I have sometimes been asked by clients to reinvent the wheel.
What does that mean in Radio Copywriting terms?
They want something creative that will stand out from their competitors ad.
Okay – the first thing I do is listen to the competitors ads – if they are all straight announcer reads then I will do something creative.
If their competitors are being creative, then I would go the opposite again and go for a straight read.
But what if there are 4 competitors and they are all already doing something different what should you do?
I don’t tell the client that I am doing this, but I look at how long those other campaigns have been running for.
If they have been running for months, weeks or days – I take note – if they are short term – then chances are they are not working – and they were just flash in the pan Call To action spots.
If they were long term, then obviously those spots are working for the clients – these are the ones I take notice of.
If they have been working I look at why?
Is it because of the core message?
The characters (have they been used for a long time?) are they likeable?
Is it due to some other factor – such as the clients voice?
I take notes, trying to discover what the best outcome would be to make the new client message stand out and go from there – making sure that I explain to the client why I have done what I have done. Backing it up with information – but never the specifics of how long campaigns have been running for, etc – they wouldn’t want me to do that to their competitors so I won’t do it to them.
The important thing is that I don’t have to reinvent the wheel – I just have to look at it from a different angle to discover a new way of presenting the information they want.
Try it – rather than jumping in blind and doing what they ask – by doing some analysis first you will get a better result for your client.
