If the UK radio industry was sufficiently well organised to have such a thing as a “Radio Promotions and Marketing Calendar” then the Radio Academy’s Promotions and Marketing Awards would be the biggest thing in it. What’s more, it’s only hours away.

Ahead of the ceremony, the Radio Academy’s Director, Trevor Dann, shares his perspective on this year’s entries in this Earshot audio exclusive.

Download audio file (trevordann.mp3)

Trevor: I think the first thing to say is, quite simply, that we had more entries than we did last year, which at a time of recession, at a time when it is difficult to get people to come to events at all, where the whole conference and awards business is showing 25%, 30% fall across most sectors, isn’t it fantastic that people are interested in this?

My other feeling is that increasingly, across not just commercial radio but even the BBC, people who make programmes are more interested in this stuff. I think if you went back 10 years, certainly 20 years, people who make programmes like me were a bit kind of luvvie about people who made trails, or people who did promotions or marketing or did sponsorship deals, they were kind of salesmen and business people and we were a bit sniffy about them, to be honest. Nowadays the two sides, if they are two sides, which they are not really, are very much working together. A lot of the best ideas that were submitted are good programming ideas as well as good marketing, sponsorship, promotional ideas.

Steve: Ok. Give me an example of one that attracted your attention that falls into that area.

Trevor: Well I will just pick one, and it is always unfair because you will think “oh if I have picked this one, they must have won” and this may or may not be true, but Absolute Radio did a promotion for the Benjamin Button movie, which you remember is about a guy who is born aged 80 something and then dies ages nought, and to kind of celebrate, commemorate the fact that this guy’s life goes backwards, they turned their schedules on their head, so they put their breakfast presenter, Christian O’Connell on Drivetime, and they put Geoff Lloyd from Drivetime on breakfast, and so on. They ran that as a promotion for the day. What I liked about that idea was as well as drawing attention to the sponsor and their product, which it clearly did, it also was a very good idea in terms of aiding trial for the listener, because maybe, like many radio stations, only the breakfast show gets listened to, well now they had an idea of what was on Drive and in the rest of the day’s schedule. So I think that was an idea where the commercial side and the programming side worked hand in hand and both got something out of it.

Steve: And if you are a presenter on that station, running that format for the day, then you have got to – virtually every link – explain what is going on, so the promotion is going to be unmissable.

Download audio file (absolute_benjaminbutton.mp3)

Trevor: I was really impressed actually with that particular one. It does not go for all the entries I have to say, but the presenters were clearly really well briefed and they had bought into it. You can tell anybody listening to the radio who has ever dealt with turns, knows that that reluctance shines through. If they are not committed, if they have to read something, you know you get that.. *rustling of paper* “Well it says here..” kind of sound… and there was no sense of that in Absolute’s entry, and I think because they as a radio station are so good at recognising the multi-platform nature of their business, I think the jocks, the presenters, everybody has bought into that.

Steve: So how would you tell Christian O’Connell that he is off breakfast for a day?

*laughter*

Trevor: Well I would probably say, “Hey, I’ve got a great idea Christian, you get a lie in”.

Steve: *drinks coffee* Excellent, sell the benefit. So that is about promotion and programming overlapping really. I like to test, I did this when I was judging this year, the quality of some of the entries on what I think of as “The Golden Triangle” of radio promotions, that “Does it touch all of those three corners”. Is it great for the listeners? Is it great for the sponsor? And is it congruent with the radio station brand? And I agree with that one, certainly. The other one that I think worked in a public service way was Chris Moyles up Kilimanjaro, which generated a huge amount of publicity and television spin-off.

Download audio file (radio1_rednoseclimb.mp3)

Trevor: Sometimes you have to be really careful that that stuff does not work the other way, and there is no doubt that some people thought, not in the judging process I am sure, but thought there is something not quite right about the way in which the radio station is using the television, and the television is using the radio star, and to what extent were they actually doing this for charity, and to what extent were they doing it for their own profile. Now I would not want to
comment about that, but you do have to be really careful that you get that kind of thing right, and that the listener does feel that they have got a benefit, and that it is not just a benefit for the people who are advertising or promoting their goods at you.

Steve: One that caught my ear which fits into that category very strongly is GMG’s “Kids out for Summer” promotion. Again I understand it was nominated.

Trevor: “Kids out for Summer” is a really good idea because it is not expensive and nobody is going to disagree with it. It is just saying “It’s the Summer holidays, far too many kids just play with their computer games, or whatever, and they are not fit enough, there is a serious obesity problem, let’s get kids out for Summer”, and they went to schools and they, you know, so it was a kind of health message but done in such a way that it was just fun.

