Radio, The Theatre of the Mind

If you’re going to take the stage in the theatre of the mind you had better be well rehearsed. Why? Because radio is the most easily ignored medium of all. You can be changing a nappy while the radio is on, you can be driving to Kinnegad while the radio is on, you can be jogging while the radio is on. But in all of those cases there is the one, singular, most abiding variable – in a fraction of a second your attention to the radio can be distracted by the nappy-needing baby, by that cyclist overtaking you on the inside, or by that dog snapping at your Nikes.

Radio is the most ubiquitous medium, but because of that it can so often become aural wallpaper, that drone of adds and chirpy DJs that can be tuned out of just as quickly as it can be tuned in to. Which is why, before you go on the airwaves, you’d better decide what you want to say, and more importantly, how you want to say it.

Because how you say it is the means by which you hold attention, and when you hold attention you increase recall, and when you increase recall you increase the likelihood of a response, and when you increase response you increase the likelihood of purchase. And if that latter is a run-on sentence it is only because message-absorption is a run-on cognitive sequence in which the audience carried through a proposition and requested to act upon it. But the first task is always “attention”. Lock the audience in immediately. The second task is “engagement”. Give me something to hook onto. The third task is the “resolution”. It can be either a call to action, a punch-line in a comedic execution, or even a provocative assertion as to the brand/products attributes.

This is a tried and true methodology. It applies to ads that are intended to create simple awareness, it applies to hard-core retail, and it applies to public-service advertising. Attention, engagement, resolution – three acts that always perform well in the theatre of the mind.