Loading ...by Doug Zanger
Eliot Spitzer jokes abounded privately and publicly at the New York Advertising Club sponsored their 2008 Radio Forum at the Grand Hyatt in Midtown yesterday. The day included a morning keynote address from John Mittnacht, Director of Advertising/Global Wealth Management for Citigroup (one Spitzer joke), three breakout sessions that included one on creative and a riotous luncheon keynote from Dennis Miller. Miller hit the Spitzer issue dead on by announcing that, “(he) went out for Chinese last night. I ordered a number nine and they brought Spitzer to the table.”
Mittnacht, after addressing his perception of the future (digital), somewhat surprisingly, touched more on creative than just medium/buy strategy. More than once, he evoked the ideas of George Dewey from McCann Erickson. He pointed out that Dewey thought that radio, “requires the listener to fill in the blanks” which makes it a challenging and demanding medium to write for Mittnacht’s most salient points, however, were about creative challenges saying that radio “can be as good as TV and worse than bad TV” because “all the technology in the world won’t help it unless the message is good.”
He continued by highlighting research that says humans are “oral thinkers” that, “we think in words and remember stories because of the arc” and that “for advertising, copy points won’t be nearly as effective without the arc.” One important illustration of his point was the 1960 United States Presidential election where, according to polls, Richard M. Nixon won on the radio but John F. Kennedy, Jr. won on TV due to Nixon’s “makeup malfunction” that could not dissuade his flop sweat.
Mittnacht also touched on the idea that radio advertisers generally “club the listeners over the head” by yelling and screaming instead of nurturing the relationship that the brand may already have with the consumer, feeling that due to the unique nature of the medium, it is radio’s responsibility not to “disappoint.”
One interesting and unexpected issue that was addressed was programming and HD radio where Mittnacht put programmers on notice by saying that it is their “duty not to disappoint” and that digital delivery, HD in particular, should free radio to specialize and be “more consistent.”
The fur, however, flew when Dennis Miller took the stage for the post-lunch keynote. No one was safe as he covered topics ranging from the war in Iraq, President Bush, his Libertarian views and global warming. He even touched on his radio show where he described the feeling of being on the radio as more “freeing” because people can engage in actual conversation instead of smaller, less genuine interaction. After the very funny Spitzer joke that warmed the crowd up, they were treated to 30 minutes of classic Dennis Miller rants.