Steve: And they made some great radio out of it.

Trevor: They made some very good radio. Quite a lot of.. There is another entry from, I think, Radio City, that is called “Make my day” where of course in a sense it is just a very simple ‘here is a way in which you can make somebody happy’ but the way that they use the audio from the people who won it, on air, was just really heart-warming and a really great listen, and I would venture to say that some years ago the.. as we were saying earlier, the two sides of that deal might not have been on the same wavelength, but they absolutely were in that example.

Steve: The promotion and marketing awards, it is a very broad Church isn’t it, because you are judging and trying to celebrate everything from promotional strategy to interlock with programming, to results, and to production and craft skills. So thinking about the promotional production and craft skills and maybe the imaging category, or some of the production work that has gone into the on-air work, what has caught your ear this year?

Trevor: Some of the imaging entries were sensational, and to be frank they usually are these days. People who make what folks of my age call “Jingles”.

Steve: Mmhm.

Trevor: .. are very clever at it. I wish I had had them when I was commissioning jingle packages in the 80s and even the early 90s. I think all that’s good. I think generally, as a kind of theme now, virtually all pre-recorded manufactured audio is pretty good quality actually, but what is most impressive is that so much of it is now multi-platform, so the audio fits the pictures and the pictures and the stills and the text and the tweets and.. you know, everything is now a ‘big picture’, and I am getting the impression that just as for the consumer, radio is now a component of a bigger multi-platform, multimedia message, so it is for those that work in radio. I think the idea that we can work in radio and think we don’t need to have those broader skills is.. that is the thinking of the past isn’t it?

Steve: I have judged the imaging award in previous years and various other promotions categories, and I agree with you entirely that high production standards are pretty universal these days, but what really does make the difference often is the quality of the writing, I think Jack FM their imaging is very simple in terms of production, but the quality of their writing is just stunning, very sharp, they clearly think a lot about every word.

Trevor: It is very easy to concentrate on hours with the Mac or with the SADiE and just think “Oh and I’ll just write a few lines for somebody to say” half heartedly.

Steve: There is one promotion I heard this year in the National Promotion category which was the television licence fee, another BBC production, and I think Neil Cowling at Fresh Air had a significant hand in this one, and it was Horne and Corden, if not entirely adlibbed, largely adlibbed, and it was a beautiful piece of work, and I remember when I used to run what is now Gordon Fudge’s department at the BBC…

Trevor: BBC Cross Trails

Steve: Cross Trails, exactly, back then it was part of what is now Red Bee Media, but we would always know that if one of the BBC radio presenters picked up on one of the promos we made then it would virtually double in awareness when we conducted research. So if we made a promo for the Today Programme and John Humphries would say “Oh well that’s a rather good programme isn’t it? I think I might watch that” we would just go “Yes! Result!”.

Trevor: Yeah, I am sure that’s right.

Steve: And the TV licensing promo, there is a lovely bit in the entry for that promo where they have played the promo and Chris Moyle’s reaction to it, and it makes, you know, as only Chris can do, five or six or seven minutes of great radio, but clearly that is adding to the promotional value of the piece throughout.

Download audio file (radio1_tvlicensing.mp3)

Trevor: I think it is interesting how in many of these entries you feel as though the audio for the promotion, which perhaps in another age might have been a separate piece of audio, is now incorporated into the programme, and there is something from Radio Trent about.. basically they call it “Credit Crunch Parking” and it is about a deal they did in Christmas week to get lots of car parks in the town they broadcast in, which is Nottingham, to be free for a night. And it is just the way that it is incorporated into the programming, you do not think of it really as a piece of marketing or promotions, you just think of it as being a good piece of programming and a good turn being done to the listener by the station, and that is clever I think. That is cleverer than “and now I am going to pause while someone else reads something out, or advertises at you”.

Steve: So are you able to identify some big trends, having been through all the entries this year?

Trevor: Well I think the only trend that I really would want to talk about is what we touched on earlier, which is the fact that almost all of them are multimedia. We have an online category, but virtually all of them.. and there is a fantastic entry from the BBC World Service which you may have something to do with, and I do not even want to know whether you do, but the BBC’s ‘Save our Sounds’, it is a very simple idea which is “Hey, send us a sound recorded by you through Audioboo, or whatever, and not only might we keep it and play it, but we might also put it on our map of the world” and you can see where these sounds come from, and you could click on the map and you can hear a train in India or a crocodile snapping in South America, whatever it is. That, as an idea, could not, would not, have existed in anyone’s head a few years ago, because if you went to radio with that idea they would have said “No, no, we’re just radio”. Nowadays nobody thinks like that, thank goodness, and so that idea that radio is a component in a bigger offer is the trend of the moment, and I think it is a very good one.

