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Radio Creatives Get A Serve MADC chairman of Judges Jim Aitchison crammed in lessons, tips, ideas and a couple of warnings for creatives keen to sharpen their radio commercials when he addressed the MADC AudioNET® "Cutting Edge Radio" lunch in Melbourne. Jim's speech was also peppered with plenty of great examples to listen to and laugh at. Interest was so keen, lunch was sold out the week before and latecomers were turned away at the door. According to Jim, the first step to creating a great radio spot is understanding the brand. ...radio is the best medium for reinforcing the brand... "It is very important as a creative that you have an opinion, and knowledge, about brands because that's what clients are interested in," Jim explained. In this century, brands are no longer trademarks built by companies: brands are defined by the people who use them and the key aim of any creative is to reinforce the brand among its community of users. Jim believes this is where radio proves its value. "Radio is the best medium for developing loyalty beyond reason because it's very very personal and very very intimate. "Advertising is not a hypodermic syringe - you can't load up an ad with information about features and inject it into a consumer. ...the golden rule of radio advertising ... "Advertising works in a much subtler way. Obviously there are times when you have to deliver a lot of information. Radio lets you do it point by point, track by track. You can't afford to do TV or print campaigns, but you can do radio." He outlined several different ways sound can be used to reinforce key features of a brand: voice, a sound device, or music for example: anything that can become readily identifiable with the brand. "The golden rule of radio is minimalism," cautioned Jim. "In print you take things out of an ad to make it stronger and in radio you do the same. "You take out unnecessary words, you take out all those complicated sound effects which only you appreciate..the audience will never hear them, they won't really care about the dog barking somewhere deep in the sound mix. ...theatre of the mind is a solo performance... "The more you take out of a radio commercial the stronger it gets. And in fact silence in radio is like white space in print. So when you do the ad, a voice with silence will have great power in radio - minimalism is very important." That's why the first thing he does when he writes a radio spot is work on one voice, and what he wants the voice to do. "You've heard this line that radio is theatre of the mind," he said. "I think a lot of writers think if it's theatre of the mind they'd better have a cast of thousands. That's not what we mean. Theatre of the mind is when your mind starts throwing up pictures." ...some examples to ponder... The example provided was a condom ad, where a young man talks about how embarrassed people are talking about condoms. He speaks directly to the audience, warning us to look away if we're embarrassed about condoms, because he's holding one. He then demonstrates condom use by putting one over the microphone. His explanation gets increasingly muffled as he unrolls the condom. Other examples included a Street Remley ad for snail pellets, with a strong musical backing of "You Made Me Love You" while Street explains how effective the snail pellets are in attracting and killing snails. A big crowd favourite was a very Monty Pythonesque anti-smoking ad which takes place in the Department of Suicide, with a helpful staff person providing advice to a needy client. Another attention getter was an ad that opened with the lines "This is what it sounds like when you're buried in a $25,000 funeral. (silence) This is what it sounds like when you're buried in a $2000 funeral. (silence)" After giving the name of the funeral service and the phone number the tag line is "When you're gone, you're gone." ...where do great ideas come from?... The problem with all the great ads you hear is they're all such simple ideas, after the fact. So how do you generate great ideas in a pressure cooker working environment? Jim advocates two methods. The first is the Dictionary Creative. Pick a page in the dictionary, take the first noun on the page and work the spot around that. How else do you get a beer ad based on a frog? The other method is 50 boxes. Draw 50 boxes and fill every single box with one idea. The aim is to fill 50 boxes. You don't stop if you get two great ideas before you've filled all the boxes. As Jim said, "Out of filling 50 boxes you've got two great ideas and you've probably got half a dozen other OK ideas." ...speed kills...
