Ancillary Task 2 - Newspaper Radio Advert - Research

Radio is mainly seen as an entertainment source for primarily driving, and background noise at work. These are two key times to bear in mind when creating an advertisement, as you want to taylor the ad to suit those sorts of times and environments. For example, using loud, intrusive, fast music, people may not take in the information if they happened to be sat in a quiet, working office environment. 

If you buy any radio advertising, it is useful to be aired during drive time, as this is prime opportunity to catch people's attention when they have nothing else to focus on apart from driving. 

At home, radio use decreases as people these days can use iPods and computers to listen to the music they enjoy without necessarily needing to tune into a radio show. This way they can avoid commercial interruption. 

The radio industry understands that many people don't want to be interrupted with advertising while trying to listen to music. Many times radio stations use this fact in order to promote themselves by offering "more music, less commercials". 

However, there are many good reasons to advertise on radio to, such as the following:

1. "Research proves that radio regularly reaches consumers within 2 hours of their largest purchase of the day." It is convenient to advertise to these consumers when they are on their way to the shops in their cars!
2. Radio has the potential to be played anywhere, at home, work or at play. This means products have a good chance of being advertised to the right person at the right time.
3. Radio sells with intimacy - some could argue that without the flashy images and bright text used in some television or newspaper adverts, radio allows the message to be put across more gently, making people more inclined to purchase certain items.
4. Sounds on radio adverts can evoke emotion from the audience, as they have the ability to use their imaginations when picturing the images suggested by the sounds a company or product manufacturer chooses to put in their advertisement. For example, a child laughing or a large band playing.
5. Radio devotes less than 1/5 of it's time to advertising, or roughly 10 minutes of advertising per hour. So it is less cluttered with information, less adverts will make the target demographic pay more attention and memory to each advert individually.
6. The costs to advertise via radio grow less than any other form of advertising.
7. Newspapers and TV are 'reach' media, which means they reach large varying numbers of people. Which is obviously a very useful thing when trying to advertise a product. However, psychologists say that "consumers need to be exposed to an advert or a message at least 3 times before the information begins to penetrate". This is made easier by radio advertising, as this way smaller companies can afford to do get enough frequency to effectively sell their product.  
8. Radio allows you to place your advert in a place where your target demographic are likely to hear it. Radio's targeting ability based on music genre and type of radio station can save companies money.
9. Only 1 advert can be played and listened to at once on the radio! So when you pay for advertising space, the time in which your advert is played, all the attention is simply one the company's one product. Unlike in newspapers or magazines perhaps, where 10 different adverts can all appear on the same page at the same time. 

Also, as part of my radio advert research, I decided to have a look at some existing radio adverts that I have heard in the past, and analyse what music, sound effects and voices they used in their adverts so I could use some of these ideas in my own work. I also thought by doing this I could begin to get an understanding of what makes an effective radio advert. 

 

The first radio advert I chose to analyse was for The Medical Foundation and it was called 'Future'. This advert begins with just a man speaking, and he has a fairly humorous voice and is speaking about what he wants to happen after he dies. "I want hundreds of people in inconsolable tears!" he says about his funeral, (in a jokey way). This is a clever way of attracting people's attention as they might be initially quite surprised at this man's opinion's on his own funeral! By having a middle aged man's voice, this suggests that this is the sort of age that this radio advert is aiming to appeal for. It would be inappropraite for example to have a child's voice talking about their own funeral, and people may take more offence if this was the case! After listening to this radio advert, I have began to consider what sort of age I wish to have speaking over my radio advert. I will opt to have someone older, with a more mature voice as my target demographic is for people aged 24-50, so having someone young speak over my advert may not be entirely appropriate when aiming to reach my audience. It also includes some more serious facts about the foundation, to balance out the advert after hearing the man speak humorously about his own funeral. This advert has no music over it whatsoever, and I think this is effective in this case so not to detract from the the information the man is trying to get across. Before listening to this advert, I had not considered not using any music at all over my advert, but after hearing this I think I will think more carefully about whether music is entirely necessary for my own work, or whether this will just make it difficult to understand and make out the information. I will experiment with Garage-band and Audacity when it comes to creating my own product to see which way works best.

The second radio advert I chose to analyse was for The Carphone Warehouse and is called 'It's a Miracle'. This advert again, like the advert for The Medical Foundation, has no music playing over the top of the man speaking. Again however, I think it works very well and is effective in making sure that the information in the radio advert is put across to the target demographic Carphone Warehouse is trying to appeal to. I like the conversational style of this advert, where there is a clear dialogue between the man who owns the phone, and the voice representing his 'poorly' or broken phone. Again like the advert before, there is an element of humour to this advert and I have found in my research that this is a very common feature of radio adverts, as it helps make the advert stick in people's heads without the help of visual aids that one might achieve from using television or magazine advertising perhaps. This advert again used a man's voice, but I think in my own advert I may opt for using a female voice to go against the conventions of a lot of adverts using male voices.

Here is my third radio advert I chose to analyse for Thames Water, which is called 'Puddle'. This advert differs slightly from the previous two, because there is a soft, jazz-type music playing quietly in the background behind the man's speaking voice. This upbeat sound is effective because it makes the advert seem more exciting and may make it stick in people's heads more effectively. Again, this advert has chosen to use a male narrator so for my own advert I am going to use a female speaker to challenge this convention. In the background, the voice for the man's wife comes through but quite softly, suggesting she is perhaps in another room calling to him. This gives the advert the feeling that it's recorded in someone's home, which is a clever technique used to suggest that the people speaking in the advert are just like the people they are aiming to appeal for, making the target audience feel that they can relate with these people and therefore will follow their instructions to try and save water for the better for everyone. Out of the three adverts I have analysed so far, this one is my preferred one because I think the use of two people of both genders is more effective in addressing an audience. However in my own advert, I don't plan on using the conversational technique used by many other companies. I may just use one, female voice to speak my entire advert to make it clear and easy to understand, with no distractions. Like I said before though, I will have to wait until I've experimented with Garage-band and Audacity, the programmes I plan on using to create my final radio advert.