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

If you live anywhere near London you will have seen how mad the shops have been over the past few weeks in the busy rush to purchase Christmas presents for loved ones.

It seems the folks at London’s Magic 105.4 aimed to capture this busy audience with a creative off-air marketing campaign, advertiser supported.

This digital ad shell creative has been running across London over the Christmas period. It allows listeners to plug their headphones in to hear a pre-recorded station sound clip hosted by Drivetime presenter Angie Greaves;  along with details of a text-to-win competition entry mechanic for a London Christmas Night out.

This campaign was also supported on air and online with another chance to win a Christmas Night Out with friends.

A great way of getting the station brand out there at a time where consumers need a bit of light relief. This creative goes beyond the standard static outdoor display and uses context, immediacy, interactivity and creativity to help listeners trial and engage with the station this Christmas.

Image from Joel Jagger via Twitter

Yes, we’ve rebranded a normal day of the week. It’s Invitation Tuesday, when your Earshot needs you. Here’s why:

Invitation 1

At 4pm on Tuesday 13 December we’re recording an edition of the Earshot Creative Review podcast and you’re welcome to come along and take part.

James Stodd of the BBC will be with us together with the Radio Academy’s John Myers. John recently wrote on his blog about some of the radio promos he hates. Now he’ll hear the good stuff.

You’ll need to be in Central London for 4pm on Tuesday armed with your favourite piece of promotional audio of the year.

Can you manage that? Please email steve@earshotcreative.com so I can be in touch with venue details.

Invitation 2

Than, from 6.30pm on Tuesday, James and I propose an Earshot team in the Radio Academy Christmas Quiz, in Highbury.

Jonathan Jacob can’t play because he’s helping to organise the event so there will be a couple of places open in our team. Anoraks only. Clever anoraks, actually.

Update: 0745, 9 December: we have now completed the selection process for our team which will comprise:

Nik Goodman, Helen Quigley, Jacob Rickard, Steve Martin and James Stodd.

BBC London’s Paul Hilton with Ben Motley of BBC Global News at the piano.

This month, the sound of London. Paul Hilton runs production at BBC London 94.9 while BBC Radio 7′s Ben Motley has spent the last year at BBC Global News where he produces promotional campaigns heard on the English language channels of the BBC World Service. If you’re confused, I’ll draw you a diagram.

You’ll hear a huge range of production designed to appeal to both local and global audiences of speech radio. Discover how BBC London tries to position itself apart from LBC, how to connect with listeners overseas who speak English as a second language and why comedy and Christmas means pulling out the creative stops at BBC Radio 7.

There’s also music from Coldcut, brand imaging heard on speech radio podcasts and we endure a tortuous play on words which helps you remember a text number.

Play the audio here: Duration 39’06″

Download audio file (ecr_october10.mp3)

Download the mp3 (36.8M).

Subscribe via iTunes.

Credits

Imaging by Chris Nicol at WizzFX using the voice of Elly Fairman. Thanks to radiobeds.co.uk for the music beds and to the Waldorf Hilton for use of a table and 3 chairs.

The Earshot Creative Review is sponsored by Hobsons. Find out more on their Hello Hobsons blog.

Next Month

Chris Stevens of GMG on the new national Smooth Radio and Bauer’s Steve Taylor explores the latest innovations in S&P.

Any views expressed are those of the contributors and not of the BBC. 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.

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.