Jeffrey Hedquist is back to give you another quip about keeping your advertising simple!

Jeff is primarily a ‘radio guy’ and writes about radio advertising, but almost every article he writes can be related to pretty much any advertising medium.  Todays post has to do with making sure the first 5 seconds of your commercial is the most impactful.  I’ll let Jeff explain…

Every time you create a spot, think about making it into a campaign – a theme that will tie all the client’s commercials together and give them an identity in the minds of the audience.

Don’t go beyond the concept stage of the first spot before you ask yourself, “How would I develop this into a campaign?” Then write down as many concepts for other spots in the campaign as you can think of.  If the first spot isn’t adaptable to a campaign, you may have to abandon or at least change it.

Even if your client is expecting, budgeting for, or preparing to air only one commercial, always have a campaign ready. It will give you another good reason to come back to the client and it will remind them that they have a group of commercials to use on the radio to give them consistency – not to just run a one shot trial.  It also gives you alternatives if the client turns down the first spot.

A campaign can be based around recurring characters, voices, situations, attitudes, formats, styles, themes or points of view.

If you’ve created a single spot and haven’t developed a campaign, then you may be hard-pressed to come up with others to fit with the first one, and you might have to abandon the original concept for another, losing some of the identity you’ve begun to establish for the advertiser.

You want to use radio’s power to give your advertiser a brand, an image, a niche in the listener’s mind. Give your spots diversity within the unity of a campaign.

Do you have the list of 333 of the most common commercial clichés? Avoid them and get better advertiser results. It’s free. Just email me jeffrey@hedquist.com and I’ll send them.

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My Two Cents

While ‘one-off’ ad may be fine for an event or a season, all of your advertising should have a ‘theme’ or ‘campaign’ tied to them.  Creating a different type of advertisement for every medium can be dangerous because you’re not creating a consistency people will remember, and potentially tie to your brand or business.  One of the simplest ways to exemplify this is keeping your logo in the same spot on every print ad.

Some businesses have ‘Corporate Identity Guidelines’ so that their brand is consistent.  Which means that whether you’re creating a website, print ads or radio advertisements, you have to include certain colors, tags, and sometimes dimensions that are associated with a business.

This consistency of Corporate Identity Guidelines or Advertising Campaigns is important for both (or either) iconic and echoic retention of your business.  So next time you’re planning an advertisement, make sure you think not only in the present, but also for the future.