Friday 24 July 2009

Advertising Radio Advertising on the radio: Is your station doing it right ?

It was many moons ago when I wrote an Ad Vantage article about many radio stations needing to adopt a more strategic approach to promoting their medium as a great place to advertise.

The world is a different place now. At the time of publication, the recession and Credit Crunch was not even a tiny dot on the horizon. Everything was fine.

Today, the media (rightly or wrongly) is telling us that life is tough and all of us have to fight for every last penny. Revenues from advertising in all media have suffered big downturns, so more than ever before radio has to fight back....NOW !

Forgive me if I am covering old ground here, but I really do think some local commercial stations need to up the ante when it comes to promoting themselves as an advertising medium. Sure, they go some way to promoting their wares by means of Advertiser Testimonials, but there’s a lot more that could be done.

I have always been in the opinion that local commercial stations could increase their own customer base by establishing a more structured approach to the way they promote their medium.

When a radio station books a long term advertiser, they generally ask their Commercial Producer or contract provider of production to come up with an idea that has legs. In other words, a framework that can be built on as the weeks and months of the campaign unfold. Yet when a radio station promotes itself on the radio as a good advertising medium, all that thinking goer out of the window. Locally-based campaigns promoting radio advertising are often sporadic, fragmented, predictable and not hugely inspiring. I’m not blaming the Commercial Producers for this either. From what I hear, some Proddies aren’t even given the opportunity to create a campaign. The messages are often produced by the same people who make the station promos.

Advertising is everything to a commercial radio station, so it seems only right that a station should invest significant resources in promoting itself as an advertising medium. Consideration should be given to allocating a percentage of airtime to promoting radio advertising. Not only that, a proper campaign structure should be established – just like stations do with paying advertisers. In addition, the Commercial Producers/Production providers should be given proper money to devise and create a comprehensive series of spell-binding radio commercials.

Radio advertising on XXXXFM should be turned into a brand. A ‘brand’ is defined as many things. Some have said it is "a name, sign or symbol used to identify items or services of the seller(s) and to differentiate them from goods of competitors.".
Others define a brand as "a set of assets linked to a brand's name and symbol that adds to the value provided by a product or service..." I could go on and on.
But we all know brands have a huge influence on us. So let’s use these values and make it relevant to radio advertising.

Radio stations already know that if their clients adopt consistent, engaging radio advertising, the clients will be successful advertisers. So if a radio station does the same thing by regularly promoting itself as great advertising medium with an engaging and consistent campaign, it is inevitable that they too will enjoy great success.

Using the above approach with a message that’s relevant to your TSA will only do good for your station. As far as I see it, you have absolutely nothing to lose. So do it !

Let Airforce create a plan for you. Get in touch now. Contact details are at www.airforce.co.uk

John Calvert

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