Radio Industry: Ad Lab Report Released
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My zygomatic muscle(s) twitched quite a bit while reading the new Radio Ad Lab's report. Stunning in its conclusions, "Engaging Emotions Through Effective Radio Ads" is the latest in a series of papers from the radio industry.
The comments in this article couldn't be contrived. They are evidence that the radio industry continues to miss its mark in advertising by shooting at the wrong target.
There are thirty-one pages in this report, twenty-five if you remove the title page, index, and explanatory pages regarding who's paying/backing this report. Please read it. I did. Which is why those darn zygomatic muscle(s) kept twitching.
If you don't have the time to read, here's a summary: Move emotion and you'll move product. (Long time AG readers will recognize this phrase. It's been repeated here since 1997.)
But on to the report, in short form; or rather, on to a summary of why this Radio Ad Lab report falls short. Seventy to eighty per cent of radio revenue comes from local advertisers, with national revenue falling fast. Somehow, though, the radio industry thought that doing research on campaigns for Campbell’s Chunky Soup, Tylenol, Allstate, Audi A-Series cars, and other national brands would reflect the advertising "norm" on radio.
I'm going to refer to the word "stunning" again because it really is the only way to describe how impactful this report will be to you.
Let me relay this fact, quoted from the report: "Words matter in Radio ads."
That's stunning stuff.
Mostly it's stunning that in the quest to prove radio advertising is effective, the researchers forgot to consider something important. Radio production directors are so overwhelmed trying to serve multiple stations that there is no time to achieve another of the Radio Ad Lab's suggestions, "It pays to invest time creating good Radio ad content...."
Oh? I'm sure that's why every station has a copy writer on staff, to create good radio ad content. If a station doesn't, I suppose it's okay to have a sales person write the ad. Same difference. (There go those zygomatic muscles again.)
Want another twitch? Take this line from the report: "...every second in an ad is precious...." Guess that's why we hear all those car dealer ads with disclaimers sounding like they've been digitally edited to remove frames of sound, the equivalent of graphics disclaimers on a mortgage company's television ad. Move it through the ears, fast, so it sounds like the advertiser is trying to pull the wool over the listener's eyes. There goes an emotion - distrust.
This Radio Ad Lab "academic" paper - and that word is used loosely - is filled with items like "facial electromyography," "Continuous Emotional Response Analysis," and "zygomatic muscle." All pretty impressive. (BTW: The zygomatic muscle is in your cheek and "is sometimes thought of as the 'smile muscle.'" I didn't know that before reading this report, but thought of it continually as I read through its pages.)
We won't spend any more time analyzing "Engaging Emotions Through Effective Radio Ads." Read a list of quotes pulled from it below. (The page where each appears is noted.)
Let me leave you with this thought: When done well, radio advertising works. It's just not being done well, however, and it won't be done well with the staffing crisis we all know exists in radio.
In the few decades when I made my living writing, producing, and voicing radio advertising, clients would pay me to write a commercial. Average length of time spent writing a :60 spot was about 4 hours. The advertiser would then pay for my production of a commercial, and for studio time. (Average studio time varied greatly, from 1 to 8 hours, depending on post production needs.) An additional flat rate was charged if they wanted me to voice that :60. Making a quality commercial takes effort.
I've made well over 10,000 broadcast commercials* for clients like the ones you try to reach every day. They're local advertisers with the money to "create" an effective campaign, and they never uttered the words "just get it on the air" (real-world speak in radio).
Referring back to the fact that evaluating national ads is not what's needed for an industry deriving 70%-80% of its revenue from local advertisers, I'll draw two conclusions about "Engaging Emotions Through Effective Radio Ads." 1) It delivers a chance to flex your zygomatic muscles, and 2) radio industry executives suffer from CAC (Cranial Anal Collision).
Isn't that stunning?
