RAB – Gareth Cliff: How to effectively execute a radio & online campaign – Gareth Cliff’s TOP TIPS..

RAB – Gareth Cliff: Priceless…

RAB – Gareth Cliff: Gareth’s Favorite radio campaign

RAB – Gareth Cliff: One thing advertisers need to hear …?

RAB – Gareth Cliff: The secret to effective advertising on radio…

RAB – Gareth Cliff: Successful On-air/On-line campaign…

RAB – Gareth Cliff: what must happen for an on-air/online campaign to work…?

RAB – Gareth Cliff: advertisers jumping the social media bandwagon…?

RAB – Gareth Cliff: Using radio together with online- what’ the benefit?

RAB: Carfind.co.za’s Frank McDouall on spending 8 years on radio and reaping the rewards…

RAB: Carfind.co.za- Frank McDouall’s thoughts on 30” ads vs going beyond the 30″ and more…

The quick and simple answer is that broadcast and online work hand in hand.

Your customers use a range of different media every day, often in quick succession and even sometimes at the same time. For example, consider that many of your customers may be sitting at their desks at work with the radio on and a Web browser open.

Others may be using social media channels like Facebook from their phones while they’re sitting in a car with the radio on waiting to pick the kids up from school. If you understand how your customers are interacting with your marketing and advertising across these different channels, you can use them to reinforce each other, drive better customer engagements and boost conversions.

This means that you need to be looking at ways of getting your campaigns across different media such as broadcast, print and digital to work together in a way that makes your ad rand stretch further. Radio and digital is a pairing that works together like bread and butter.

With radio, you are speaking to people on the go and you have their attention for a few precious seconds. You need to be short, sharp and impactful. But once you have their attention, you can steer them to digital channels to complete their journey to conversion.

On your website or Facebook page, for example, you could flesh out the details of the great special or product you tried to sum up in a few seconds of airtime.

Remember that digital doesn’t just mean your website – you should use vehicles such as SMS, mobi sites for cell phones etc, to prompt action from customers who are not near a PC.

This is a great way of capturing potential customers who are intrigued but not yet ready to buy. Your digital presence – through search engines, your website and social media can also help you to understand how well your radio ads are working.  What are people saying online in social media about your ad? Have you gained more Twitter followers since you gave your handle in your ad? Have searches for your products and traffic to your website increased following a radio campaign?

Radio and online are a powerful pairing because they complement each other’s strengths. One is an excellent way to call for action; the other helps customers respond to that call and gives you insight into how customers are responding to your ads. You should plan radio and online campaigns together to get better results from both.

It should come as no surprise that radio is ideally suited to integrate with digital. After all, radio is the original social medium, a place that reflects the listener’s life, interests, whilst allowing them to interact.

That said, the rise of digital was a godsend for radio stations in that it allowed listeners to interact with the station on a variety of platforms including websites, SMS, Facebook and Twitter, whereas in the past interaction was possible only through calling in, writing letters or perhaps at the station’s annual concert.

The beauty of radio – which is precisely why it is so complementary to digital lies in the personal relationship listeners have with the medium and by extension, their favourite stations and DJs. They become a part of our lives.

Think about how you consume radio. You wake up with your favourite DJ, you brush your teeth with them, you drive to work with them. We spend a lot of alone-time with the radio -very much like we do with digital media.

Our perception of radio is that it’s a one-on-one relationship with our favourite station or DJ, whereas with TV and print, the perception seems to be that we are just one of millions.

The advent of the digital era, however, has breathed new life into radio by making the stations realise that their brand is in fact everything. It’s not just about who has the most listeners or the best license conditions anymore. It’s now about building the station’s brand as well as that of its presenters so that consumers will want to interact with them across multiple platforms.

What this means is that the airwaves are now just the starting point of the relationship the station brands build with listeners. While it is still where they fall in love with the station’s brand, digital platforms are increasingly becoming the place where listeners engage with that brand.

Late bloomer…

In the early part of this century South African radio lagged behind the world in terms of digital connectivity and take-up. Whilst many in radio saw this as a handicap, the reality is that it turned out to be a real bonus.

It’s my view that radio stations in countries who implemented this digital technology first saw digital as a separate medium and many of them set up separate companies to market it. All they succeeded in doing, however, was cannibalising their own ad revenue.

