What Makes A Good Radio Advertisement?

In 30 or 60 seconds, a good radio ad

• Grabs attention
• Involves a listener
• Sounds believable
• Creates a mental picture
• Spins a story
• Calls for action
• Manages to keep the product on center stage and the customer in the spotlight.

It is important that whilst achieving these above steps the advert does not become boring, pushy or obnoxous. When executed to its full potential a radio advert is almost a one-to-one conversation with the listener. This makes a customer feel valued and may result in them purchasing the product/service being sold. Radio adverts are often used to complement other adverts in a campaign, they are also used heavily by new businesses to get the word out to a large audience because they cannot currently afford to pay for TV advertisement. It is also important to match the advert with the type of music played by the radio station. For example advertising using modern music on a country and western radio station would not only be innapropriate but would also waste time and money for the company.

The Cost of Advertisement

Costs for advertising varies considerably for different types of media advertising. The price is not the most important factor when considering its the value for money recieved from that particular advertisement. For instance the most expensive advertisement is not always the best and the cheapest is not always the worst.

For example, you can pay 5p per click for ppc advertising, but what is it actually giving you, in terms of value for money. There is no doubt that on a cost per click basis, the pay per click format is hard to beat as you are only paying for the audience that are actually affected by the advertisement.
Other media like magazine advertising can offer a mixture of awareness, branding and corporate identity, as well as providing an effective media for 'new launch' campaigns and meeting other specific objectives. Usually, prices start at around £1000 per colour page and go above £10,000 per page in certain publications. Some magazines do have a very specific readership and rates can be lower for those that are part of a membership or club.
For Outdoor Advertising formats, prices can vary from around £2000 for mobile billboards on vehicles to £7-8000 per month for large billboard advertising on the high street or roadside.
With Radio Advertising, the costs vary enormously and depend very much on the time slot and length of advert. A typical slot of 25 seconds can be around £250 - £1000 per week, depending on the frequency and amount of listeners.
With newspaper advertising they will usually charge by the SCM or single column centimetre if it is for classified ads or up to £10,000 for full page magazine advertisements if it is in the display section.
The top end of the advertising sales scale is TV advertising. They can demand tens of thousands of pounds before running a campaign, but a lot does depend on the frequency and viewing audience. With this and Radio, there are going to be additional costs for creating the advert, so do build this into your media planning budget.

Regulation of Advertisement

"The ASA is the UK's independent regulator of advertising across all media, including
marketing on websites. We work to ensure ads are legal, decent, honest and truthful by applying the Advertising Codes."

Advertisement is an important part of every day life. It informs, entertains and promotes health competition. It is important for these adverts to be regulated for the benefit of the consumer and company. Without this regulation advertsisements may mislead, offend or harm the viewer therefore contradicting the purpose of advertisement.

The ASA regulates the following types of advertisement:

• Magazine and newspaper advertisements 
• Radio and TV commercials (not programmes or programme sponsorship) 
• Television Shopping Channels 
• Posters on legitimate poster sites (not fly posters) 
• Leaflets and brochures 
• Cinema commercials 
• Direct mail (advertising sent through the post and addressed to you personally) 
• Door drops and circulars (advertising posted through the letter box without your name on) 
• Advertisements on the Internet, including banner and display ads and paid-for (sponsored) search 
• Marketing communications on companies’ own websites and in other, non-paid-for space under their own control  
• Commercial e-mail and SMS text message ads 
• Ads on CD ROMs, DVD and video, and faxes
• We regulate sales promotions, such as special offers, prize draws and competitions wherever they appear.

On 1st March 2011 the ASA was extended significantly to deliver more comprehensive consumer protection online.

Our advertisement will have to meet the standards set by the advertising codes. If advertisements don't meet the required standards it is likely that consumers can complain through the ASA's website. Once a complaint is recieved the ASA must investigate and if they find the advert in breach of any rules they can ask for the advert to be removed. This is costly for the company and is therefore important that an advert adheres to these rules to save uneccessary costs.

As we are planning to make a short sponsorship for a programme featuring our product it is important to understand the regulation behind this. Ofcom are responsible for the regulation of these films. The codes for which need to be followed can be found here. Ofcom also regulate product placement, where companies can pay for their product to feature in a particular programme. The codes for this would also need to be considered if we were to do this.

The Future of Advertisement

As technology evolves advertisement evolves with it. The introduction of more TV channels and services meant that TV advertisement is currently the most popular form of advertisement. As a result it is the most expensive. As technology keeps on improving will TV be replaced as the main advertisement form.

Over the last few years DVR's, Digital Video Recorders, have rapidly become part of the British home. Sky+, the most popular form of DVR, allows programmes to be recorded to suit the modern lifestyle. When a programme is recorded the user can define the parts of the programme they want to watch. This often leads to fast forwarding the advert breaks to save time. Aware of this knowledge TV companies have launched On Demand services in which viewers can catch up with programmes on the Internet. These services mean the viewer has no control over the adverts and is therefore forced to watch them. 

The rise of social media has meant that advertising companies have had to change their strategy. Sites such as twitter and Facebook are funded by the revenue from advertising on the site. Facebook advertisement works on a pay per click system where the cost is determined by how effective the advert is. YouTube also has a form of advertisement on its site. These range from pop up adverts whilst watching a video to full adverts, some of which cannot be skipped, when watching videos posted by certain companies like channel 4s on demand service or the music video service VEVO. It is reckoned that TV adverts are far more effective when the user has seen the brand before. As social media sites are where most young people (16-34) spend most of their time, apart from watching TV, this seems a logical addition to an advertising campaign. 

