Radio Election Advertising - Recommend or Advise Against? (A Political Scientist’s Remarks)

Abstract

It appears that during an election campaign no one who treats his electoral contest seriously should give up any instrument of communicating with their electorate, even one as apparently ineffective as radio advertising. Bearing in mind the flaws of radio election advertising that arise mainly from the medium which the radio is, i.e. the necessity of receiving the message only through the sense of hearing, the habit of listening to the radio while doing other activities, and difficulties in discerning the content important to the sponsors of a particular advertisement, as well as the high fragmentation of the market and the audience of widely dispersed listeners, the advantages of this tool should also be remembered. Because radio can be listened to practically everywhere, radio advertising has wider chance to be “received” by the listener. It seems that to guarantee the efficacy of advertising based only on sound message one has to remember David Ogilvy’s principles and to meet the requirements presented by McLeish: formulate the thesis of an advertisement, write the right text, choose the appropriate voice and way of speaking, select right music and special effects, and, with some reservation here, see to it that there is some humour in the advertisement.

The risk associated with expenses incurred for this communication tool can be further diminished if we decide to air radio election advertisements only as part of free election broadcasts on the programmes of Polish Radio and its regional stations. However, we should remember that not all times of election advertising broadcasts are optimal for their ordering parties. Regardless of the broadcasting time and whether we choose paid advertising or take the opportunity of having free broadcasts as part of election programmes on the public radio, the fundamental aspect of effective radio election advertising is its interesting form and content.