Creative Development Process: Radio

1. Creative Development Process: Radio Terry Muchoki PSI Kenya The Alliance for Malaria Prevention Workshop on Behaviour Change Communications Bamako, Mali 21-24 September 2010

2. Contents • Considerations when developing a great radio ad • Great advertising • What constitutes an effective ad? • How do you get there? • Production and design of radio ads • Placement of radio ads

3. Effective advertising is.... • Great advertising is a process managed by you. • It involves art and luck, but you limit your dependency on these by managing it as a discipline. What defines great advertising? 1. Memorability (does the *target remember it)? 2. Persuasiveness (did it convince the target to act)? *understand your target audience- what/when they listen to radio, what makes them listen to radio?

4. How do you get there? Spend time developing the brief. Think through and discuss with those who can challenge. Try to force yourself to get it to just a few pages. Focus. The more you give up in your communication objectives, the more powerful your core message will be. Meet and share the brief with the agency. Regardless of their capability, if they don’t understand the brief, you will fail. Meet again one week later. After they have translated the brief into their own internal brief or strategy, the idea is to play back to you what you have said so that everyone is on the same page will all elements of the brief.

5. How do you get there? Give them time to come up with the concepts. It takes a week if not three. Two weeks is usually enough. Review and evaluate concepts. Go back to the criteria of effective advertising. Talk about good and troubling things. Ask for a day if you need time to evaluate. Then provide feedback. You pick. Use testing to check concept appeal. Now go to production. Get estimates. Costs are key. Agree on as much as possible up front. Attend the shoot. There are a million questions, and artists sometimes sacrifice strategy for art.

6. Production and design of radio ads

7. Selecting a studio and artists • The first step is to identify a studio and negotiate the cost. The longer the ad, the more you pay. Go through the studio’s portfolio to hear ads they have done in the past. Get your advertising agency to give you contacts of studios. • Identify voice-overs. (i) Select voice-overs (i.e. male voice-over (mvo) or female voice over (fvo) that meets your specifications from the studio database. (ii) Determine voice delivery style. • Call in the artists you have selected to the studio and brief them.

8. Selecting a studio and artists • Let them rehearse the scripts for a few minutes and make adjust your execution strategy if needed. • Start recording, bearing in mind that the first few recordings will be rehearsals. (You will be listening to their voice intonation.) Once you have done a few takes, then you can proceed and do the final recording. Remember, it’s not always smooth sailing. Sometimes it takes time to achieve the desired results. You may also have to replace the selected artists at times if the desired results are not achieved.

9. Selecting music and sound effects • Selecting music –– Music is used to set the mood for a production. It can create a feeling of excitement, tranquility, suspense or sadness. The following four types of music can be used in audio production: Theme, Background, Bridge, Fill • Selecting sound effects – The use of sound and sound effects works much the same way as music. The purpose of sound effects is to enhance the spoken word. Creative use  of  sound can help  develop a vivid picture in the mind of the listener. Decide what image you want to convey. The image portrayed in your ads should mesh with what your products are all about. • Pretest to see if the target understands you. Their feedback gives you ammunition for the next step especially when the donor wants to change the small stuff.

10. Other available radio options • Radio activations – where the presenter talks about the behavior live on air, or an adoption of a trivia element where the listener who calls in with the correct answer gets a prize. This gives credibility to the product or behavior because of the association with presenter. • Presenter mentions – these are prerecorded commercials • Vox pops – prerecorded testimonials from the target audience • Live links – from the ground where the activities are ongoing

11. Samples of radio ads

12. Placement of radio ads • Determine your radio marketing campaign budget. You have a limited budget to spend on radio commercials. You must determine your radio marketing campaign budget before you do anything else. • Identify the target radio station--the station your best customers most often listen to (Hint: Ask them). • Identify which programs on the target radio station your target audience most often listen to. • Meet with the radio station you identified and select the most effective ad package your advertising budget can afford. This ad package should focus on the most popular programs of your best customers. Identify times when there is less clutter.

13. Placement of radio ads • Place the spots in rotation (if more than one) at the end or the beginning of each transition during the show (usually at the top or bottom of the hour). • To measure the success of your program, measure how often radio listeners act on your call to action.