* If you care to sample my work, here are a station promo and client's commercial. I wrote, produced and voiced each. I'll make no excuse for the sound quality, as each is over 14 years old and lifted from a just-as-old cassette tape.
- Tiffany's - It won the 1994 radio campaign of the year at the AIR Awards, even though it was for a strip club.
Quotes from "Engaging Emotions Through Effective Radio Ads"
- p-2:The quality of Radio ad creative matters.
- p-2: It pays to invest time creating good Radio ad content to begin with, and whenever possible, it can pay to test the content in advance to make sure that consumers really are reacting as intended.
- p-4: An emotional reaction needs to be established before further cognitive processing of an advertising stimulus takes place.
Emotions can be considered as the gatekeeper for further advertisement processing.
- p-5: By their very nature, many advertising measurement techniques, including those that look at emotion using survey research methods, focus on the cognitive component of message processing. Without minimizing the importance of these “self-report” metrics, though, recent work in neurophysiology has suggested that much information processing takes place largely outside of conscious awareness.
- p-5: To do that, we used a new testing system to better assess the emotional connection that advertising messaging makes with its audience. Called CERA (Continuous Emotional Response Analysis), this system uses leading edge measures of emotional response, supplemented with traditional validated metrics of advertising effectiveness.
- p-5: What exactly is this facial EMG measurement? Briefly, the technique measures (in a highly sensitive way) small muscle stimulations in two areas of the face. Electrical signals are detected near the zygomatic muscle along the cheek, which is sometimes thought of as the “smile muscle.” In addition, the technique measures contractions of the corrugator muscle on the brow, near the bridge of the nose; that muscle is linked to frowning.
- p-6: For newcomers to this technique, we acknowledge that it may sound a bit exotic.
- p-6: Consumers often aren’t aware of, or can’t articulate, the effects we’re trying to assess here.
- p-6: Sixteen pairs of Radio and TV ads were obtained from a monitoring service...
- p-7: For the facial electromyography (EMG) measurement, respondents were given a few minutes at the start of each session to settle in and settle down before the program material began. That allowed for the generation of baseline measures to be taken on all physiological data.
- p-7: Some of these creative techniques may seem like common sense, but the fact is, they’re not always practiced...
- p-8: Pattern #1: Strong Beginnings Make a Difference
- p-8: We’ll share with you an ad from Allstate
- p-10: The presumably-necessary boilerplate (“subject to terms, conditions and availability”).
- p-12: First, of course, is that every second in an ad is precious...
- p-12: Second: A strong beginning can be one of the things lost when television audio is simply “lifted” to make a Radio spot. The original TV ad might have had useful video to accompany the music-bed audio...
- p-12: (Some) Spoken Words Are Powerful
- p-12: But if the audio bed alone isn’t engaging on its own merits, it won’t work as a Radio ad.
- p:12: And in Radio, the power of the spoken word can be impressive, at least when those words are sensory-laden, emotional, or empowering.
- p-14: A simple message, simply delivered, with powerful, sensory-laden words.
- p-14: Radio does have sensory impact—when the words are right.
- p-16: Words matter in Radio ads.
- p-16: Words can be more powerful than pictures.
- p-16: The spoken word is powerful, and at least in some circumstances, saying something the right way can be even more emotionally potent than simply showing it.
- p-16: Don’t Forget the Branding...
- p-16: Lest we forget, ads are supposed to be about the advertiser and their brands.
- p-16: brand mentions sometimes get lost when audio tracks are simply lifted from television ads for use as Radio commercials.
- p-16: We think that’s how some of these “Radio” ads ended up with so few brand mentions; they actually started out as TV ads with visual brand cues that never transferred.
- p-23: Time is valuable. Use it all well.
- p-25: we examined the actual respondent-level correlations between emotional engagement and recall.
- p-27: The quality of Radio ad creative matters.
- p:28: It pays to invest time creating good Radio ad content to begin with, and whenever possible, it can pay to test the content in advance to make sure that consumers really are reacting as intended.
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