Shugart on Radio Advertising

It's easy to underestimate the power and effectiveness of radio advertising. Satellite and live streaming notwithstanding, broadcast radio remains mostly a local-market medium. While not as sexy as TV advertising, radio can give you your best value for your advertising budget dollars.

Advertising innovator Stan Freberg once said that TV is limited by the size of the screen. Radio is limited only by the size of your mind. I sometimes wonder if the art of radio has become a sort of lost technology that's gotten buried underneath the flamboyant glitz of multimedia theatrics.

One of my very first advertising jobs involved writing radio copy for a record store distributor. It was an activity that involved mostly squeezing as many album titles I could into a thirty-second spot. When I started my own radio show, I got a chance to explore the potential and possibilities of this "theater of the mind." I remain convinced that in radio, there's still untapped potential.