SMALL PRINT:THE JOB of the radio ad is to sell stuff. The advertising industry may talk loftily about customer engagement, brand relationships and above-the-line optimisation (to mangle some jargon), but it comes down to flogging stuff. The people who make the ad hope you hear it, remember it and buy whatever it is they're selling.
But there are some radio ads that are repeated so often that they have a much different effect on the audience. You hear the ad and you simply switch off.
Lately, it's been impossible to listen to RTÉ Radio One without hearing Larry Gogan's dulcet tones advertising the forthcoming show by Neil Diamond (pictured) in Dublin. These ads – to my ears – have become so ubiquitous that they've begun to sound desperate. Please buy these tickets, the ads seem to implore, or we'll send Mary Byrne around to your house to sing Sweet Caroline.
Meanwhile, another bunch of creatives have tried every possible scenario to come up with a fresh angle for the TV licence ads, but the ads still make me reach for the off button. We’re glad, however, that they’ve canned those stereotypical caricatures of immigrants and students, though it can only be a matter of time before they recruit that girl with the Cork accent from those excruciating 11890 directory enquiry ads.
Then, there are the ads which are aired so often that the catchphrase takes over from the product.
One such chestnut is the ad which goes “the password is cheers”. Chances are you don’t know the name of the hotel which that ad is for without resorting to Google, which is one in the eye for those ad men who say even bad ads work because we remember them. We remember them alright, but maybe not for the right reasons.
