Show me the money!

The straight answer? You get to take your product to an audio dimension.

You could spend Rs 1 crore on making a television ad with a helicopter, a Bollywood star, a yacht, a car chase with a Ferrari that you wreck in a huge crash with big explosions. You could spend your money on a print ad with a boring line and a boring creative that people look at, forget and line their waste paper baskets with the next day.

Or you could advertise on radio. Use the one tool that other mediums seldom use: your customers’ imagination. You could use that helicopter and that Ferrari complete with the huge explosions at a fraction of the cost, with even more of the punch. Radio plugs into a person’s mind and takes them where television and print can’t. Radio gets there with you.

You can fill Ulsoor Lake with sweet curd, have a pink parrot in your favourite tree outside, paint MG Road and all its buildings bright blue for the day, have all the planes taking off from the airport drop confetti in your brand colour, make Bangalore’s roads look and feel smoother than a baby’s bum. You could have a flying horse just above cars and autos waiting at the Brigade Road traffic lights.

The mind is the medium’s canvas and the imagination its favourite tool. That’s the magic of radio.

Imagine using sound to bring back memories and even smells. Sounds that evoke memories like the first time you held hands with your wife to your favourite song and to the sound of her laughter. These memories could even trigger smells -- from the perfume she was wearing on your first date to the smell of freshly cut grass. The way Bangalore smells after the first monsoon rains.

When was the last time you smelt your television or the ink on your paper? A two-dimensional, limited experience at best. Give Radio your imagination and it can bring your world to your customer.

Let’ do a quick pop quiz: Who has the longest arm in the media world? Television? Print?

Wrong! It’s radio. For the benefit of those of you who need a shot in the arm, let’s start off by looking at how much fun it is to carry your television with you everywhere. Or making sure that a newspaper is always under you arm.

Radio waves are everywhere; they cover people, communities, cities, and most importantly, they can course through the very fabric that makes up what ‘you’ are. It makes up the bloodstream of Bangalore, for instance, beaming from Brigade Road to basements in Banaswadi. From flats in Fraser town to garages in Gandhinagar. While other mediums can claim to cover a certain segment or demographic, radio has the power to cover a city inch by inch.

It can serve you breakfast, it can play your music, it can take you to college, it can take you to the movies, it can wind you down, it can turn back time, it can wake you up the next day. That is the wonderful reach of radio.

Think of it this way that while you were reading this article, how many places did radio take you?

Send your comments to Rohit Barker