Media Forum: Are bad ads restricting radio?

Is poor creativity radio's only serious barrier to growth? Alasdair Reid investigates.

Sometimes, the whole question of creativity seems to be the radio industry's favourite form of self-mortification - and what better time to come over all anxious than in the days following radio advertising's annual creative bash, the Aerial Awards?

As always, the gongs were picked up by seriously impressive work. The Campaign Gold Award went to Ben Tollett and Emer Stamp of Miles Calcraft Briginshaw Duffy for Travelocity, and Delaney Lund Knox Warren & Partners' Robert Clayman won the award for best overall campaign for Batchelors Super Noodles.

But, in radio, the gulf between the best and the rest is huge - certainly larger than you'll find in any other medium. And the medium's inability to close the quality gap, despite the best efforts of individual radio groups and their joint marketing outfit, the Radio Advertising Bureau, has to be worrying.

Despite this, radio has a 7 per cent share of UK display advertising and has legitimate aspirations of pushing on to 10 per cent by 2010.

So, obviously, poor creative work isn't exactly holding the medium back now is it? Oh yes, it is, John McGeough, the group sales director at Capital Radio, says. He states: 'Of course, we recognise creative standards are not all they could be and I'd certainly argue that it's still the single biggest thing stopping the medium growing as it should There's this attitude - and the industry has been talking about this again recently - where three weeks before the radio campaign is due to go out, someone notices there's radio on the media plan and they go: 'Shit, we'll have to produce something.''

The suspicion remains, of course, that creatives still tend to turn their noses up at radio briefs. Paul Briginshaw, the creative director at Miles Calcraft Briginshaw Duffy, says radio continues to have something of a positioning problem. The bottom line is that it is the medium often used for a hard sell within a media mix, not brand building.