How to Create a Great Radio Commercial?
During my 20 years of experience as a radio commercial director, I’ve encountered many clients who believe that radio advertising doesn’t work. Why? After further conversations with these clients, I usually discovered that the process of creating the commercial often lacked important milestones that would ensure the creation of a functional ad—one that would achieve the desired goal. Their ads simply didn’t work. Often, these were clients who produced the spots directly at radio stations that specialize more in selling advertising than in creating effective commercials. Sometimes the reason was the low production cost, but more often it was due to their professional lack of knowledge (which is understandable) and entrusting the job to inexperienced producers. A bad commercial, saved by a few thousand, can sink an entire campaign worth tens or even hundreds of thousands. Convincing such a client to return to radio advertising is then very difficult.
However, radio commercials are still effective and an important part of advertising communication. If you stick to these key points during production, you’ll achieve great results.
1. Good Briefing
- A successful commercial is not a matter of chance. The key is a good brief. This is not just a phrase. With a poor brief, the most common mistake is creating a spot that tries to please everyone (including the client, who may sometimes have a naturally skewed perception of the benefits of their product). After all, the brief says that the product is for everyone and is made on a unique machine, the only one in the Czech Republic. This is the key to failure. Unless we’re talking about toilet paper, most products or services are not for everyone. Therefore, it’s essential to first define the right target audience, so we know who to speak to and what to say. It’s also important to know when and how to say it. The success of the entire campaign depends on this.
If the client cannot provide a good brief, ask them. By asking the right questions, you can create a solid brief yourself and have the client approve it. Many times, at this point, the same client will further refine the brief, and you’ll end up with an excellent one. You don’t need to explain definitions of target audiences or the latest research on buying behaviors. Simply ask who should use the product or service. When will they be receptive to your message? (The same person might be ordering building materials for their company in the morning and partying in a club in the evening.) What is the product or service itself? Find out what goal or need the client wants the commercial to address and what action the listener should take. A great commercial can sometimes be a happy accident, but usually, it’s not. What? Who? When? How? Why? Where? These are the questions you need to have answers to before you begin the actual creation of the commercial. Only then do the first creative concepts start to take shape.
2. Good idea
There are two ways to convey a message to the listener: through emotions and through information. Therefore, it’s important to step into the shoes of your audience. What form will catch their attention? Emotions? Which ones? There’s a wide range of emotions to choose from, and knowing when and how to use them is crucial.
Look at ads, and you’ll see that those using emotions like fear or anxiety are typically employed by insurance companies or pharmaceutical firms to sell their products, such as supplements or vaccines. Youth, fun, and beauty are often used by food companies to boost sales and create a personal connection with the product. Companies selling hygiene products, on the other hand, use emotions like satisfaction, comfort, and health. On the contrary, if you want to increase brand interest, humor can be a great tool. But should it be primitive, clever, or dark humor? It depends on the brand.
For a telecommunications company, it’s ideal to use clever humor—where, for example, you swap or confuse two synonyms. Do you remember one ad from a telecom operator: “I didn’t get it! It surely isn’t the signal… 98% coverage!”It requires some thought from the listener, but the target audience is high school and university students, so why not take this approach? Can a “simple” clever joke actually boost the client’s brand? The key is that the brand doesn’t necessarily need to be in the joke itself. The high school student might think, “That’s a good ad, so the company behind it must be good too.” In the end, you can tie the brand with the product or service, related to the previous joke.
But what if the task is to sell off coal stock? In this case, invoking fear or anxiety won’t really help. People don’t die from the cold in the Czech Republic. So, should we go for primitive or dark humor instead? Coal is usually used for heating by people who aren’t interested in modern heating technologies, so you might be able to appeal to them and entertain them with more basic or dark humor, without making them overthink it. For example, you could entertain them with the idea that you can’t save on heating by burning kittens. You’ll grab their attention, and then you can tell them that you have coal for a great price, so they should stop by to get some. They’ll remember it, and when they’re thinking about their winter supplies, the image of your ad with the kittens will bring your client to mind. Of course, you can also go the simple informational route, repeatedly stating that your client is having a coal sale. Repeated information can also be very effective.
It’s important to constantly think about who you’re talking to. But don’t fall into trends or clichés. That’s when the good ideas start flowing—what and how to convey the message. Present these ideas to the client, and they’ll surely pick one, and then you can get to work on the script.
3. Good script
When creating a script, there are four approaches: Monologue – for example, one voice talks about their experience with the product. Dialogue, where two voices engage in a Q&A that highlights the product’s benefits. A dramatic scene, where, for example, we can hear the product, or the product might even speak itself. Or a song. Choose the path that aligns most closely with the chosen idea, and along with that, decide whether the tone will be emotional or informational.
