Page 232 - DMGT507_SALES AND PROMOTIONS MANAGEMENT

Sales and Promotions Management

Notes The audience scenario has undergone a change. In the evenings, most urban households are
tuned to television. In the rural areas, nearly 37% population still gets information through
listening to radio. The well-known radio personality, Ameen Sayani has commented that TV
has not killed radio anywhere in the world. Both TV and radio have advantages and neither can
replace the other.
Radio can deliver ad messages to a very large number of audiences across the length and
breadth of our country. Akashvani (All India Radio) reaches 97.3% population and coverage by
area is 90%. FM broadcast in India started in 1980 and was opened to private producers in mid-
1993. It is primarily a music channel (mainly Western) and attracts youngsters from upwardly
mobile families. FM broadcast is available in a limited area. FM stereo service is available in
Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkota, and Panjim. FM channels broadcast several different music
and other programmes. Radio Mirchi is quite popular among younger population.

Did u know? According to NRS 2005, radio reaches only 23.10% of the adult population (the
proportion is the same for rural and urban India) compared with much better population
coverage in the 1980s. The good news is that the following for FM radio seems impressively
on the rise with the 96.8 million FM listeners representing a 100% increase over 2002.
Radio time in India is sold in spots of 7, 10, 15, 20, and 30 seconds. The ads are interspersed
amongst the programmes, and a spot capsule contains a maximum of 4 spots not exceeding a
total of 75 seconds.
Advantages

Radio offers a variety of features to advertisers and many of the medium's characteristics seem
to be important to advertisers.
Of all the mass media, radio is believed to be one of the most personal medium and offers
advantages over other media, including selectivity, cost efficiency, flexibility and mental imagery.
1. Selectivity: Radio offers a high degree of selectivity through geographic coverage by a
large number of stations and various programme formats. More than 70% of the Indian
population lives in villages and the literacy rates are low. Advertisers can focus their ad
messages on specific audiences who speak different languages in different areas, which
otherwise may not be accessible by means of other media.
2. Cost Efficiency: Cost advantages are quite significant with radio as an advertising medium.
Radio time costs far less than TV and the commercials are quite inexpensive to produce.
They require only a script of the commercial to be read by the announcer, or a pre-
recorded message that the station can broadcast. Advertisers can use different stations to
broaden the reach and frequency within a limited media budget.

3. Flexibility: Among all the media, radio is probably the most flexible as it has a short
closing period. Radio commercials can usually be produced in a relatively short time and
if required, the ad message can be changed almost just before the broadcast time. The same
ad message can be adjusted in different languages to suit the market conditions.
4. Mental Imagery: Radio advertising uses sound, and a major advantage of this situation is
that it encourages audiences to use their imagination in creating images while processing
the ad messages. According to Verne Gay, radio can reinforce images created by television
commercial through image transfer. In this technique, the same spoken words or jingles
are used in radio commercial as on television.

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