Write a One-Minute Radio Ad

Writing Advertisements: Planning Guide

Assignment: Write the rough draft for an advertisement for a real or imaginary product or service. The ad is intended for the radio and is to fill a one- to two-minute time slot. The planning guide below, willl help you to design an ad.  To be sure of having a good project, answer these questions for three different possible ads and turn them in on Friday.  You will not have to write three ads, but you are to plan three.  Answer each question in COMPLETE SENTENCES. Sample answers are given for an ad for a cat cemetery plot, to which you may listen below.  You must answer the questions three times, with your own possible ads in mind.

1. What is the product's function? (What does it do and how does it work?)

Sample Response: It is a hole in the ground to receive the corpse of a cat. Or it could be a box in a building (a crypt).

2. What audience are you "targeting" in this particular radio ad? (Just one, please.)

These people live in the city and have more money than they know what to do with, but they are not very sure of themselves. They are goofy about their pets, possibly because they have few human friends.

3. Consider how you will make the audience eager to buy your product. What need do these people already have for it?

Cats do die eventually and must be disposed of before the Board of Health begins nosing around. However, the real challenge of this ad will be to sell the grave plots BEFORE the pets die, before there is any need of a grave.

4. What further need can your ad create? Can the use of this product enhance the audience's prestige, sex appeal, vanity? Can it soothe guilt, allay fear, inspire sentimentality, or make them feel good about themselves in any way? Be specific.

Cat lovers are sometimes sentimental and see their pets as almost human. A grave in a real pet cemetery might make them feel that they had done their best for poor little Morris, even to the bitter end. Besides, this cemetery will be EXCLUSIVE—for cats only, so that Morris will earn STATUS by dying. Cute names such as The Eternal Lap and the Mouse-o-leum will remind the owners of Morris's feline pleasures and make them think they can win cat heaven for him.

5. Does this product have any disadvantages?

It'll cost a bundle, and it's not something you can wrap up and take home with you.

6. What might be some unpleasant consequences of not having this product?

What do you do with a dead cat in the city? You can't bury it in the yard, and you don't want to put it in the garbage. So there it sits in its box, drawing flies until you find a solution. You'll hate yourself if you resort to just throwing Morris out. You won't be able to see yourself as a truly responsible "cat-companion" anymore. You will be just another exploiter of a weaker species, "loving" it till it dies and then pitching it out with the trash.

7. What "stance" would you adopt toward your audience; that is, what sort of personality or attitude should the radio announcer project? (e.g., intimate, formal, hip, ironic, pushy, sisterly, . . .)

It must be a very serious, responsible stance. I must sound deeply concerned; this must seem almost a social issue, like minority rights. I must appear severely realistic in looking to the future in order to disguise the schmaltzy appeal to sentiment.

Listen to samples below, from A Prarie Home Companion and Saturday Night Live.  Then write the text for a radio ad of your own.

St. Paul Water

Shimmer, the Floor Wax and Dessert Topping