Which brings us back to Jim's Golden Rule of Radio: minimalism. Sound Appearances for MADC Finalists Radio has a much healthier representation among this year's MADC finalists, thanks in part to higher entries and in part to a decision by chairman of judges Jim Aitchison to judge radio first instead of last. Risk, Good Audio Sense and Flagstaff Studios share most of the finalists' spots for radio, while overall Sound Lounge and Gusto Music have made the finals in most categories. Of the five finalists for Best 30 second radio commercial, three were engineered at Risk Sound and two at Flagstaff Studios. Risk's three spots were for 100% Juice, Durex Condoms and Just Jeans while Flagstaff's were both for Australia Post's Father's Day Cards. The Risk spots were engineered by Dylan Stevens and James Ashton and the Flagstaff spots by Paul le Couteur. Good Audio Sense is the only finalist for both 45+ second radio commercial and best radio campaign. All the spots were for VB and were engineered by Stevo Williams. ...original music and soundtrack... There are also five finalists for Best Use of Original Music. Gusto Music has two chances, with spots for Werribee Zoo and Saab Convertible. Duffield Kenihan's spot for Officeworks, GAS's work for Portmans and Flagstaff's music for Australian Unity Insurance are the other contenders. And for Best Soundtrack - there are also five finalists! Gusto has three entries for Nike, Renault and Tourism Victoria and Duffield Kenihan has the other two finalist spots for Officeworks and Antz Pantz. ...TVC finalists... For those of you interested in TV - Sound Lounge features in three of the four finalists for 15 second TV commercial with work for Just Jeans and the Richmond Footy Club. 30 Second TV commercial has eight finalists vying for the award. Sound Lounge has five entries, Good Audio Sense two and Duffield Kenihan one. Gusto has half of the six finalist spots for 45+ TV commercial. The other three finalists are Song Zu, Sound Reservoir and Rocket Music. Sound Lounge monopolises the field in the finalists for both TV campaign of less than 30 seconds and TV campaign 30 seconds and over. Just Jeans was the client for the shorter ads, and the Richmond Footy Club for the longer ones. Similarly, Gusto Music is competing against itself for Best Cinema Commercial, with the two finalists' berths going to ads for Nike and Tourism Victoria. You can check out the MADC website for all the finalists. STW Agencies Get New Plush Studios There is more to Plush Films than the immediately obvious. Firstly, the Post Production arm of the company specialises in short-form audio and video despite its name. Secondly, although it's been established to provide post-production facilities for the three advertising agencies in the STWWPP group and their TV Production & Creative staff are encouraged to use it whenever possible, there is no formal edict that Plush must be used. Director of A/V Facilities Steve Hessell says CEO Ron Taylor first floated the concept of serious audio and video facilities five years ago on joining Singleton Ogilvy & Mather. "And then it grew with investments in J Walter Thomson by the STW Group and by WPP purchasing Young & Rubicam, for them to actually look at having facilities that could be shared among the agencies in the STW/WPP group in Australia particularly Singletons, Y & R and JWT." Steve says. Establishing a TV Production company such as Plush Films provided the ideal vehicle for such a facility. "...everyone was blown away by what the studios look like..." Although Plush Films has been operating as a production company for a few months, he says the agencies really got their first good look at the completed studio facilities on launch night. "Not many people in the group actually knew the level of professionalism we were planning for this facility. We always said that if we were to build an external post production facility, it had to be competitive in service, price and provide a product that was also competitive with the other studios in town." "But still not many people knew what to expect. Everyone was really blown away by what the studios look like, the gear and how we've fitted them out. "We launched the facility to the group in early February. It was a great night. We encouraged people to bring in their favourite CD or DVD and put the rooms through their paces. It went on until about three o'clock in the morning and everyone walked away pretty happy." "...basically we've got to be competitive..." Plush has two identical audio suites outfitted with Fairlight Dream stations linked to V Motion video capture systems, and an Avid Adrenalin suite for on-line and offline editing. "All the rooms are networked so transfer of audio or video between them is no problem," Steve says. "I think a lot of people expected that we were going to capture every bit of Post Production work from these three STW agencies, but basically we've got to be competitive with our rates and the service we provide, because if the creatives and producers don't think we're up to scratch, then, in search of the best job possible, they will want to take their work elsewhere," Steve says. Steve says that they have had a good start to the year, and as relationships and trust develop with the agency creatives and producers, they'll build the Plush Films post production arm into a successful and profitable business. Radio Revenue Rising Advertising revenue in metro radio stations increased by 7.8% in the last half of last year, according to Commercial Radio Australia. The figures, compiled by PricewaterhouseCoopers also showed a 6.2% increase over the full 2003 calendar year. "Radio performed better than most analysts had predicted and demonstrated its resilience during an extremely competitive year," says CRA chief executive Joan Warner. Commercial Radio Australia is planning new research this year to demonstrate the value and effectiveness of radio advertising. "A radio awareness multiplier study in the UK found that if 10 per cent of a given television advertising budget is redeployed onto radio, the efficiency of the campaign in building awareness increases on average by 15 per cent. We are very interested in undertaking similar research in Australia, where commercial radio commands the bulk of radio listening," Joan says. Your Bits - Studio news
Big Ears' engineer Tony Lazzaro also went down to the ground to capture the excitement of the crowd on location. The studio is now busy writing and compiling the underscore for a new feature length movie "Welcome to Wonderland."
Our Bits - AudioNET® news We've added a couple of new bells and whistles to AudioNET® over the last couple of weeks. For radio station traffic managers
For production studios
We've already had some positive feedback about our anti-email campaign, which we launched in the February issue of GAS Magazine and progressed with our sponsorship of the MADC Cutting Edge Radio Lunch, mentioned earlier in the newsletter. We've also had some queries from studios about our statements regarding the poorer quality of e-mailed MP3 files. You can find any information you need in our 6-page brochures, which Dave has already started distributing. If you'd like some, please e-mail us or call us. Or you can download this PDF. Even though the next phase of the campaign includes a mail-out to agencies, please be aware that all our material advises agencies to contact their audio producer for further information. You can download a PDF copy of the agency flyer here. Now we realise that e-mail can deliver MP3 files and maybe we're being precious. But the point is, now there's a faster, more secure way to deliver better quality audio files, why risk distorting the quality with e-mail? AudioNET® Thought For The Day "The difficulty lies not so much in developing new ideas as in escaping from old ones." - John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946), British Economist.
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Killer Bits: March 2004
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