Key points of this case study:
- Radio beat TV with more listener involvement and impact.
- Radio created incredible message recall
- Radio increase traffic to website
- Activating the listeners imagination was a key ingredient.
"It’s one of the best-loved campaigns, and the Radio portion is one of the best-loved components of the campaign. From that standpoint, it’s tremendously successful.”
- Michael Freeman, Director of Advertising Services for the California Milk Advisory Board.
“Every day we get e-mail and hand-written letters from busy people who take the time to write and to tell us how much they like the campaign. We report to our Board of Directors every sixty days with negative and positive feedback, and this campaign has been so overwhelmingly positive, I’ve seen nothing like it since I’ve been working for the Milk Board. It’s one of the best-loved campaigns, and the Radio portion is one of the best-loved components of the campaign. From that standpoint, it’s tremendously successful.” Michael Freeman, Director of Advertising Services for the California Milk Advisory Board, describes his feeling about the popular, “Happy Cows” campaign for Real California Cheese (California Milk Advisory Board) in accepting SCBA’s “GSM Council Best Spot of the Month” Award.
Early on, Universal McCann (CMAB’s Media resource) VP Group Media Director Lynne Scott felt that, after five years of TV and outdoor, the client was ready for Radio. “We felt that the consumer awareness was there and we could stick with what we had but add Radio to the mix. It was a perfect transition, a natural transition. The creative was so perfect for Radio, and with Deutsch doing the creative it turned out even better than I thought. Radio does give an additional frequency and more continuity. Basically it was time.”
Deutsch Associate Creative Director Chris Ribeiro puts it this way: “Before Deutsch had the account, there was television for this advertiser and the primary supportive medium was outdoor. We’re still doing outdoor, but Radio has risen up to replace it as the continuity medium. Radio’s been a terrific addition.”
Janice, Diane and Radio
“Our Radio spot came directly from the television idea. We created these consistent characters that are in all of the spots — Janice and Diane. Radio gives you twice the time that TV does to paint the picture. So people have the thirty-second TV cow commercials in their heads but now we can take the time to really develop those pictures. Each time you hear a spot, you know that they are cows talking because you know these characters. Also, at the outset of each spot, they give you something to remind you. They’ll say, ‘stop twitching your tail, Janice’ or whatever.”
“Another reason Radio works so well is the talent that we hire, April Winchell and Tress McNeal. I would love to take all the credit, but when we get into the recording booth, there’s a lot of ad-libbing and the way they read the copy makes it come off so real and funny and endearing. They are a huge addition.”
“Radio’s a more intimate medium...”
“Not to do disservice to TV,” he continues, “but we have gotten more positive comments from the consumers about the Radio campaign. There are a lot of reasons for that. Radio is a more intimate medium. You’re in your car or by yourself, driving down the road and it’s a very personal experience. If someone can do a good spot that can make you laugh when you’re stuck in traffic on the 405, it endears the brand and the message to you.”
Driving people to the website.
Deutsch Managing Partner and Executive Creative Director Eric Hirschberg says, “Radio allows us, because it’s a sixty-second format rather than a thirty-second format, to get a little more detail in with some of the selling points that TV doesn’t allow. For example, we did a spot specifically to drive people to the website. TV delivers the broad message of ‘great cheese comes from happy cows and happy cows come from California.’ Radio can do that plus convey other bits of information that we want to get across. We’ve always thought of Radio as the, ‘Theater of the Mind.’ You can preach to people, you can disseminate information, but if you’re not activating the listeners’ imagination they are going to be less likely to engage and less likely to remember. With our Radio spots, simple cues let your brain know you are in a field with a bunch of cows and that makes it more than just dialogue. It leverages the TV because listeners know how the cows look and the general humor. I think the lack of a picture plays into our hands. Some images are hard to create in TV, but, in Radio, you let the listeners’ mind do the work for you and it works great. We always use the same creative talent for Radio as we do for TV or print. We actually think of Radio as a very visual medium. You need to engage the listener’s imagination.”
“Our entry into Radio started out as a media exploration,” says Ad Director Freeman. “We decided that we wanted to try it for several different reasons. Number one, just adding a new medium to the mix. It is, in itself, news and can breathe life into a campaign. The second thing is that, with Radio, we could gain a lot more continuity throughout the year. And the brand is maturing. We’re sort of adopting a “recency theory” where we want more recent exposure throughout the year. So Radio made sense from a media aspect. Our creative people had to convince us that there were enough spots for a campaign. We’ve produced sixteen now. We looked at six or seven because, we felt that if we were going to run a lot of weight over so many weeks, we needed to know that we had a campaign that wouldn’t get tired of itself.”
Chris Ribeiro adds, “When you go out of the gate with multiple executions, people get used to something new. We were concerned that people would say that they’d heard the spot already because the opening is always consistent. But by putting three or four different spots on and rotating them every four weeks it makes people turn up the Radio, to see what Janice and Diane are up to this time. We’ve created anticipation in the marketplace which allows us to put different stories out there.”
Incredible recall.
“There’s incredible recall on the names of Janice and Diane,” says Karen Costello, Deutsch VP/Associate Creative Director/Art Director. Most people know Janice and Diane. So, if you say Janice and Diane, they know they’re cows. Most of the letters we get from listeners refer to Janice and Diane by name. That’s pretty powerful Radio!”
After several weeks of the Radio campaign, agency and client discovered that they were using a superior direct response medium as well a brand image strengthener. “At times, we’ve run a tag that tells listeners to go on line and buy a ‘happy cow’ t-shirt.” Freeman notes. “Every two-week period that we run that tag, visits to the website go up four or five times and the t-shirt sales increase three or four fold. At first we thought that was a nice coincidence. Then we ran it again and it’s not a coincidence that it happens concurrently. Every time we run that tag we get incredible sales on the t-shirts. It’s a testament to Radio that people are actually listening closely enough, hear the tag and take action on it. If we didn’t know that already, we know that now.”
The Happy Cows campaign has a promising future, Media Director Scott says, “Next year, we’ll be back in Radio with a few more weeks than this year. I think we’ve added five more weeks. I think we’ll be in about twenty-seven weeks for next year. Overall, it’s a little bit more of an investment, but we strongly believe in it. I can’t imagine that there would ever be a year where we didn’t have Radio along with television and outdoor.”
See article here: http://www.scba.com/article.asp?id=177714
