The ASA, and advertisers are, in my opinion, displaying a total lack of understanding of canine behaviour and communication and showing a complete disregard for the reactive stress, discomfort and confusion that the broadcast of such an advert could produce in reactive dogs – which comprise the vast majority of the canine population.

Perhaps they really do think dogs are actually human children able to rationalise Television? Perhaps they believe that when dogs wag their tails it automatically means they are happy – because when humans cry it automatically means we are sad – doesn’t it????? Perhaps they know exactly how a canine hears such high frequency sounds – maybe they can confirm that dogs hear it as a soft whisper that gently rouses them rather than a piercing scream that scares the living daylights out of them. The dog will be in an environment where no one else is reacting, because they didn’t hear it, and it is clear that no one the dog may be able to see has initiated the sound. I know exactly the level of stress and feeling of uncertainty and insecurity that such an intervention would cause to my own dogs.

This sort of gimmick needs stamping out now – it’s not clever and it’s not funny.

What surprises us most is when we supply our commercials to foreign channels and they are not subjected to any legal or technical scrutiny whatsoever – an advertiser could literally make any spurious claim they wanted in a commercial without any prior approval or caveats, and production quality is at best dubious (but that’s likely why airtime is so cheap!)

The soundtrack aimed at dogs contained a 17kHz tone that would be inaudible to most people whilst annoying dogs and people under 24 years of age (who have a wider hearing spectrum than older people). Essentially it’s a dog whistle. This can pass through the production and broadcast process as 17kHz remains within the broadcast audio bandwidth. The sonic notify signal is a high frequency data burst, similar to old fashioned analogue codecs like the high-pitch warbling that Atari games on tape cassettes made (if you’re old enough to remember such things!)

Oddly this is actually the reason that food sponsorship of programming is so popular (Blossom Hill for wine, Domino’s for pizza etc…) basically advertisers know that when you’re watching TV you are relaxed and open to suggestion, so in a sense targeting advertising at viewers who are ready and willing to act there and then on an offer (ignoring or missing the commercials that follow) is actually the very intention of some advertisers.

Interestingly although there has been a lot of discussion about the impact of PVRs on the effectiveness of television advertising it’s never been a concern raised by any of our advertisers – firstly, because the majority of television is still watched live and the majority of viewers are in the room, if not directly concentrating on the screen during the breaks. Secondly, as I mentioned at the top, advertisers have other options including programme sponsorship and most recently product placement for triggering impulse purchases.

Steve Mizel
Charleston, SC
(17 year former radio career)

An all day schedule will certainly cover all bases but there’s no harm in scheduling the majority of your spots during a specific period of the day and using up the rest at more random times (depends on the product and target audience really).

The Radio Advertising Bureau has published an article that makes a good case for listener behavior being influenced by the time of day:

http://2011.rab.co.uk/showContent.aspx?id=570