By the time radio stations in SA got serious about digital, the radio industry, worldwide had realised that digital had to be seen as an extension of the station’s brand. The offering to both the advertiser and the consumer had to be an integrated, multi-platform one.

Having said that, over the past couple of years I think there’s been something of a slackening-off in innovation by SA radio stations when it comes to their digital offerings.

For instance, some stations have developed huge databases of loyal listeners but have yet to find a way to offer that audience to advertisers in a way that sells product directly, and in a measurable way.

This is the next challenge for our radio stations if radio is to remain the favourite bedfellow of digital. They need to develop and focus their digital offerings in a way that deliver what clients are looking for, namely:

• access to segmented, targeted groups of listeners

• one-on-one contact direct from client to listener, but capitalising on the affinity the listener has with the station.

• Advertisers need to create genuinely attractive offers, which are exclusive to that station only. This will enable them to have direct access to listeners. Radio stations, on the other hand, need to understand that a listener will see value in genuinely lucrative commercial offerings. Even if it’s as basic as 50% off their next purchase of bread and milk, listeners will appreciate that their station has delivered something valuable and exclusive to them

• Measurability- Stations should ensure that they deliver detailed post-digital campaign reports to give advertisers a clearer idea of what it is they should be looking for in their next campaign.

In summary, the way forward is for stations to offer controlled access to their listener databases, whilst clients should strive to make genuinely valuable and exclusive offers. The end result of any radio-driven digital campaign should be direct sales on the part of the client with a comprehensive post-campaign analysis detailing exactly who did the buying.

“Online brands have the benefit of being able to answer that old ‘Does advertising work?’ adage as they can effectively measure traffic to their sites and drill down into very specific detail such as hourly, daily and weekly hits.This is great because it enables us to monitor the direct effect of all our advertising and use this information to inform future strategies and plans.  Radio has been working exceptionally well for Gumtree.

Take our recent Gumtree campaign on 5FM for example;the campaign was incredibly successful for us, indicating that the media choice was spot on. Good media alone cannot drive sales, however.  It’s a combination of the media selection and the creative element that contributes to the success of any campaign.  Our client wants traffic to his site, the currency in the online world is audience, and 5FM helped deliver and drive this for us”.

Anne Dearnaly, Page 3 Media Managing Director – for Gumtree

“For a brand like ours that doesn’t have the luxury of a huge media budget, we don’t believe that integrated is flavour of the month. Radio is great for expressing humor and there’s always a call to action – all great ingredients because we can always tie this in beautifully with the overall campaign idea and our objectives.

Listeners have told us anecdotally that they love hearing our ads so we not only have a commercial responsibility in using radio, but also a responsibility to lovers of the brand to be funny in a sophisticated way. We’ve always been a champion for the people and really encourage our agency, King James to help us continuously push the envelope in terms of offerings”.

Heidi Brauer, Executive Manager: Group Marketing & Loyalty Comair-kulula, BA, SLOW

“Radio is the most targeted channel in terms of our campaign message as most motorists listen to the radio while driving.

It is therefore the key message driver for our campaign in terms of building awareness around the message we’re trying to convey i.e. promoting safer, friendlier driving.

Additionally, radio presenters have established relationships with their listeners and are often proactive online in a social sense, so it is this interactivity that we find highly useful in creating discussions around our roads and driving behaviour.

Radio’s helping us work towards achieving awareness and to drive pledges and engagement around a topic that should be close to all radio listeners’ hearts”.

Niki Cronje, Imperial Holdings (IPledge campaign)

“From an online campaign point of view, our aim is to attract as many potential users to the website as possible, with a view to converting them into registered transacting users, at as little a cost as possible.

The general public is rather cautious when it comes to online businesses especially when purchasing products online. We therefore use radio mostly to create that brand awareness and to remain top of mind when users go online to look for products to purchase or research.

We believe it helps in re-affirming the authenticity of an online brand when users need to make the decision to click on a link or visit your website directly.

That said, I believe that radio stations have a responsibility to educate the general public around online businesses, benefits and possible risk areas. Radio stations have a very powerful influence on listeners and asmore and more people access the Internet via their mobile phones or tablets, tech programmes on radio, featuring regular industry experts could go a long way in educating them on what’s on offer.

