Commercial Radio Australia hijacks radio ads to share the importance of advertising with the medium
Commercial Radio Australia (CRA’s) has hijacked brands’ radio ads to send a message to advertisers that radio’s audience is growing as more Australians are turn to the medium.
One of CRA’s ads highlight that the radio ads are still able to be recorded and produced while abiding by COVID-19 social distancing rules.
The campaign was created by audio specialist agency, Eardrum.
Clever idea, well-executed. Do the brands whose commercials are being “hijacked” mind (or have any say whatsoever in this) – or were they consulted ahead of time?
This is radio’s time to shine! Good job, all.
RS
Sounds great in Isolation, however, I caught the ad this weekend insitu on a metro station and it sounded like someone had hit three buttons at once… it was jarring.
Guess it got my attention.
There’s nothing new about this as a creative execution on commercial radio and I’m sure Ralph is aware that it was being done across both the Nova and Austereo networks in the early 2000s. They were even being sold to both featured clients as a ‘premium’ execution.
The fact that Commercial Radio Australia is calling their campaign ‘Radio Alive’ suggests they’re currently performing CPR on radio as a medium. It’ll be hard to revive with ideas that are 20 years old.
If Creg Maygan is correct that’s incredible, it just goes to show, old ideas re-hashed are the best ones right? Radio is at its most powerful right now, the demand for news and content is high. This article though, is an interesting read. These executions, were they made at low cost? Were these messages tailored in a matter of hours? Or stewed over for days and debated in the creative den of Eardrum? If they were made in a matter of hours like the article suggests, that would be a radio creative team doing that, not an agency like Eardrum. I wonder what lost cost creative is in the world of Eardrum? Not $0 like most radio stations during the pandemic to help clients stay on air! Let get more realistic people.