The Hindu Business Line : Creatively speaking...

How is advertising on radio shaping up? As the medium becomes more popular, ad agencies are ready to explore ways by which creatives can be made interesting. But they still have some way to go.

THERE'S an old joke — a PJ, rather — that does the rounds occasionally, and it's about a dancer whose performance featured on the radio! Visual imagery has no place in the medium of listening. Extending the logic further, products whose performance can only be visually gauged — a photographic film, for instance — will never be on radio, right? Not so.

Remember, "radio is the theatre of the mind". The medium is about how you use sound "to fire the imagination of the listener", says Josy Paul, Country Head & National Creative Director of rmg david. So, you can very well `view' the sunset over the Grand Canyon through the radio, courtesy an international Kodak Gold ad. Or, `reach' the heights Nike takes you to. Such ads use radio most effectively, ad professionals say. But how much of the creative work done in India can compare with the world's best?

This may be well left unanswered. The excuse, quite justifiably, is this: With private FM only a couple of years old, the industry has just about begun noticing its potential. The country, unlike the US, may not be able to boast of thousands of radio stations but the 22 private ones have been able to garner sizeable listenership. This, in turn, has of late spurred advertisers to use radio as a marketing medium.

Prashant Panday, Chief Operating Officer of the Times group's Radio Mirchi, says about three-fourths of the total advertising on his channel pertains to brand building. In that sense, it's more than a supplementary medium.

In spite of this, industry professionals admit that, many a time television campaigns are conveniently adapted to radio, making a mockery of the medium's scope. This is all the more "disappointing", considering that radio creatives thrive on spontaneity and need little time and money to produce. A similar situation existed in the early '80s when print ads were adapted to the then-evolving television medium, says Panday. The exclusive-to-radio creatives exist more at the level of dialogues. And most times, the `novelty' in sound is provided by the usage of Bollywood voices. This is what Paul describes as "the easy and lazy way of doing radio".

The ads are also too obvious. For instance, `fear' is communicated by merely heightening the background score, says Priya Madhusudan, Writer and Creative Director, JWT. And although the era of stale announcement ads seems to be on its last leg, many ideas still express themselves only through jingles, she says.

Even ads based on humour are more "loud" and lack subtlety, says O&M's Creative Consultant, Sendil Kumar. This is because most Indians don't much appreciate subtle humour; our "idea of humour is different", he says.

Scripting is another area the advertising fraternity needs to focus on, he says. But sometimes, despite agencies being ready to experiment, and having the talent to do so, some clients want to play it safe in a medium where they could afford to be more "daring", he complains.

Steve England, who is a consultant on radio advertising and who was in India recently to conduct a workshop on radio creatives, says these limitations are to be expected when a new medium opens up. But over time, when the advantages of radio become more apparent, things will change for the better. For the time being, though, he is "pleasantly surprised" by the quality of work that the agencies are doing. And "the agencies seem to know what they're doing", he says.

In the past two years, radio has seen a sample of the brilliance the advertising industry is capable of, say the ad professionals. The following are descriptions of some of such ads. These may not bring out the intended effect — print is not really the theatre of the mind!

JWT, Bangalore, wanted to advertise the lowered rates of Spice Telecom. And it used the famous Suprabhatham at high speed. A voice interrupts to announce that narrating it the normal way is fine, as the rates have come down.

Then there is rmg's work for Bennetton, which Paul describes as `Pavarotti meeting Amitabh'. In this, the song Rang Barse is sung in the Italian style. "You hear something you haven't heard before but suddenly there's something that's familiar."

JWT's Madhusudan talks excitedly about the `Lingo Leela' campaign which Spice Telecom runs in Radio City, Bangalore. The "extremely creative" promo reflects Indians' obsession with English but goes beyond spoofing them. She feels the success of radio campaigns lies in finding "local ideas and ways of speech".

Humour enhances the value of any ad. And advertisers seem to have realised this, for one of the most-used delivery modes is humour. Advertisers use humour to a large extent, along with music and music logos, in order to identify with the listener, says Panday.

This is because the reality of the medium, when compared with the "artificial happiness" portrayed on television, works wonders for properly executed humorous ads, says O&M's Sendil Kumar.

But it's not humour all the way. rmg's Paul says an ad for a headache pill uses an "irritating" sound which continues throughout the commercial but can't be ignored, much like in the case of Surf's legendary Lalitaji on TV. England also cites an example of how a "serious" ad for a war museum evoked listener appreciation. It "didn't glorify war" but expressed the feelings of a soldier on duty.

As Indian ad agencies gear up for a more intense association with radio, England says there are a couple of things that need attention. First, there's a need for sound voice-over networks (there are 300 of these in UK). Second, more creative professionals need to be groomed. Is someone listening?

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