Jaco Jonker, Managing Director, Bid or Buy

WRITING RADIO THE HARD WAY

Usually, when a radio brief lands on my desk, a number of emotions smash through my brain in quick succession.

The first is a fizzle of excitement, because radio is often a nice opportunity to make something lekker. But this feeling is very short-lived and is almost always immediately followed by angst, stress, and low-grade panic. Which, once I’ve read through the brief a couple of times, and opened a blank page in Microsoft Word, then elevates itself to high-grade panic and flat-out anxiety.
That’s because writing great radio is hard. Like reasoning with a four year old-hard, explaining the theory of relativity-hard, or running the comrades-hard. That hard.

There’s nowhere to hide. It’s usually just you, facing down a blank page and a deadline, and when it gets late, that blinking cursor can tend to mock you a little bit.

With other media, like print or television, you can always try to rescue an average idea with fancy art direction, or a spectacular grade, but in radio you’re more than just a little naked, it’s just you and your concept.

But when you eventually crack it, or even when you just suspect you might have cracked it (there will be false starts) you get a funny feeling in your tummy. And while that might be the four bags of MSG-coated Cheesy Pouffs you anxiety-ate while you were stressing over not cracking it, it’s more than likely the feeling that if you write and rewrite your heart out, and if your CD loves it, and if your client buys into it, and if your voice-over doesn’t cock it up, that then you might just be able to create that special kind of spot. The kind of spot that when you hear it, everything else disappears, and you hear a piece of communication that is so simple, so relevant, so effortless and so effective, that it makes your stomach fall out of itself, and it makes you think, dammit, I wish I’d written that.

I’M NO RADIO GENIUS

But here are some tips I’ve picked up along the way:

• Write a lot. I try to write as many spots as possible for one brief. It’s a game of averages; I find that if I write twenty spots, two of them will be good.

• You don’t always have to go it alone. I try and get my Art Director to brainstorm radio concepts with me as often as possible. Two brains are always better than one.

• Listen to great radio. But don’t copy it. Thanks to the internet, some of the best radio ever written is only a couple of clicks away. It helps inspire and inform what makes a great spot, but I always have to remind myself to make my own great radio, not a copy of someone else’s.

• Some writers are naturally good at producing their spots, I really have to work at it. Find your allies at the recording studios. A talented sound engineer can make a really big difference, the same goes for brilliant voice overs.

• Never eat more than four bags of Cheesy Pouffs at a time.

Paige Nick, Creative Head

Whether you’re writing for a bank, a sport shoe or an online brand, the rules aren’t vastly different. You’ll be judged on the same principle – how good, compelling or creative your ad is. The key to good and effective writing is understanding the brand you’re writing for. The product you’re selling, tone, the humour etc. Also, the line between brands and online brands are blurring. These days most ads, especially radio ads drive consumers to a website as the primary source of information as opposed to phone numbers.

If you’re trying to drive people to a site to take advantage of an offer, it helps to have a good offer. An average ad can drive a lot of people to your site if the offer is good but even a great ad will struggle to drive consumers to an uninspiring offer. And of course, this is where we’re lucky with one of our online clients, kulula. They’ve always been a champion for the people and continuously strive to push the envelope in terms of offerings. And if you start off with something compelling to say, it makes it a lot easier to do great advertising.

It’s also great when you have a brave client that wants great advertisingor spontaneously loves an idea that might scare other clients and bombs an idea because it’s not crazy enough. If both parties want good work, everybody wins in the end. 

Devin Kennedy, Executive Creative Director

With an extensive background within the marketing, media and advertising industries, most recently as General Manager of Mallworx, a mall media company, Sakupwanya’s 18 year career spans radio sales management experience as well as Station Management at the largest commercial radio station in SA, MetroFM.

Commenting on her new role, Sakupwanya feels the timing is now right to embark on a new radio challenge; “Radio has always been my first love and with the current media landscape being quite ripe with opportunity – and the RAB strategy solid, my sleeves are firmly rolled up.

“I’m particularly excited at the prospect of championing the medium and helping marketers, media and creative agencies better understand and harness the power of radio for their brands”.

