Why do certain reads succeed? That’s the question asked and answered during the latest RAB Radio Mercury Awards webinar, which delivered a detailed breakdown of how radio creatives can elevate performance, direction, and talent selection for their ads.
The session, with Sound and Fury CEO Jill Kershaw and Head of Casting Tina Morasco in conversation with RAB SVP of Marketing and Communications Leah Kamon, framed an overlooked challenge to ad creation: radio spots rely on voice performance more than any other medium, yet casting is often treated as a procedural step instead of a creative discipline.
Kershaw opened by addressing the gap directly, explaining that chief creative officers repeatedly tell her “many junior creatives see voice casting as a mysterious black box.” The goal of the webinar, she said, was to “pull back the curtain” on how casting works, why certain reads succeed, and what separates a good spot from a great one.
Local producers, the panelists said, can build their own talent ecosystems by tapping into theater departments, improv communities, comedy clubs, modeling agencies, and even magic clubs.
One of the biggest takeaways of the session was the importance of detailed casting specifications. The Sound and Fury team repeatedly stressed that general specs, like “mom, 30s, upbeat,” create predictable, generic reads. The distinction between weak specs and strong specs, Morasco explained, is the difference between a spot that blends into the background and one that performs.
The panelists broke down their concept of “character DNA,” which includes environmental cues, cultural context, backstory, emotional beats, vocal texture, and celebrity touchstones that help actors understand tone without imitating recognizable figures. They illustrated the point with a detailed case study: a Tomcat mouse-bait script that required a YouTube unboxing influencer.
The final booked read came from a talent who integrated every element of the specs, from improvised comments to tonal reversals, validating the power of precise direction upfront.
Direction in the booth formed the last major pillar of the webinar. Morasco emphasized that even strong actors can lose confidence if control rooms become noisy or contradictory, urging teams to designate a single voice for notes. She also warned against leaning on line-readings, which actors interpret as failure, suggesting instead that producers offer “moment before” scenarios or paraphrased emotional cues that unlock natural performance. Kershaw added that physical adjustments like changing stance, holding an object, or shifting posture can generate immediate shifts in delivery when words alone fail.
As for the future of spots, Morasco said Sound and Fury clients “haven’t even touched AI” for broadcast work, and the brands that tested synthetic voices in e-learning projects “saw engagement diminish so drastically” that they returned to human actors. Kershaw added that AI “is a great research tool” but lacks the nuance required for performance, particularly in brand work.
