I read a commercial today for a council, announcing road closures, road works, and for drivers to be careful & obey road signs and instructions of workers directing traffic. They were thanked for understanding & help. The wording came from official policy and was not to be deviated. Thing was that it read to 18 sec, not 15 & the words were so “official” that they only made senece together in  the same sentence was with ink on a page.

In the very limited research for this post, I found very little about the distinction between the two, Written & Spoken Word.

In commercial production, the major part of our job is to communicate information, in the form of an advertisement, that in turn should be easy to for a consumer to understand, interpret and that act upon if the need is there.

Now, the space between the two, the listener/customer & the advertiser, is a radio creative/sales/production mechanism a translation conduit. Consider, when the client has printed glossy material, the writer usually gets it to translate into copy for the ad. The client has spent many hours preparing the details of the brochure to perfectly portray their products & services, so the writer gets the instruction to stick to the details from the printed material.

Two errors, one is, the so carefully worded glossy is written to be read & what is needed are words to be spoken out loud. The other, is that very few understand this & leave the script writer/producer with no choice but to follow the clients instructions (as the client is always right), leaving the copy sounding like the brochure.

All’s good except for the poor listener/customer. He/she has words thrown at them, that normally appear to them in the editorial of news publications & magazines, which is only self centered bragging or postulating, trying to show that the individual has a position of power, influencing opinion etc.

Note: Just had this thought actually, that all the Breakfast/Morning talkback presenters, most have the same god-like complexes actually read their diatribe in this fashion too.

The successful advertisers allow the creative teams to craft words to appeal, inspire & attract customers to buy their products, done in a way that is easy to understand. They talk to the listener not at them. Suddenly the ads and the products, have relevance to everyone, and Bingo! Sales, profits, growth..capitalism at its core.