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  • posted Jul 2nd 2009...
I liked the first sentence.
Radio will always hold its with its proposition-cheapish, relatively effective retail driving media. Building a brand on radio? It needs the suppot of the big brothers (and yes there a few in todays media jungle)
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  • posted Jul 8th 2009...
It's actually quite achievable to build a brand using radio. NRMA in particular did it extremely well in the 80's, with a long-running radio campaign that - gasp - won awards for the agency/Writers AND a lot of business for NRMA.

Radio is the theatre of the mind. The reason we develop a liking for so many radio personalities is that listeners are free to add their own visuals: face, hair length, style of dress, nervous tics ... the lot. The same applies to radio campaigns. On the surface there is little difference between stations until you take this into account and realise that the very difference is all in listeners' heads ... and ears.

Used creatively radio can drive sales & build brands as well as any other mainstream media. Used strategically it can deliver access to finite target audiences. Yes, Mums with kids are a crossover. And yes, Mummy's little angel may well know all the lyrics to the AMI's latest radio campaign, but like TV and print it's her role as a parent to avoid the situation.

As for Jingles, they rightfully made a graceful exit at the same time great radio campaigns did - the early 90's. It wasn't because the Writers who wrote great radio also wrote great jingles, (jingles then were predominantly just soundtracks from TV commercials thrown on to radio as a commercial to extend reach) it was purely that after the 'recession we had to have' many agency clients began looking for far greater transparency and adland became rightfully nervous.

With that came an agency reaction of "Shit! We have to trim our internal costs now if we're ever going to be able to afford 3 weeks in Cannes this year! Unload a few of the biggest salaries".

The greatest salaries were of course the greatest Creatives and thus, thanks to limited creative mentoring in the industry for the last couple of decades, the dearth of great radio today.
  • posted May 21st 2010...
Great thought provoking piece. The jingle on radio is indeed alive and well. We have been bringing it back for the past ten years and have been changing creative snobbery and attitudes towards jingles in think tanks across Australia.

If you're on radio with less than 30 seconds to make an impression the jingle gives your audience something to sing-a-long too.

When I walk down a supermarket aisle, i can still hum along to every brand jingle. In most cases, the familiarity of that tune and brand subconciously cooerce my purchase decision many, many years later.

We are a weird bunch, passionate about changing popular culture and giving brands a chance to stand out and last in a whole new generations mind space.

listen to some of jingles www.brandmusic.com.au

Michael Burrows

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