MEDIA AND MARKETING:MORE MONEY than ever is being spent on radio advertisements, with the €12 million spend in January up 13 per cent on the previous year.

In a cluttered market, creativity is more important than ever to make advertisements stand out with bombarded consumers.

But senior industry figures believe that the standard of commercials is at rock bottom. Alan Cox, chief executive of Starcom Mediavest, one of the biggest ad agencies in the State, recently told delegates at the inaugural Independent Broadcasters of Ireland conference that the quality of radio advertising is "garbage".

At last week's annual advertising radio awards, organised by Independent Radio Sales, there was no winner in the cars category because the quality of entries was so poor.

Two agencies - Cawley Nea TBWA and QMP Publicis - dominated the event, scooping 11 of the 24 gongs. Only three other agencies - Inventive Marketing, Irish International and Chemistry - got a look in.

As one of the main winners, Pearse McCaughey, group creative director in Cawley Nea, knows a good radio advertisement when he hears one. And he concurs with Alan Cox. " A huge amount of money is spent on radio advertising and you have to question how much of that money is wasted."

Awards judge Ian Murray, creative director of McConnells Advertising, said: "It wasn't that the awards were particularly bad this year. The poor standard was just par for the course. There are an awful lot of radio ads and most of them are completely uninspiring." Murray added: "Radio is a much abused medium. People create radio ads for messages that, in a lot of cases, belong in a leaflet. Artificial dialogue between two people has crept into a lot of ads and it's extremely ineffective.

"The problem for radio is that it is considered a cheap medium compared with TV. But aspiring copywriters should be aspiring to inspire. A single simple message is a basic imperative," he adds.

Murray has an ally in fellow awards judge Colin Murphy, creative director of Owens DDB.

Murphy said some entries were so bad that the judges were left scratching their heads as to how they could ever have been entered in the first place. He believes the poor standard of radio ads is symptomatic of a bigger problem.

"It's a product of the era we live in where advertisers believe the only way to get cut through is to shout at the listener over the airwaves," he said.

"There is so much advertising out there that advertisers really have to have advertisements that stand out to get cut through. It is easy for us creatives to blame the clients and say the clients are not prepared to take risks.

"One of the other problems is that radio ads are not perceived to have the prestige of television ads and outdoor ads because they are not as visible. So making these ads gets shunted down to the young, inexperienced creative."

QMP Publicis won awards for commercials for Brown Thomas, Spar, the Dublin Airport Authority and TG4. Its creative director, Ger Roe, believes a good radio ad has a unique voice-over, and a script that comes at the listener from a different angle and makes them laugh.

"Cawley Nea's ads for the Licensed Vintners had all those characteristics and that's why they were so good," said Rowe.

These ads, encouraging people to go to the pub, were written by Jessica Kiang and narrated by comedian Dara Ó Briain. Says McCaughey: "To make good radio ads, we have to stop writing radio ads that talk at people and instead write ads that are having a conversation. A good radio ad is all in the writing."

QMP tests creative ideas with a panel of 1,500 consumers if the agency or the client is unsure of the creatives. "The key is to listen really closely to the client," says Roe. "They will say maybe just one thing that will unlock the creative idea. But to spend that amount of time listening to your client means an agency has to be staffed up sufficiently."

Smart creative concepts will always achieve cut-through. Advertising agency Chemistry came up with the clever idea of hiring snooker ace Steve Davis to promote the consistent performance of Irish Life investment funds. Davis's deliberate "boring" monotone delivery added to the appeal.

With poor creative standards in many ad agencies, advertisers may be better off going directly to radio stations. Stations that won awards for their creative endeavours were 98FM, Midland 103, Cork 96FM, FM104 and WLRFM.

GE Money spends €1.6m on rebranding

GE Money was the first lender to enter the Irish subprime market in 2003. But with subprime a more challenging sell now, GE Money is embarking on a new marketing strategy to show that it competes against the high-street banks as a mainstream personal loan provider.

Beginning with the rebranding of its personal loan product as Flexiloan, the strategy will be underpinned by a €1.6 million campaign including television, radio and outdoor advertising.

The commercial was developed by Javelin Direct, produced by animation company Brown Bag with Dave Fanning as voiceover.

siobhan@businessplus.ie