Radiocentre is the industry body responsible for promoting commercial radio. The medium is in rude health, with listening at an all-time high, but commercial radio’s share of revenue still doesn’t match its share of consumers’ time. Our brief was to change this.
Our insight was that media planning is a very emotional decision, like any other. Marketing decision makers are well aware of the strong, rational case for radio – but just don’t feel the medium is current, exciting or capable of driving fame. We needed to make them see for themselves,that these prejudices aren’t true.
Our solution was to target the top marketers in the land, with bespoke songs, explicitly name-checking them and asking them to “see radio differently”. The idea being that they would either hear their song on stations like Capital, Kiss FM or Heart – or be alerted to it by amazed family, friends and colleagues. This would in turn provoke lots of conversation on social media – and our targets would literally see for themselves, how radio advertising can make you famous.
Our first target was Keith Weed, CMO of Unilever and one of the nation’s most respected marketers. We targeted him with a banging hip-hop number (!) and the effect was immediate.