Internet advertising has many advantages. Adverts can now be tailored to your browsing history therefore the advertisement is customised to the consumers interests. This means that the advert is more likely to achieve its target audience rather than on the TV. The Internet is the fastest growing form of media interaction. Therefore an advert reach a high number of people for a fraction of the cost of TV advertisement. 

However the effectiveness of Internet advertisement is unknown. It is unlikely that Internet advertisement will replace TV advertisement as the main form in a campaign. Despite the advances in technology TV advertisement is still as effective as it was 15 years ago. The future for advertisement is likely to be the cross media campaigns in which TV ads are supported online meaning that the consumer is in contact with advertisement for the largest possible time.

Codes and Conventions of Advertisements

Codes and conventions of Adverts:

• Using a celebrity to sell the product: John Smiths – Peter Kay
• Been unusual: Cadburys gorilla advert.
• Brand name advertised over and over.
• Using a popular song to sell....boots "Hear come the girls” whenever you hear it you think of them.
• Catch tag lines such as Haribo "Kids and grownups love them so".
• Fear factor: if you don't use this he wont love you, used in health products
• Using guilt, life insurance use this don't leave loved ones without anything.
• Shot styles....close up on face of person Charity's use this.
• Creating a mini series: BT adverts. This makes them instantly recognisable and rememberable

Advertising Tends to follow a basic format - a slogan or a striking imade catches our attention, the body of the ad contains factual information about the product, and a pack shot or logo reinforces the brand indetity. The combination of these elements, even though the advert is viewed for a matter of seconds, leaves us with an impression of the values that are attached to that brand, and a sense of the target audience.

What Makes a Good TV Advertisement?

TV advertisement is the biggest form of advertisement in the world. On average, we know spend more than a day (26 Hours) a week watching broadcast TV. We know view more than a hour longer of TV commercials than we did 10 years ago. With such a wide audience TV advertisement is expensive. For an advert in 2010 Britain's Got Talent it would have set you back £250,000 for a 30 second ad. It is therefore imperative for companies to make an effective advert in order to make such an investment worthwhile. A good advert will be worth the investment and increase sales. The Cadbury's Gorilla advert helped to  increase annual sales for Cadbury by 5%.

A good TV advert uses the same philosophy as any good advertisement. A standard 30 second advert has slightly longer to impress than most other forms of advertising but is still not a long time for advertising companies to work with. It is therefore important to get the message across quickly but give the consumer time to absorb the information.

A good TV advertisement has to interest the public. If an ad fails to spark a human interest the message is likely to have little or no interest to the consumer. This human interest may be in the form of engaging the viewer by giving them something to relate to. For example it could be a situation they often find themselves in. They would then relate to this advert and the product it is advertising.

Some adverts are product orientated some are consumer orientated.

Product orientated adverts often show off their product, describing its features and what makes it unique from everything else on the market. Product orientated adverts are usually technology products where the company is trying to stand out from the competition.

Consumer orientated adverts are based on the consumer. Usually used for advertising services showing the effect on the customer that a particular product or service will have. Charity advertising is consumer orientated playing on the emotions of the consumer.



An example of a well executed
humorous advert



Many adverts use the humour element in order to catch the viewers attention. A well executed humorous advert will be remember able when it comes to buying a particular product. Also they will achieve additional advertisement through word of mouth as funny adverts get people talking. However if a humorous advert isn't executed well then it can have an adverse effect and possibly cause viewers to avoid a certain product. As the picture to the left shows people want to see a good advert. Over 50million people have made the effort to view this advert on YouTube. Many of these will have seen the advert before but a minority may encounter this for a first time whilst on YouTube. This means that a good advert acheives a much wider audience.

Celebrity endorsement is another way of achieving a good advert. Using a role model for the public makes the viewer believe that if this product is good enough for them its good enough for me. Most health care and beauty products use a celebrity to help with promotion. This helps to convince the viewer to buy the product by making them believe that they will become as good looking as their celebrity counterpart.

Finally adverts don't have to be entertaining to be good. Adverts that are meant to provoke and annoy are going on the principal that there is no such thing as bad publicity. Many adverts, such as the GoCompare adverts, annoy the viewers however when it comes to needing their service they will think of that brand as it is remember able. In these cases the adverts have served its purpose however there could be occasions where consumers boycott the service due to its advertisement. In the case of Benetton after their controversial series of advertisements the Daily Mail called for its readers to look elsewhere so these types of adverts are potentially risky.

What Makes a Good Advertisement?

In order to make the best advertising campaign for our product it is important to understand the features of good advertisement campaigns.

In any advertisement, the time frame you have to make an impression on your audience is limited to seconds. For billboard and print ads, this may be as little as 3-5 seconds; for radio and television, 30 seconds is usually standard. It is then encouraging to overload the ad with as much information as possible. However this is unlikely to be absorbed by the consumer. A far more effective approach is concise information that appeals to the consumer. In other words less is more.

A good ad:

• Connects with its audience
• Is memorable and easily recalled
• Provides information quickly and succinctly
• Doesn’t confuse the viewer or make them hunt for the pertinent information
• Calls the viewer to action

An effective campaign may include a slogan. A well thought out slogan will stick in the mind of the viewer. They will then remember the slogan and the product it relates to making them more aware of the product, its features and therefore they are more likely to purchase the item. A slogan may also tie in with the advertisement: For example the Guinness Adverts use the slogan "good things come to those who wait" and one advert they used it with is about evolution that ends with them drinking Guinness suggesting that it is worth the wait.