My experience at work today reminded me why I always listen to CDs in my car instead of the radio. The lab radios are all on and louder than usual on Sundays, so I couldn’t avoid listening to them no matter where I was. TV ads are stupid enough, but DAAAAMN! Radio ads are horrible!
The one ad that drove me over the top, making me want to plunge my pipette into the eyeball of whoever thought it up, was for a grocery store, and was, needless to say, repeated approximately eleventy billion times. Firstly, their entire damned ad campaign is based on the fact that their receipts print off the amount of money you “save” by using their incarnation of those evil savings cards (hope that works - if not, it’s today’s Dilbert comic). But they don’t just print it off for you, oh no. They also circle it for you! Yes! A circle!! Woo-hoo! For some reason, the ad people seem to think this one stupid little piece of mundanity (is that a word?) deserves all the attention and fanfare of a cure for cancer.
Secondly, not only is the campaign’s entire concept stultifyingly idiotic, but the ads themselves (or, I should say, the ad itself, since there’s just one) plumb new depths of brainlessness. Actual quotes from voice actresses pretending to be customers:
“It makes me feel like a winner!”
“I look at that circle, and it’s like ‘Yeah!’”
I swear I didn’t make those up. It makes you feel like a winner? What the hell is wrong with you?? Who is this ad supposed to attract? I have this mental picture of a woman utterly without self-esteem - think Jean Teasdale, but more pathetic - only allowed out of the house to purchase groceries, finally getting some small measure of validation from her grocery store receipt. That’s the only type of person I can imagine feeling like a winner because she saved thirteen cents on a can of tomato paste. Not being one of those people, I guess I’ll just have to find someplace else to shop.
Ah, I feel better. Sometimes you just have to vent.
Its’ just like that episode of Fraiser with the jingle writer, the worst the jingle, the more memorable. In Jersey there is an ad for Citone.com. I remember it because the ad begin with a droning robot’s voice saying “Click on Citone.com. Click on Citone.com…” for the first seven seconds, then an annoucer starts and the robot’s voice softens, but continues. This goes on for 30 seconds. Annoying as hell, but it worked.
Not quite answering exactly the question you’re asking, but many radio ads are just the audio from ads produced for TV. Copy that might work well over certain images sometimes makes absolutely no sense without, yet ends up on the airwaves, leaving us all to scratch our heads and wonder from what muddy cave the marketing department of X corporation just crawled out of.
Allow me to speak as one who wrote copy for radio ads.
There are a number of reasons why radio ads suck. You can combine this list by grouping any set of numbers and I guarantee that’s been the reason on more than one occasion.
The “professional” writer on staff has no business writing ads for he could not find create a coherent sentence if he had every tile from Scrabble at his disposal.
The clients don’t want to use real copy writers. They want to write it themselves because their prose always comes out smelling like roses.
The copywriter is good but he’s not a fucking miracle worker. By that, I mean that the salesperson makes the sale in the morning and they want the commercial written in 30 minutes so it can be produced that afternoon to be aired tomorrow.
The final product must still be approved by the client and way out there (i.e. original) ideas, language, or concepts just don’t fly. The writer doesn’t get to “sell it” to the client.
Since there’s such a time crunch, the production studio doesn’t have time to do anything but the bare essentials. Background music? Sound effects? Ha! We have a schedule to keep, people!
Those people that sound stilted, as if they’re reading it straight from the script? They are! We’ll pull the receptionist from behind the desk if we need a female voice. Male voice? Hey, lets use the production manager for every single commercial.
There are more, but there you go. Bad writers, bad actors, bad script, all on a time crunch. Yet, if the client is happy then we’re happy, move on to the next commercial.
Thanks for the explanation Ender, but as someone who is forced to hear that freaking Citone.com commercial, (shudder) I can understand if the ads come out boring, but I don’t understand who the heck would approve an ad that seems deliberately annoying?
Citone is a chronic offender. Their latest tactic: berating people who: “DON’T HAVE A JOB, AND CAN’T AFFORD A DARN CELLPHONE!”
Yeah, that’ll bring them streaming into your “school.”
I swear, if I find the assclown who created this radio ad, I’m going to make one of my own. It will feature me, his head, and a side of frozen salmon. It’ll go something like this: “Whack!..Whack! Whack!..Whackkk!..”
Gee whiz, Smeghead don’t you appreciate that personal touch they’re offering you? Doesn’t it make up for all the times they only had two checkout clerks working the day before Thanksgiving?
Just be glad you don’t have to listen to the irritating White Castle Hamburger spots that we get here in the Twin Cities (or maybe you do).
They feature this guy who just freaks out and says:
IT’S HARD TO BEHAVE WHEN YOU’RE HIT WITH A CRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAVVVVE!!! (You can actually hear his vocal cords split and fray as he screams this.)
Any desire I might have had to eat a White Castle hamburger is now officially, irrevocably dead.