The Radio Advertising Bureau and the VCU Brandcenter at Virginia Commonwealth University held a 90-minute roundtable discussion on April 30 in New York with 11 of the ad world’s top creative directors. My Response to ADWEEK-RAB MEETING

The panel spoke of radio advertising in terms of the effectiveness of radio or lack thereof. They spoke of radio’s reach or lack thereof, of radio’s popularity or lack thereof, and simply, about how radio needs to get better.

However, no one addressed the real question: HOW TO MAKE BETTER RADIO ADS!

Read a newspaper or magazine and if the ads don’t catch your eye, you continue to flip pages. Watch TV commercials and if you don’t connect to the images and/or words, you scan the channels or play with you dog or head to the kitchen. Listen to the radio at work, home or in the car and if you don’t connect to any of those messages (that for the most part all sound the same) you will find a way to tune out.

Boring advertising gets passed over no matter the medium. Advertising that treats the end user like a consumerous boobus gets ignored. And advertising that is all about the advertiser instead of the customer gets tuned out.

So how to make better radio ads? A start might be for advertisers and their agencies to stop treating radio like an electronic post it note; stuffing everything that won’t fit into their TV or print ads into their radio spot. Because, after all, it’s only radio.

Like all good advertising messages, radio ads must connect emotionally to the consumer. And the same care that goes into the crafting of the TV and print message must be paid to the radio advertising creative. Ignore this and the advertiser is simply wasting his money and will, of course, (just as agency people or advertisers tend to do) jump to the conclusion that the medium of radio has failed them.

Good radio ads are emotionally relevant, generate response, and must be shrouded in a cloak of creativity. Ad Agencies simply don’t recognize these facts which is why TV and Print take a front seat to Radio. How many agencies will take the audio from a TV track and simply edit it for use it on radio? How many agencies or advertisers have a specialized staff devoted ONLY to radio? You can count on one hand the number of articles that appear in advertising trades that focus on radio during the course of a year. No wonder radio gets such a bad rap. Too bad for advertisers! Too bad for Radio!