Few marketers have been able to use effective as well as creative radio advertising to make brand stories come alive for a listener.

So what is in the DNA of a great radio commercial?

A panel discussion at the recently concluded India Radio Forum conference in Mumbai set out to answer this as they discussed branded content and shared their success stories on radio.

Moderated by Ashwin Padmanabhan, COO, Reliance Broadcast Network, the session titled ‘Telling Brand Stories Through Effective and Creative Radio’ discussed what goes into the making of an exciting radio commercial.

On the panel were Manohar Nayak of Lingo India, Manish Bhatt of Scarecrow communications and Sunil Kumaran of Story Lab.

The panellists agreed that people tune off a channel because of the number of ads broadcasted.

In Padmanabhan’s opinion, some ads by Tide and OLX were among the ones that stood out because of their music, relevance and quirkiness.

Kumaran felt that in a country like India, using emotions works best for creating an exciting radio commercial.

Bhatt said: “Memorability of an ad is very important.”