes an extensive benefit list unnecessary.

3.    Our product name and key benefits, which briefly but effectively introduces us, giving an idea of the value we can offer and establishing our contextual relevance.

If you look at the benefit list, they essentially fall into two broad brackets; customer satisfaction (convenience) and employee efficiency. We have the opportunity to expand this on our website, social media posts, fliers, etc. On this basis, we recommend proceeding with option 1.

Outcome: Get ready to hear radio option 1 on the airwaves in the coming days.

Just out of curiosity; what’s most important to you in a radio ad?

PS: Originally written in July 2020 @ https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/quickie-science-30-radio-ad-benjamin-anyan/

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