Steve: In the interests of disclosure and transparency, I did have a hand on the tiller…

Trevor: *imitates siren sounds* I don’t want to know, I am not listening, and I am not going to tell you if you won either.

Steve: No, no, no, no, certainly not, no. Other people had a much bigger hand in it, Kate Arkless Gray, certainly… she had a hand in that like Matthew Corbett had a hand in Sooty. She was fairly fundamental to the operation.

Trevor: *laughter* Horrible thought.

Steve: So I picked up three trends. One is ‘big statement’, so huge events, and I think Absolute Radio’s turning the radio station on it’s head, turning the whole thing upside down, is a good example of that. The second one, and you touched on this, is tight integration between programming and promotion, so that you can’t see the join really. And the third one, I am so delighted, there was not one entry I heard where a presenter came on and said “Here is a promotion. We’ve got together with our friends from ‘dot dot dot’” and the death of that I think is a joyous moment in the history of radio.

Trevor: Yes, well.. quite right, let’s consign that along with “Join me as I tell the story…” *laughter*

Steve: Trevor it is great to talk to you, thank you very much for your time today.

Trevor: Thank you Steve, see you at the awards.

Good luck to you if you’re nominated, and see you at the ceremony if you’re just going along for the drinks nobly representing your station.

Transcription by Good to Go Transcription of Richmond, Surrey.

Audio and graphic kindly provided by The Radio Academy. Audio copyright BBC, Fresh Air Productions, Absolute Radio. All rights of the original artists, publishers and performers acknowledged.

Comments

• Thursday 22 October, 2009, The P&M Awards – a review of a preview - blog - James Cridland writes: [...] blog posting I’m typing about is Steve Martin’s interview with Trevor Dann; and it’s very interesting for two [...]

As you may have noticed from the previous post we’re deep into the autumn awards season in UK radio.

In addition to all the award schemes previously mentioned you’ve alerted me to a couple more. The AIB awards and the Internet Radio Awards are both imminent.

But The Radio Academy P&Ms are first in line this Thursday, and thanks to them I can promise you a little treat.

On Thursday morning*, just hours ahead of the P&Ms ceremony, the Radio Academy’s Trevor Dann and I will be listening to some of our favourite entries together and chatting about them. You’ll be able to read our thoughts and hear the audio right here on the Earshot blog.

Follow me on Twitter or subscribe to this blog’s RSS feed for first word when our conversation hits the web.

*in truth, we’re recording on Tuesday, then I’ll try to remember how to edit, will transcribe our collective witterings into text, upload and tag some mp3s and conduct a bit of WordPress wrangling. Which should all be done by Thursday morning.

And with that explanation a little trust is duly safeguarded. See you Thursday.

Jelly babies image by jonathanb1989, on Flickr. Used under licence.

The campaign is for the BBC’s new season exploring the impact of the recession. It’s a global recession and this is a global campaign, delivered by radio, television and online around the world.

The Aftershock season starts this weekend and contains everything from a radio drama based on the fall of Lehman to a Robert Peston documentary.

The programmes on radio and television are actually quite different so the promotional campaign requires a big idea to transcend the detail.

Here it is for television:

…and for radio:

Download audio file (aftershock.mp3)

The approach, as you’ll see and hear, is to present challenging questions about the possible effects of the recession. It’s good that the agency (Rainey Kelly Campbell Rolfe Y&R) and production teams (including the good folk I recently managed) have played to the different strengths of each medium while remaining true to the common theme. That’s not always as easy as it seems.

Moreover, there’s a vibrant debate already on the YouTube page sparked by the campaign. If you’re going to ask challenging questions, I reckon that’s a good first response.

But what do you think?

Comments

• Saturday 5 September, 2009, Drew writes: That TV trail is stunning and it's a real "stop & watch" production. What's the soundtrack? I noticed the Rockabye Baby version of Under Pressure on another trail but this one sounds like it must have been made to fit the storyboard.
• Saturday 5 September, 2009, Stephen Martin writes: If you watch the tv promo on the BBC World News channel you'll hear the "Under Pressure" glockenspiel soundtrack. However, online rights clearance for that track meant that the viral/online/YouTube version uses this piece of library music which has been expertly structured around the narrative of the film. If you think it sounds like a custom then the production folk have done a truly superb job. There's also an Aftershock sonic mnemonic, produced by Ben Neidle of Noise Fusion. You'll hear it a lot on the BBC World Service over the coming weeks.

