Radio can elevate the media advertising plan  #NABShow

Pierre Bouvard, the chief insights officer at Westwood One delivered the latest thinking on radio sales and creative at NAB 2025 in Las Vegas.

“Radio can get your clients the reach they are seeking,” said Bouvard, especially when radio advertising is paired with wider advertising strategies across other media.

Showing figures on the amount of audience for various social platforms, he acknowledged there are a lot of people using social platforms, but also pointed out that those platforms do not reach all of the audience in a particular demographic. “Radio can get you the rest of the people that Facebook, Instagram and Tiktok don’t reach,” he said, providing a good argument that radio sales people can pitch to advertisers.

With a lot of ad revenue going to search, Bouvard also framed the radio sales proposition in terms relating to search.

“The most powerful search engine in the world is your memory. If the audio ad is interesting and enjoyable, people will remember it. If it is targeted to sales events that people find interesting and useful, they may not be ready to buy now, but they will keep it in their memory for later.”

There are two types of advertising: ads for those who want to buy now and branding ads for people who are not ready to buy a product yet.

“Think about both types of people. 5% are ready to buy now. 95% are not ready to buy now, but will be in future. For the 5% who are ready to buy now, use a call to action style radio ad. For the other 95%, be more entertaining, so when they are ready to buy they will remember your ad and think of you.

“You will need them to remember your brand. Radio can sell products immediately and it can also create future demand. If the ad is remembered it will serve as a brand introduction for when you what to expand to a new audience

“When you teach people about the brand you grow awareness and interest, then when they are ready to buy they use it,” said Bouvard.

Good advertising is both showmanship and salesmanship. Make entertaining funny ads, use a memorable jingle that the audience can sing, change the copy often, make multiple versions of the ad. “If your brand goes into their memory they will recall it.”

Online advertising on search and social sites usually has many different versions of the ad’s graphics and text, designed to deliver just the right message to a specific audience segment. An ad targeted at youth may have a completely different look and slogan for the young audience than it does for ads targeted to appear on the social feeds of older audiences.

Radio has long been a medium that is able to make multiple versions of ads to place in different timeslots or formats, so digital advertising is not the only medium that can tailor content and deliver different versions of it to different audience segments. Radio sales and copywriters should be highlighting this aspect of radio advertising flexibility when they are pitching to clients who say they prefer to buy advertising on ‘digital’ or ‘social’ media.

Bouvard gave an example of radio ads for Steve’s Pest Control. Steve advertised on radio only at first when he started his Missouri business and only operated one van. Now he has 90 vans and credits the radio advertising for his success.

Steve’s radio ads built name recognition for his company, the company name immediately said who owned it and what the company did, so there was no need to spend time explaining the business in the ad, leaving more time for creativity.

“They are funny ads, he changes copy often, spends most on radio… Be known before you are needed is the successful approach Steve used,” said Bouvard.

These days Madison Avenue is obsessed with the science of measuring the short-term sales effect of advertising and converting existing demand. Performance marketers sometimes calculate ROI by show by week. Steve’s Pest Control knows what Madison Avenue has forgotten. To generate substantial sales and profit, a business needs to create future demand rather than just obsess over converting existing demand.

As a result of Steve’s campaigns, “Steve’s Pest Control dominates unaided brand awareness,” according to a study commissioned by Westwood One.

In the research, consumers were asked, ‘When you think of pest and insect control services, which ones come to mind?’ Respondents had to write in all the brand names they could think of. They were not provided with a list of firms. Steve’s Pest Control was found to lead in unaided awareness at 34%, beating all national brands. It owns its category as the best known brand.

Click here for full details of the study.

Using research, Westwood One helps radio sales and creative staff improve their advertising effectiveness, even in the face of more competition for advertising in the modern ad environment. Advertising Tips:

Short term sales activation campaigns to convert existing demand should have these characteristics:

• Create a Lead
• Generate Sales Now
• Tightly Targeted
• Short Term
• Persuasive Messages

For the other 95% of potential future buyers, create future demand by brand building:

• Create a Memory
• Influence Future Sales
• Broad Reach
• Long Term
• Emotional Priming

Bouvard also made the point that audience research about time, place and type of listening are essential these days for programmers and sales people, but that it is difficult to get real time data in small markets. He commented on new developments for in-car data gathering that is ow available: “DTS Autostage will give you huge amounts of free data from their platform.”

View Bouvard’s presentation on Steve’s Pest Control below.