30-second commercial. This obscene extravagance is largely the fault of the agencies. Says Hooper White, ‘Production dollars are typed into the commercial by the copywriter and drawn into the commercial by the art director.’ Miner Raymond of Procter & Gamble tells the story of an art director who objected to a table on the set. The client pointed out that it was covered by a cloth and thus invisible. ‘But I would know what’s under the cloth’ said the art director, ‘and it just wouldn’t be right.’ So another table was 1 found and the delay cost the client $5,000. The easiest way to reduce the cost of a commercial is to cut actors out of the storyboard. Every actor you cut will save you between $350 and $ 10,000, depending on how long you run the commercial. Copywriters specify that a commercial should be shot in Bali When it could equally well be shot in a studio for half the price. They insert expensive animation into live-action commercials. They insist that original music be composed for background purposes, as if there were nothing suitable in the whole repertoire of existing music. Worst of all, they use expensive celebrities when an unknown actor would sell more of the product. I have no research to prove it, but I suspect that there is a negative correlation between the money spent on producing commercials and their power to sell products. My partner Al Eicoff was asked by a client to remake a $15,000 commercial for $100,000. Sales went down. Radio – the Cinderella medium Once upon a time, I spent six months studying radio at the feet of John Royal, the pioneering head of programming at NBC. In those days every family in America tuned in to Jack Benny, Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy, Fred Allen, Amos and Andy, Burns and Allen. Some of us also listened to Roy Larsen’s marvellous March of Time, and Toscanini conducting the NBC Symphony Orchestra. All this was swept away by television. For most people radio has become no more than a security blanket, a reassuring noise in the background. Radio has become the Cinderella of advertising media, representing only 6 per cent of total advertising in the United States. There is no