The recession and UK radio’s continuing consolidation are affecting the amount of work available for radio promos writers and producers.

As someone who employs creative promos folk, both on staff contracts and as freelancers for short-term projects, it’s an effect I see daily. I’m receiving an increasing number of emails and demo reels from talented writers and producers who are horribly short of work.

What a change from just eighteen months ago when we’d struggle to find any extra pair of hands (and their accompanying ears) to get us out of a production crisis.

However, despite the current gulf between supply and demand, many people are selling themselves short.

I may not have any freelance work to offer right now but if you’re out there trying to pick up a project or two I can share some tips based on what’s been dropping into the inbox these past few weeks:

1. Highlight your specialisms.
You may well consider yourself to be a decent promos all-rounder but just about everybody has a sweet-spot or particular talent. Perhaps you’re a great comedy writer, an accomplished director or sound fusion artist. Maybe your knowledge of dance music is unsurpassed or you’re a trained journalist.

In making promos you spend your professional life picking out brand USPs, simplifying them, dramatising them and then making them memorable. Now do the same for yourself.

It’s understandable that you’ll want to appeal to the widest possible market but the truth is that you’re unique and that’s why someone will hire you.

2. Show you care.
The call that says “I love the way your station crafts its promos and thought you might like to know that I’m currently available.” is far more impressive than “I’ve just been made redundant and wondered if you have anything going”.

“Gissajob” didn’t do much for Yosser Hughes’ fortunes and it’s an unattractive approach in professional radio too.

Unbelievably, I receive approaches from people who haven’t even listened to our output. Care a bit and it will show.

3. Make human contact.
Let’s be honest, an unsolicited email is a bit cold. Better to arrange an email introduction from a mutual acquantaince and then quickly move to a phone call or, best of all, contrive a meeting.

If work is a bit light then you certainly have time to pay a personal visit. This will show you’re genuinely interested in the station/company you’ve approached and it will let you demonstrate what a lovely person you are. It’s also an opportunity to see how different places operate and start to build expereince in new areas.

4. Have a showreel ready to go.
There’s no excuse for not having a showreel. You will be asked for one so don’t risk losing the momentum in a new relationship because you haven’t bothered to keep your reel up to date.

Ensure the content backs up what you’ve said about your specialisms (see point 1) and keep it short. How short? Well, two minutes should be quite enough to demonstrate your brilliance. Two minutes packs down into an emailable mp3 file without hammering the bitrate too.

If you really want to sell yourself on versatility remember you can demonstrate diversity with just two well-chosen items.

5. Relevant adjacencies.
Ok, “relevant adjacencies” is rubbish copy but it’s a phrase I saw in an internal report the other day and I’ve been waiting for a place to deploy it.

Promos projects and campaigns are increasingly multi-platform entities so promos production people with video, digital publishing and online skills are becoming more valuable. Can you also shoot and edit video, use a CMS or do gorgeous photography? Can you understand Analytics, do your own voice work and write music, code and storyboards simultaneously?

If so, I hate you already – but I might just need you one day. Mention it.

6. No means no.
It’s tough turning talented people away, especially when you’re aching to work with them, but often the answer is going to be “sorry, no”. Or as my HR colleagues would put it “not on this particular occasion”.

There will be good reasons why your skills are not immediately snapped-up so withdraw gracefully and stay positive. If you’ve made an impression you will be remembered. Sending repeated emails or leaving countless, increasingly anxious voicemail messages does not mulitply your appeal accordingly.

Finally, while this is all written with short lead-time freelance work in mind, these principles apply equally to full-time jobs. Let’s just hope that one day we see some being advertised again.

Photograph: “Hire Me” by greg.g photography, on Flickr. Used under Creative Commons licence.

But “Obama is elected” promos are now helping the BBC’s global audiences to find a whole range of content related to the US election which, as the promotional campaign would have it, is “the vote that affects your world”.

Given the global reaction we’re hearing from Iraq, Indonesia, Afghanistan, Europe, Kenya and beyond this claim has been satisfyingly justified by our audiences.

We didn’t rush the Obama promos onto air the moment the announcement was made, but waited until the speeches were over, the euphoria had been properly reflected and the debate moved on to what challenges are waiting for the Obama administration.

It just felt right that way… and we were up by then.