A Cut Through Commercial when you’re busy
I have to say that these types of Radio Commercial are getting more and more frequent as our (Producers) numbers diminish and the amount of advertisers being drawn to radio increases.
It is without doubt, that these figures carry worrying undertone.
Firstly, this mostly applies to the in house commercial, being made in the radio stations.
It effects the client most of all, the advertiser is not getting what they deserve, a cracker jack radio commercial. Sure they get the best possible form the Production and Creative that’s available, the airtime placement is good too. He the whole lot is good, but its only given, at best 70% of what it deserves.
All this to get the most out of every second we spend on the job, before we are rushed to get to the next..and so on.
So to get this, I have always run on the simple principle.
It takes very little time to get a commercial to 85% of what it should be, the time it takes to get to 100% is double what you have already spent.
The trick is to have a bag of tools in your system to get to that 85% quicker. The standard eq to get you going, the way you set up a project to start with..and others. The one I like is the faithful reverb on the voice track, it can get the voice to decay just on 30 sec, for a clean cross fade. And if the voice over is good enough you have the commercial finished.
This bag also has benefits when you are really rushed, or you have the “Head Cold from Hell” and the ears are blocked you cant hear clearly. Just throw yourself into automation and produce. You get the 85%’er and the ad sounds fine too.
From our side too, with fewer Producers, the annual leave window becomes more stressful. The ones left holding the fort have to work harder to cover the man hours shortfall, but also, those on leave get smashed before they are away and again upon return (the feeling that hour haven’t been away comes quickly from here). Lack of producer numbers and companies not wishing to spend more covering the work load goes in the wrong direction to help as well.
Worst case, the ad isn’t what it should be, the campaign does not get the results it should, Mr Client looses faith in radio and goes to TV or Print. I guess the cycle goes around we might get them back, but with other forms of advertising, away from main stream media, that is more targeted to a particular demogrphic, radio could go the print is going.
Read this from John C Devorak in the USA to see. http://tinyurl.com/dnh67f
There still will be the need for sound or voice track for the commercial TV or radio, that producers will still be making noise, the EQ maybe a little different…
