National UTV station, talkSPORT have launched a new TV creative last week which is being shown on their UTV station in Northern Ireland. It features some of the stations’ best known faces promoting their Premier League football coverage with some nice regional references.

Thanks to BBC manager Stuart Thomas for sharing this. It’s a 20″ spot informing tv viewers of the snow reports available on BBC Local Radio stations.

It’s short, to the point and with obvious public service benefit.

It’s also very clearly an extremely low budget production: stock footage, a short animation probably done in half a day on After Effects, and only versioned by region in text, not in the graphics or audio.

No everything has to be lavish.

You won’t find many presenters who do the ‘big reveal’ better than Chris Moyles. This morning, announcing the line-up of the BBC Radio 1 Hackney Weekend Chris was on brilliant form.

He was helped greatly by the production decision to focus only on this one event for the duration of the entire show.

No matter what time you turned on Radio 1 this morning you immediately would have been in no doubt what was the biggest story of the day: the one big thing that excited Chris, his team and the audience, and the one subject that will unite Radio 1 listeners in conversation when they meet as friends later in the day.

Not all radio events are as big as a BBC music festival and your station may not have the talents of Chris Moyles to hype thing up but you can give any promotion extra impact by suppressing all other activity that would otherwise compete for attention.

Be clear on your one big priority, clear the decks of distractions and put what’s most important centre stage.

Living just outside a Hampshire market town I admit to knowing little about gun crime. The most dramatic entry in a recent local police report was “burglary – nothing stolen”.

That said, I do know a great ad when I see one and this, from 2007, is superb.

The message would be clear whatever brand logo appeared in the final frames but a well targeted radio station can bring an issue close and make it feel extremely personal.

Radio is always on your level and on your side. We should put that advantage to work more often.

Ad credit: AMV BBDO

Roadside and in-car audiences become target audience for Absolute Radio in its next stage of their long running outdoor advertising campaign which launched in March 2010 (and refreshed in March 2011).

The team at national radio station, Absolute Radio have launched the next stage of its ‘Faces For Radio’ campaign for 2012 with the addition of a live “now playing” feed on digital outdoor creative. A media first which uses live RSS feeds to indicate the artist that is currently playing live on Absolute Radio giving consumers an immediate and interactive taste of the Absolute Radio playlist.

A new slogan has been brought into the design – which takes the campaign onto the next stage from the seven day breakfast mantra into ‘Presenting for your curiosity – The Faces For Radio’ to help resonate with the stations reluctant adult audience. The outdoor digital creative use live RSS feeds to show the artist that is currently playing live on Absolute Radio in a bid to raise brand awareness and encourage trial.

The new ‘Faces For Radio’ ads, photographed by Gary Salter for Albion London, feature the breakfast DJs Christian O’Connell, Frank Skinner and Dave Gorman behind bars, with ‘Rock ‘N’ Roll Football’ host Ian Wright as a circus ringmaster. This is the first time that Ian Wright has been used in the Faces for Radio creative – he’s more commonly known for appearing in bespoke football content creative alongside his football stablemates Jim Proudfoot and Russ Williams.

The new ‘Faces for Radio’ campaign with the Now Playing RSS feed will commence on 1st February 2012 which includes outdoor, digital media and print media – with a combination of digital, backlit and scrolling 48 and 6 sheets specifically focussing in central and greater London, so make sure you look out for them! Currently Absolute Radio London (Digital/AM/FM/Extra-London) reaches 771,000 adults weekly which is 6.9% reach of its TSA.

Clare Baker, marketing director at Absolute Radio, said:

As well as outdoor advertising – Absolute Radio will run a digital element of the campaign from 13th Feb to drive online/mobile audiences. This will include MPUs on third-party sites which feature “now playing” information, paid search, a homepage takeover on its own website, and banners across its mobile app network.