From the ad agency that brought you the execrable “Radio: You hear it here first,” comes a new campaign for the medium, this time targeting advertisers and plunging the notion of memorability lower than a Playmate’s cleavage: “If It Works, Don’t Ignore It.”
Why anyone would ignore anything that works is not well explained. After all, we’re talking about ultra-rational media buyers and planners, aren’t we? This is an audience of advertisers, and we’re trying to spin the spinners?
If you think it’s only my B.S. detector that’s off-the-scale, then check out what the media industry’s own MediaPost wrote about the campaign:
If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. If it’s worked in the past, it’s likely to work in the future. Those are the messages the Radio Advertising Bureau is hoping to convey with a new print campaign designed to keep advertisers faithful to old-fashioned terrestrial radio during a period of intense new competition from satellite and Web radio.
Key phrases:
– “don’t fix it” – meaning the message implies you shouldn’t advance with the times and do better, broke or otherwise – “designed to keep advertisers faithful” – as if the effectiveness of radio were less than obvious. – “old-fashioned terrestrial radio” – sounds like “your father’s Oldsmobile radio” – “intense new competition from satellite and Web radio” – which legitimizes both in the same breath as it announces the radio industry campaign
Such pitfalls are P.R. disasters made of. The RAB has dug itself a hole on this one, then issued a news release to announce they’re jumping in.
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