Sakupwanya joins the RAB at a time when the South African radio landscape today is immeasurably more exciting than it’s been in years.

The media landscape has exploded into an ever expanding smorgasbord of choice over the last few years, leaving marketers pressed for time, and less able to give each element of their strategy in depth attention;

“Apart from the fact that radio still offers exceptional value from both a numbers and pricing perspective, its strength still lies in the personal relationship it has with people.

As the RAB we are ideally positioned to work with stations, sales houses and agencies in gauging where their challenges lie in effective radio planning and creative execution, and then deliver on these in an impactful manner.

With mainstay RAB projects such as the RadioWorks Conference and RadioGAUGEhaving gone a long way in establishing positive perceptions of the RAB within the advertising and marketing industries, the next step to maintaining this focus is to continually share these skills and wisdom with our target market, ensuring that radio continues to dominate the SA media landscape well into the future”, she adds.

RAB Board Chairman Ryan Till says; “We are delighted to have Matona on board and look forward to the energy and insight that she’ll bring as we head into this next chapter in the RAB’s existence. The RAB currently holds a strong and solid position within the industry andcatapulting it to even greater heights will be an exciting challenge for her”.

“I was on the last slot of the last day and everyone was in info overload.” recounts Joffe. “We’d been hearing the same facts over and over, which is amazing actually, because it drove home the basic principles of EE, time and again. “  What emerges time and again, is that:

• social change  is possible if information is communicated authentically and consistently in the native tongue of the target market
• destination listening is a global phenomenon whereby the masses identify with characters that are ‘just like them’
• radio is the medium globally to communicate with low-income communities in an intimate one-to-one manner
• vernacular or native languages is the only way to effectively communicate to people for whom literacy is a challenge
• EE (edutainment) can create cognitive, emotional and behavioral shifts in target markets
• the social health sector is seeing the value in ‘branding’ adopting marketing principles to their causes
• Social change cannot be experienced in thirty seconds
• Social change and brand building have many aspects in common
• Campaigns need to have synergistic touchpoints to have significant effects.

So what set Creatrix’s campaign apart?

Joffe explains.  “’Viva Street’ is the first radio edutainment campaign of its kind to successfully raise awareness of energy  efficiency  – in the form of solar water  heating geysers to disadvantaged communities in South African townships  on their terms, on their turf  … in their language

The Viva Solar Viva campaign  comprises three “media” or areas of activity that will each stand alone and also become part of a ‘gestalt’, touching people in the communities in which they live

• Radio – Edutainment drama that characterizes the target  market, demonstrates  the offering and interacts with each community

• Print –  Cartoon Style inserts with ongoing storyline, print targeted at the community

•  Activation – On the ground engagement, demonstration, reassurance and  encouragement

The objective of the campaign was to announce, invite and enlighten  communities in LSM 1-4 regarding eligibility for a free solar low pressure water geyser that will change their lives

• “Viva Street succeeded in entertaining, educating and explaining the criteria for and benefits  of  solar water  by ‘mirroring’  the psychographic qualities of the characters in the program with those of the  community creating credibility and empathy.
• The interaction between the activities in the community and the radio program creates a synergy  between on the ground and in the air activities, allowing the medium of radio to ‘narrowcast’ to a specific community – allows community reciprocal  access and communication

The campaign focused on

• Educational Awareness
•   Best practice usage
•   Energy efficiency
•   Communicate extrinsic and intrinsic benefits
•   Solicit consume support from beneficiaries
•   Evoke spirit of ‘ubuntu’ for non-receivers
•   Clarify criteria by which beneficiaries are chosen
•   Leapfrog 1^st world solutions to 3^rd world challenges

The campaign comprised the following elements:

• Weekly drama series set in a small community with big characters
•  Story driven by a ‘larger than life’ main character, ‘know all’ pensioner  Ntate Pitso is responsible for creating the buzz around the solar water offering and its affect on the community. As a result of his own conceptions and misconceptions, the community debates and is subtly educated about the solar product in the process.
•   Each week the program focuses on a different character who embodies and personifies a specific qualifying criteria.
•  The  dialogue demonstrates the effect the solar heated water has on this community; emotionally and functionally

The results

Unearthing FRESH talent for radio

Radio – the one-stop-shop for Gumtree!

