Radio’s “Sweet Spot”

(By Ronald Robinson) Any broadcaster, unwilling to agree the general condition of radio’s locally produced advertising creative is remorsefully inadequate, has not been, or refuses to, pay attention to their products – the spots. That commercials have the impact they often do is, to my mind, a startling representation of (mostly) one thing: The innate “power” of radio.

Yes, I have been plying my wares from out here where even the cops don’t patrol. And yet, to my delighted surprise and also great relief, I find there are some who are very much aware of this innate “power.” Others are more intuitively suspicious that “Sumthin’s up – and it’s weird.” Still, minus an acceptable explanation, those radio folks are wise to keep such suspicions to themselves.

Occasionally, I feel obliged to rehearse that explanation, and I will briefly do so now: This all has to do with how humans mentally access and process different segments of their experiences. Conversations being held in a real-time and natural circumstance – the only true, one-to-one situation – are processed, primarily, as dominant hemisphere (“left brain”) activities. The same goes for reading any “hard copy”: books, magazines, documents etc.

When any electronic medium, however, is introduced as the source, the sub-dominant hemisphere (“right brain”) provides the primary processing functions. Electronic media includes televisions, phones, computer screens, and…radio.

Here then, is where this information is critical to delivering effective radio from the on-air presenters and through commercial content. The dominant (left brain) aspects include those of understanding what is being said or read – only in natural environments – and deriving comprehension and “meaning,” as well. This is also the part of the brain that internally generates language. Plus, the capacity to better retain information is another dominant hemisphere function.

Irony #1. Since radio commercials and much of the “live” on-air product is made up (mostly) of content information, much of this material is lost on an audience that is processing, primarily, with the opposite hemisphere – the sub-dominant (right brain) hemisphere. The “right brain” also deals with emotions, and completes patterns. It attempts to make sense of large generalizations, gross deletions or wild distortions – the “meat & taters” of entertainment, comedy, fear, anger, and influence! It is not a “lie detector,” either. “Facts,” in this hemisphere, just muddy the waters.

Irony #2. When we radio-people are listening to our own medium, more often than not we are listening cognitively and rationally. That is to say, with our left brain (dominant hemispheres) snapping, crackling, and popping. We listen critically. Audiences don’t – at least not in the same way.

Irony #3. I have just provided this content-heavy explanation through an electronic medium. Drat! Readers would have a far better and useful experience by considering this material after printing and re-reading it as hard copy. PET scans (positron emission tomography) have been demonstrating these (above) phenomena for decades.

This brings me to another thoroughly contentious, but related, matter: Must ads be creative? My first, default, answer is: Sometimes, maybe, and depends. Would I, nevertheless, suggest every spot be an entrant for a Creative Award? No. Does radio need most of its spot production to be, at least, somewhat creative and entertaining? Nice, but not necessarily. Lucky for us, too, as the chances of commercial creativity becoming a #1 priority – even on an experimental “skunk works” basis – are zero. No matter how hard those who campaign for a full-blown effort to moving aggressively towards more “creativity,” it is still not going to happen. Not in this dereliction cycle.

Now, here is some thrilling news concerning taking advantage of these extraordinary neurological distinctions.

There exists a “sweet spot” for radio. It is magical and it lies within and in between the two hemispheres, which are, after all, biologically connected. Speech can be directed into either one or both, easily and elegantly. It’s natural! This is a sweet spot where a communicator can, with purpose and precision, dance among and in between listeners’ two hemispheres and do so without impaling them on the spears of annoyance, insult, and the limitations of meaning and/or interest. (There is no known cure for the inevitable events of people who insist on taking “offense.”)

Learning to be a formidable and influential radio communicator/writer is a serious process. There are the basics, and there are the nuances, all of which can be learned and applied. However, as every traveler knows, to go somewhere else means they can’t stay here! So, to risk the trip, the destination had better be a lot more appealing than the current location. Radio quit and dug-in decades ago. The adventure is out here.

“Letting go” of a few of radio’s carved-in-stone tenets is the first step. Dedicated and motivated-to-learn communicators will have to, among others, re-consider the following two, traditional edicts: 1.) Radio is an indirect medium – not a direct, and one-to-one or a medium of personal connectivity; 2.) Speakers on the radio have no authority to demand behaviors of anyone at any time – ever. Calls to action? That’s agency ad-speak. No. Those are explicit demands for behaviors! Playful splashing, free swims, and serious learning begin only after those two sacks of rotting fish are chucked overboard.

Besides developing more skilled, listenable, and adept on-air talent, applying the new, communicative practices I have been promoting, allows for content-heavy (direct response) ads to be delivered in a more cogent, acceptable, and influential manner. I expect most readers would agree that, if there were to be any significant improvements in spots, they would have to be transformational, and genuinely enhance this most common genre of info-dumping ads.

The “sweet spot” is often a reference to the ideal striking location on a baseball bat, tennis racquet, or hockey stick. (Golf clubs have no sweet spot.) At the risk of being ambiguous, “sweet spot” might also describe a terrific radio ad. And now, radio has been respectfully reintroduced to a gorgeous, luscious, delightful, sonorous, exceptionally powerful, and magical sweet spot of its own. Whether we exploit that is up to us.

Ronald T. Robinson has been involved in Canadian radio since the ’60s as a performer, writer and coach, and has trained and certified as a personal counselor. Contact him at [email protected]