Sunday 8 September 2013

RJ Mentions

I know what a RJ Mention is when I hear it. But if I am asked to define it, I can’t. I have heard it on radio, and on occasions I liked how RJ Mentions added value to the spot and made it meaningful to the listener.
Googling did not help find a definition. It provided me links to debate about “should RJ Mentions be regulated”, or network executives who believe “that stations should demand a premium for RJ Mentions” or opinions that “RJ Mentions are not good for listener experience”. Given the fact that this is being debated, eulogized and rubbished, it deserves to be first defined! I will define it simply as:
Mention of a brand when RJ speaks to you. Of course on radio J
The spot I heard was about a business that delivers online trainings. They are named as SIMPLILEARN.com. Like me, if you have heard their spot, it would SOUND to you as SIMPLYLEARN.com. For all you know, the ad dollars spent by SIMPLILEARN would be driving traffic to its homophonic (phonetically similar sounding) counterpart SIMPLYLEARN. Scary isn’t it? So what options do these guys have to make the ad dollars count by driving the traffic to the right URL? Not so good three options come to mind:
·         Change their name, which is not a good idea, they can’t rename their business just to do a campaign on radio.
·         Create a spot which emphasizes their name over 50% of the time, which would be an utter waste, as they would rather speak about their work than spell their name.
·         Use a URL shortening service to set up an acronym redirect to their site and spend ad dollars to advertise the short alias than building their brand.
Since this campaign also had RJ Mentions in its media plan, the RJ not only spoke about SIMPLILEARN, but also spelled out the URL for listener benefit and in the process salvaged the ad dollars spent by the brand. If the brand actually paid a premium for the RJ Mention, I’ll say it was money well spent.
Hypothetically, an online brand with homophonic words in its URL would not face such a dilemma while advertising on radio if it is a big spender on visual media (e.g. QUIKR) and uses radio as a supplementary media to increase reach and frequency. But for brands who are yet to grow big on visual spends, do you believe they present an opportunity for radio stations to sell RJ mentions at a premium to them?
I’ll be glad to have your thoughts on this. Please leave your comments.

5 comments:

  1. We did thought about...and saying website url would have made already big ad even bigger and may be un-interesting...

    Anyone who finds the ad useful...we expect them to google us, if not calling on the number. Its fairly easy to figure out...who we are through google and we think, those, who cannot, are anyways not our target users.

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  2. This is a good read, Himanshu.

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  3. Best information ever.I hope you will continue to share your post same in future articles too.
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