Creative Review for August

James Cridland and David Couch in typical showbusiness mood. Picture by Sally Walker.

You’ll learn a lot from this month’s Earshot Creative Review with David Couch and James Cridland. And you’ll hear a lot of radio ads.

Discover how Spotify is allowing advertisers to target audiences by postcode, what is the most important content to have on your radio station web site and what not to do with cameras in the studio. Hear ads from Cuervo, Kwik Fit, Transport for London and the Bentall Centre, plus an educational promo from Absolute Radio.

Play the audio here: Duration 42’17″

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David Couch is Managing Director of Maple Street Studios and a former creative head at GCap and Global. You’ll hear him enthuse about some superb radio ads and discuss the freedom and new opportunities of product placement.

Radio futurologist James Cridland divulges tip after tip on radio’s multiplatform future. Be sure to take notes – James’s clients spend vast sums of money on his advice. You only have to pay attention.

And, as always, there’s tons of great audio including leading entrants to The Cow Moo Challenge and its ultimate winner. Thank goodness that’s over.

Credits

Thanks to London’s Somerset House for hosting our recording on their wonderful sunny terrace, thanks to radiobeds.co.uk for the music beds and thanks to Pascal Standaert from Belgium for the ident used towards the end of the podcast.

Next Month

Inside Glide – the story of the year’s biggest radio stunt so far direct from the people who pulled it off, and what’s going on at BBC Radio 2 and 6 Music? Christopher Reay shares his perspective from the production desk. Subscribe to the podcast so you don’t miss it. There’ll be no cows.

If you’d like to comment on anything in the podcast or if you’d like us to include your audio just drop us a line to earshot@smartin.me

Any views expressed are those of the contributors and not of Maple Street Studios, the BBC or any of our associates, employers or clients. We acknowledge all rights held by the owners, creators and performers of the recorded works which are included solely for the purposes of education and review.

2 splendid comments

Listen now

We all know that a good way to drive trial of your radio station is make it available in a new place. That’s what Classic FM has done with its current advertising activity across the Culture section of the Telegraph website.

Not just The Telegraph mind, but it’s Culture section. You’re trying to tell me this is a classy station, right? Beyond the upmarket association it gets even better. The call to action on the banner and the elegant right column ad is “listen now”.

A couple of clicks (not sure why it couldn’t be one) and you’re enjoying sweet classical music while browsing through the arts pages of the online newspaper.

When you finally stop reading the Telegraph, Classic FM stays with you because it’s running on a separate pop-up window. It’s a neat execution that’s only missing a “bookmark this” link on the player so you can find it easily again on another occasion.

If we want to make listening to radio while browsing the web a habitual behaviour for a few more people this is a great way to go about it.

And it needn’t be the preserve of national brands like Classic FM.

If you’re running a local station you could offer a similar service to non-profit community groups whose websites are a local resource. Or why not make carriage of your station part of a deal with a local advertiser?

The advertiser adds your station to their website and in return you offer them a few more spots. You could even customise the code so their own ad formed the pre-roll audio.

I’d be interested to see examples of where this is happening already so if you spot any do send them my way.

3 splendid comments

Creative Review for May

This month Mike Cooper and Emma Clarke reflect on radio production and imaging work from the perspective of a radio voice artist.

There’s a discussion about the current trends in radio ad writing and a heartfelt plea for brave creativity and a lower word count.

Also, BBC Manchester’s John Ryan reports from the recent Radio Academy event on The Future of Radio Imaging and we share some creative bits and pieces that have caught our attention on the radio recently.

Contains some rude words. See if you can find them.

Play the audio here: Duration 42’37″

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Thanks

Music beds are by radiobeds.co.uk and we thank the BBC for letting us use their Skype facility. As you’ll hear, the connection was somewhat flaky but we’re no less grateful for that.

Twitter

You can follow us all on Twitter. Mike is @londonvoiceover,  Emma is @emmabclarke and I’m @smartin.

Next month

More radio promos, imaging and general radio creativity, probably recorded outdoors if the weather holds. If you’d like to be involved or suggest a guest or topic just email earshot@smartin.me or leave a comment on this page.

Any views expressed are those of the contributors and not of any organisation. We acknowledge all rights held by the owners, creators and performers of the recorded works which are included solely for the purposes of education and review.

Picture: My new mic by Mr Happy on Flickr. Used under licence.

3 splendid comments

Missed the bus?

When your station offers a mass-market proposition in a highly competitive city like London a bit of visibility can really drive awareness. And one way to be visible is to spend a bunch of cash on good old-fashioned above-the-line advertising.

This tactic has worked well for LBC 97.3 in recent months. Its heavyweight outdoor campaign on taxis helped LBC become the number two London station in the market. Meanwhile, Capital FM has built its recent success in part on a decent events strategy.

Now Heart 106.2 has also been putting some energy into outdoor advertising with big red ads on even bigger red London buses. What Heart has saved on the creative they seem to have spent on the media with huge numbers of bus sides carrying the station’s message across town.

The ads may be hard to miss, but awareness doesn’t in itself bring new listeners even if it can help recall and therefore improve the effectiveness of diary-based measurement. To convert awareness into genuine audience you also need trial. It’s the next step up the engagement escalator.

So given the prominent Heart branding on these buses I assumed they’d take the next logical step and were introducing people to Heart by playing the station inside the buses.

Heart is a brilliantly well-programmed station that would undoubtedly attract new listeners through trial and a short bus ride could be a great opportunity to let people sample a new radio station.

An opportunity missed it seems – the driver of the Heart-branded bus I caught this morning was listening to, er, 5 Live.

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