Emotion helps you build a positive association with the brand. However, if you go down this path, be careful not to let the emotional content overshadow the intended message. A typical example is the excellent but ineffective “Bobika” commercial, where humor overshadowed the message, and most people didn’t even remember the brand or the service it was promoting.
Informational ads are better suited to support a product. Listeners appreciate them as a good source of information about the product and its features. These types of spots are also very suitable for in-store radio presentations.
Avoid exaggerated superlatives and pomposity, as they reduce the credibility of the ad. If you include a sentence like “We are the best,” especially if it’s shouted loudly, most listeners will instinctively defend against it, dismissing it as just an ad, and they won’t believe it. Studies show this can reduce the effectiveness of the ad by up to 40%. If you remain natural and credible, you will instead evoke sympathy.
Be clear. Ads are based on speech. The listener hears them, they don’t read them, and they can’t go back to something they didn’t understand. Write short sentences and read them out loud once you’ve written them. That way, you’ll know if the text is written the way people actually speak. While reading, correct any sections that are difficult to pronounce, rearrange words, or replace them with synonyms that are easier to say. There’s nothing worse than having a phrase like “meet your new car” in the text, when “discover your new car” would be a better alternative.
Repeat key facts and benefits in the text. It’s especially effective to repeat the information at the end of the ad.
Create longer spots. The longer the ad, the better in the case of radio advertising. Longer ads can build positive associations, which shorter ones often cannot, and their effectiveness must be compensated by higher repetition frequency. In the Czech Republic, a 30-second spot is the standard, but in the U.S., it’s 60 seconds. However, U.S. ads aren’t longer in terms of content; the same information is simply repeated more. In my opinion, a well-prepared 60-second spot is more than twice as effective, but the cost of airing it is also double, which often becomes the deciding factor for the client when choosing shorter spots.
Keep a stopwatch nearby. Read your text aloud at the right pace and time yourself. Pause slightly at important sounds to get an accurate idea of the current length of the spot (I often make these sounds while reading). Keep in mind that reading the spot “in your head” is not enough, because you can mentally read much more text in the same amount of time than you can speak. When recording, you’ll be surprised to find that the spot is 40 seconds instead of the expected 30. Pay particular attention to numbers or abbreviations. For example, the number “3333” looks short in the text, but when you read it, it’s much longer: “three thousand three hundred thirty-three.”
Remember, it’s all about sound. Radio is an audio medium and a powerful tool for creating emotions. It targets the listener’s hearing, and you can’t hide from it. Make the most of this by incorporating various sounds, acoustic effects, or tones into the script. This will increase attention and make the ad more memorable. The opening of the ad is especially suitable for these elements and has great potential to grab attention. This will also ensure that your spot doesn’t get lost among the others in a commercial break. And that’s exactly what your client wants. There are other media for detailed information, such as leaflets.
Think about the music. Music is very important. It’s a unique tool for working with emotions and the listener’s mood. If the script doesn’t exclude music, it shouldn’t be missing from the spot. However, music increases production costs because it’s a component that requires payment to a composer or music providers for commercials, known as music libraries. But compared to the overall cost of the radio advertising campaign, it’s a negligible expense.
Don’t forget the call to action. Make sure your spot has a clear call to action (CTA). That is, what you want the listener to do. You should find this in the brief. A spot like: “ABC cleaning company offers cleaning services for businesses and households in your area. We are professionals. Call 603 603 603” will be much more effective if you drop the overused superlatives about being professionals, put the company name at the end, and use a much more engaging message at the beginning: “While you’re working, we could be cleaning at your place. Don’t worry, call us at 603 603 603 and we’ll fix it. ABC Cleaning Company.” This way, you give the listener an important call to action. And that’s exactly what matters.
Don’t copy other ads. In the best case, people will just think “I’ve seen this before,” and they’ll ignore the rest of your client’s message. Unfortunately, in the worst case, if the original ad is from your client’s competitor, your ad will just remind listeners of that competitor. And that’s at your client’s expense.
Stand out. Be innovative and original. Radio stations are bombarded with standard ads. That’s why ads that break from the norm are effective these days. These ads are better at convincing people to buy or at least make a lasting impression on the listener’s subconscious.
Finally, respect the brief, the target audience, and always keep the intended goal in mind.
To enhance the effectiveness and memorability of the spot, you might consider creating a jingle or melody. This way, the listener will recall your message faster than if it was just spoken. This element also increases brand recall. From personal experience and research, we know how closely melodies are associated with a particular company, product, or service. Do you remember “Wüstenrot, Wüstenrot – your housing solution”? How about this jingle?
