My reflexion on radios advertising led me this week to mix very hard two informations in the same shaker.
On one hand RMC, a big french national radio became a big… TV brand. While SFR, a phone operator became… a content broadcaster. One broadcasts, the other produces…
On the second hand, I saw that in the US the step has been made. 51% of the advertising budgets are now made in the digital medias.
What’s the link between the two you might ask ?
Well, I wondered how radios promote themselves today. Selling advertising? They know how to do it. Explaining to advertisers that they need to advertise? They know how to dit as well. But promote themselves ? They have a trend to fall into the “do what I say, not what I do“.
Really, I’m surprised to see that radios’ advertising campaigns, mostly local, are almost exclusively made with traditional media. Clearly by “traditional”, I mean old goodies that don’t include the digital : bus stop display, banners on football fields, concerts and other shows sponsoring.
Of course, all of this works, partially. But an advertising campaign that isn’t 360° rarely fully works.
Definitly I spent 5 great days at IBC Amsterdam, talking with all sorts of radio professionals : radio hosts, producers, technical managers. And I did my best to open their mind again.
Of course the name of a radio is a brand. No doubt too that a radio show is a product. For sure the name of a radio host could be a brand too. Thus a radio, like any other company has brands and products. Clearly it is urgent, no matter the size, that they take care of it and adopt a whole approach for their communication. Probably they didn’t notice that the time when digital was just an opportunity is over… We are now in a time where digital is a vital necessity.
Somehow will appear again the lack of resources in the radio industry, especially two : money and time. For that IBC was an amazing motivation for the LiLiCAST team, we definitely offer a relevant answer to those challenges.
At last I couldn’t wait to go home. At last I could keep on making my own my digital communication.
Arnaud