It’s a ‘tick’ for radio on Mango’s ‘Bucket List’!

BMW sponsorship‘revs’ up the airwaves

Nothing ‘MINI’ about this launch

Unearthing FRESH talent for radio

There’s a fresh new campaign on the airwaves! And as Robyn Aspeling Shower to Shower Brand Manager points out, radio was the perfect fit; “Because deodorants are generally a cluttered category, a standout brand personality is important in order to create affinity within listeners’ minds. Radio allows a brand to start expressing its personality, in addition to creating awareness”.

Developed by JWT, the LIVE FRESH campaign talks to a state of being and an attitude to life that says LIVE FRESH/ go for it in everything you do! The team has certainly taken this message to heart with the innovative voice talent search competition.

“One of our main insights into our target audience is that they want to be successful in life and, and what better way to do that than to give them an opportunity to create their own fame. It’s difficult to stand out in the clutter on radio, we felt that in order to resonate with the target audience and be true to our brands personality, a more interactive campaign was necessary”. You got it!

Lookout for the winning voice-over ads which will be flighted on METROFM this May.

Listen Up:

Radio – the one-stop-shop for Gumtree!

proudly South African personalities including comedian Casper de Vries, model Minkie van der Westhuizen, broadcaster Sasha Martinengo and sporting hero Breyton Paulse to reach a broad spectrum of the Mzansi population and showcase the diversity of their online search capabilities.

Bet you didn’t know that popular online search engine Gumtree is actually based in Norway, did you? This didn’t stop them from employing on the expertise of

Be sure to listen to the ads to see how award-winning copywriter Jonathan Bain has cleverly crafted radio commercials that not only impart a clear retail message but are also highly entertaining.

If not that, then tune into 5FM to hear the DJs reading clues directing listeners to find an item on the Gumtree in exchange for great cash prizes. One thing’s for sure, the DJs sound like they’ve having great fun with it and it’s had a great response!

 Listen Up:

It’s a ‘tick’ for radio on Mango’s ‘Bucket List’!

‘Check the boxes on your Bucket List!’ says Mango on their largest brand campaign since the first flight half a decade ago. For those not in the know, the campaign is being used as part of the launch of its new payoff line; ‘Why Not Today?’

Definitely one for the adrenaline junkies, the ‘Bucket List’ challenge sees entrants completing four challenges off a hit parade of adventures. Beyond its campaign objectives, Mango also aims to promote domestic tourism through the initiative.

Mango CEO Nico Bezuidenhout says of the payoff line and challenge; “The campaign encapsulates what Mango’s about – seizing the day, hence, ‘Why not today?’. It’s about just going with it, seeing our country, living your dreams and being inspired”.

Thanks to agency, Gendel, who were inspired by the 2012 ‘end of the world’ myth, and developed the concept of ‘doing all the things you’ve always wanted to do’ – the campaign has certainly taken off!

BMW sponsorship‘revs’ up the airwaves

What do you do when you have to launch a brand new 3 series to your already hugely popular offering? You get on the radio, just like BMW has done on their latest campaign!

“Like the new BMW 3 Series, sport has evolved over the years, increasing in both its levels of performance and innovations. This insight proved to be natural and entertaining for the Y&R team who worked on the radio campaign” says Guy Kilfoil, BMW Head of Communication.

With a schedule boasting both English and Afrikaans ads, together with news and traffic sponsorships, it’s easy to see why Kilfoi lsays; “Radio offers an immediate response. We can track it according to the exact deliverables per campaign. Apart from pure generic advertising we firmly believe in the power of appointment listening – such as the traffic and news sponsorships. They are a targeted means of owning the airwaves”.

Listen Up:

Nothing ‘MINI’ about this launch

The MINI Roadster is in town! Aimed at the listenerthat enjoys open top driving andthe night life, MINI SA Marketing Manager Carmen Slade says;“We realise that our target market listens to the radio when driving to work or to events and when they are in the car. For this reason, radio is a natural fit for our brand.

MINI has also very cleverly added twitter to the mix, with the #MINIYournight hashtag to tie in with the central theme of ‘Another night. Another adventure’.

What are you waiting for? If you want to know about all the fun and night adventures you can have in a Roadster, listenout for the ads flighting until June.

Listen up: