Our client, Next Door off licences, asked us to produce a radio ad informing listeners about a number of special offers they had in each of their 60 outlets. They also wanted the ad to be Halloween themed. And, naturally enough, they wanted us to make it interesting or entertaining enough to not make listeners feel like setting fire to themselves every time they heard it (as, to be fair, many radio ads do).
I didn’t have a huge amount of time so I deployed a number of tried and tested techniques to get the juices flowing. First I tried a standard chin-stroke. Then I went for a slow-motion ear pinch. Then I opted to massage my skull with my knuckles while staring through the window of a Kelkin muesli packet. It was only after self-administering the cranial equivalent of a Chinese burn that I came up with something I felt audacious enough to call “an idea”. Why not develop a character named… oh, I dunno… The Guy From Next Door?
On the one hand, The Guy From Next Door can be a brand emissary in the traditional sense, who gets the name out there in a simple way while delivering all the relevant product information – just like the Meerkat, the infuriatingly smug Churchill or that bloke off the telly wot does the UPC ads. On the other hand, he can also deliver engagement by allowing us to parody those radio ads we all hate, in which two people innocently having a conversation are interrupted by someone who just happens to be in possession of that nugget of consumer information that will turn their lives around in 30 seconds without the need for surgery.
Look: I could spend all day describing it but by the end of it you’d be as bearded as I am and none the wiser. If, after hearing it, people (a) know that Next Door is the country’s biggest chain of off licences, (b) know there some great Halloween deals on offer and (c) have been provided with a modicum of entertainment, then it works. Have a listen and judge for yourself…
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It’s one thing for our Mammies to say they like our ad but when the man himself Ray D’Arcy says it’s “brilliant” on air it means that little bit more (Sorry Mum). Here’s an excerpt from his show on Tuesday.
