I was told a great story/analogy last night by a friend who works as an sound engineer at a radio station in Bristol. It came about following a disagreement on wit within press advertising which then migrated into humour in radio ads and whether the message gets lost at the expense of humour (or attempted humour)…
If you are a dog owner you will know that every few months you have to trick him into swallowing a worming pill. They are average pill size, nothing too onerous or challenging, and not too awkward in shape. It’s just a simple little pill. But it isn’t as easy as just giving him the pill to swallow because they don’t really care for it or want it – he’ll spit it out , nose it around the bowl, hide it, pretend to swallow it then spit it out again. You get the deal here. What you need to do is conceal it within something tasty, say cheese or a sausage. He then gulps down the treat without appreciating its true contents and, job done… until the next time.
To radio listeners, those ads that break up the programming can be like the pill. They can get in the way of the content that the listener really cares for, and they get ignored or just spat out. To make the listener swallow the pill, you need to make it tasty. Maybe use a celebrity endorsement, a funny story, a witty pun, a comedy jingle [where this all started], some foot-tapping retro music, or a no-nonsense special offer. Whatever is used to make the pill appear like a treat, it must make a connection with the listener.
All too often the treat tries too hard to be tasty, but is it even wrapped around the pill? Many ads fall down by getting carried away in the creativity behind the humour and completely miss getting the real message across. The listener has gone, an opportunity missed, wasted advertising costs, and an unhappy client.
Whatever the pill, I love the concept that part of our role here at Purple Frog is to make them appear really tasty in any media. [And that’s no joke].
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