Deadly Sins #3

Paul Borny is a former Creative Director for the Capital Radio Group and GCap Media in the UK. These days he can be found enjoying the warm weather in Brisbane – and working as a creative at 4BC/4BH.

He’s also available for voice work through Voices Today, hear Pauls demo here. He hates it when people plug themselves in articles 😉

You can read The deadly sins of radio advertising part 1 here and part 2 here.

Below is part 3….

Radio advertising can be brilliant.

It can move you, engage you, bring emotion to a brand and deliver direct response. Sometimes though, radio advertising is bad. Writers fall (or are pushed) into some big traps. Here’s my third of radio advertising’s deadliest sins.

Number 3: Response mechanisms

We’re back to the paranoia of a new advertiser with this one – leading to them cramming their commercial with multiple response mechanisms: their location (or list of locations), web address and phone number.

In my experience multiple response mechanisms in the same commercial will reduce the amount of responses you get.

So, which is the correct one to use? That’s easy to answer – the one that is the method of purchase.

Motor dealers want people to test drive the car, so send people to their location – you can’t test drive a car on their website!

And if there is more than one way to buy, just record two versions. But wait! What if the listener wants to fax them? Better put that number in too…