Let’s talk about ‘that ad’ on TVNZ – the one that attempts to take a pop at Radio Advertising.

You know the one; it’s got that radio-style voiceover telling us that “People who are listening to the radio are usually doing other things too.” whilst “People who are watching television are….watching television!”

You Might Have Missed It!

You haven’t seen it? Well, maybe you were too busy fast forwarding, muting, channel hopping, chatting, catching up on chores, reading, surfing, making a cuppa or popping to the loo. As Mark Ritson, Assistant Professor of Marketing at the London Business School says, "A commercial break is not a time when we watch advertising.'' [1]

Media Advertising Media

To be honest, you and I both know that pitting one medium against another is a fairly contentious exercise. All media have their advertising merits and most (Radio in particular) work incredibly well in combination. Advocating one medium to the exclusion of all others is a huge over-simplification and slightly daft when we all know that just about every single medium uses its ‘competitors’ to advertise itself at one time or another.

We all do it, and yes, despite ‘that ad’, TV brands often advertise themselves, their programmes and their films on Radio. So it’s more than a little disingenuous (although very flattering!) for TVNZ to take a pop at Radio – particularly as they’ve (inadvertently) highlighted one of Radio’s major advertising strengths...

Background Benefits

You see, we love the fact that people do other things whilst listening to the Radio and more importantly, so do our advertisers. Audiences who don’t have to focus all of their attention on Radio are quite happy listening whilst they do those “other things”. This is one of the reasons why Radio is the preeminent daytime medium - people can enjoy the Radio and still get all those daytime tasks done.

And as the daytime medium, Radio reaches people when they are most likely to be in purchase mode (out in the car, in the office, surfing the net, writing that shopping list, en route to the shops…). If you’re au fait with ‘recency theory’ (which states that “advertising messages received close to the time of purchase generate strong influence over that purchasing decision” [2]) then it will come as no surprise that in a recent ‘Recency’ study, 51% of 18+ who heard an advertising message less than 1 hour before their main purchase of the day - heard it on the radio [3].

Low Ad Avoidance

Radio is designed to be an auxiliary medium and its ability to engage people without demanding 100% of their focus is a key factor in the medium’s low ad avoidance levels [4]. Because Radio audiences can comfortably zone in and out of the commercials depending on whether they find them interesting or relevant, there’s no real need to flip to another station when the ads come on [5]. I think we all know what a hot topic TV ad avoidance is at the moment (*cough fastforward timeshift channel hopping cough*) so I don’t think there’s any need for me to go into it here but to quote one of the fathers of modern media planning

“Even when listeners are not consciously listening, they still hear radio. But when viewers do not see television, they do not see television.” [6] Hmmmm, it’s got a certain ring to it that quote.

[1] Ritson was commenting on the findings of the London Business School research conducted in 2003, which studied viewer behaviour in the UK. Amongst other things, the ‘fly-on-the-wall’ study revealed that the more people in a room during a break, the less chance there is they will pay attention to the adverts and that so called ‘prime time’ is when people are least likely to pay attention to ads.

[2] Radio Marketing Bureau (Canada)/Foundation Research Group Reseach Study: ‘Radio & Sales Lift’ 2009

[3] Ibid. ‘Radio & Sales Lift’ 2009: Radio's 51% compared incredibly favourably with other media: Out of Home Poster 25%; Television 21%; Internet 21%; Newspaper 16%; Magazine 12%. 

[4] See Clark Chapman 2005: Advertising Avoidance Study

[5] That’s why creative execution is so important and why we encourage creative excellence in Radio with our monthly ORCA programme.

[6] Erwin Ephron: How People Sense Media 2007. See also the early ‘distraction studies’ conducted in the 1980’s and 1990’s in which various methods of distraction (including Ironing and Jigsaw puzzles) demonstrated that Radio advertising is recalled, even when the listening occurs in the background or when listeners are distracted by other tasks.