To further enhance the effectiveness, consider using a celebrity or a well-known voice in the spot. While this is more expensive for the client, it’s a very effective way to boost the desired effect. Dr. House’s voice will sell a weight-loss product much better, or Bart Simpson’s voice will sell a crazy kids’ toy better. In the latter case, we were able to increase the ad’s effectiveness several times, so Mr. Dejdar’s voice was ultimately very cost-effective for the client.
4. High-quality execution
Several options are available here. I will skip the option of creating the spot in-house or at the radio station, where the knowledge of spot creation usually only covers technical skills. It is more effective to produce the spot with a specialized production company that has long-term experience in this field. Moreover, the additional investment, often only a few thousand more, will pay off many times over for your client due to the professional execution. On the other hand, trying to save money by finding a cheap and inexperienced producer can often result in a savings of a few hundred or thousand, but this can sink the entire campaign, costing tens or even hundreds of thousands in the end.
Get yourself a good director. It’s the foundation for a good spot. Without one, it just won’t work. A good director is able to take the script, envision the final result, often add a little extra flair, and then professionally direct it so that their vision comes through in the speakers.
A good director must have a clear vision even before filming, and they should align this vision with your client—ideally, you should work together to determine what the spot should look like in terms of voice expression, music tonality, and sound effects. A truly great director should then be able to convey their vision to the client, even if it makes them smile, as they might, for example, mimic children’s voices or animals. At the same time, they shouldn’t be afraid to work with actors, even if those actors are famous and sometimes two generations older, to whom they may have immense professional respect. The director needs to “switch gears” and see the actor as their tool (a trained tool) that will help bring their vision to life.
Every director has their own methods, but they must be able to get on the same page as the actor. It cannot happen that they don’t understand each other. Personally, when directing actors, I find it very helpful to describe the situation as clearly as possible. Instead of giving dry instructions like “tone it down, add more, less,” I prefer to describe a situation that’s close to my intention. For example, the character is in one room, and his wife, whom he’s speaking to, is in the kitchen next door with the water running, so she might not hear him. Even though we don’t see this situation in the spot, we’re just playing it out. The actor is usually immediately able to interpret this correctly and deliver the tone and strength of the voice exactly as I imagine it. It often happens that some actors are better suited for commercial messages, and others are better for the dramatic parts of the spot. Respect that and don’t try to flip it. Choose voices carefully. If you select an actor with a higher-pitched voice for a certain part of the spot, don’t ask them to deliver the lines in a deep baritone during recording. It won’t work; everyone will feel awkward—the actor, the director, and your client—and the atmosphere during the recording won’t allow you to experiment with the actor on other takes that could improve the spot. Always give actors feedback, ideally immediate feedback. I usually have a very clear idea of what I want. The actor delivers their line, and if it’s heading in the right direction, I praise them and guide them further to match my intention more closely. When “it’s there,” meaning when it’s right, that’s when there’s space for experimentation. This approach has great results. Unfortunately, there’s nothing worse than letting the actor deliver several variations and remaining silent, hoping you’ll “pick something later” or starting with experiments because you’re not sure what the spot should look like. The atmosphere during the recording will shift from a creative mood to a desperate one.
Get yourself good actors. With good actors, the spot will be good; with average ones, it will be average; and with bad ones, it will be bad. A truly good (and well-chosen) actor will deliver your director’s vision even better than the director intended and ultimately exceed even your client’s expectations. In my career, it’s happened many times that after an actor delivered their line, I jumped into the air, cheering because it was even better than I had imagined. A truly great actor will elevate the result to the next level. Prepare the script for the actors in a sans-serif font and at a large enough size. Format each new sentence on a new line. This will make it easier for them to read the script. However, what’s also crucial is naturalness—no overacting in the case of a commercial message, or conversely, no unnatural, overly expressive delivery in a dramatic scene if the script requires it. A good actor should be able to handle all these nuances.
Get yourself a good sound engineer. They should know exactly where to “reach” – meaning they should have excellent experience with the software, and device settings for recording and editing sound, a good understanding of sound effects and background noises in the database, and knowledge of the technical specifications for radio stations. They should also have a good sense of rhythm and a sharp musical ear. The right sound engineer, unfortunately, is not the one who you tell to make the voice sound divine, only for you to gradually hear more and more of an echo, like a gymnasium.
Oala!
And that is all. Put everything together, and you’ll have a great radio spot that will make your campaign effective, and in the best-case scenario, it might even help you win an award :-).
This is how we do it here. If you’ve read this far, I’m curious to know how you do it. Do you have any experience with producing spots? What were the results? Do you produce spots in-house? Do you follow a different process? Feel free to write to me at martin@isprodukce.cz. Děkuji vám! Thank you!
Martin Gazda