Category: The MediaShop

Is there any value in comforting your customers today with nostalgia from yesterday when their choices are naturally evolving at the rapid pace of a vastly shifting world around them?

Gareth Grant, Business Unit Head at The MediaShop, questions how best to future-proof a brand’s message to a post 2020 customer base.

In the current ever changing and growing market, there are some challenging questions that brands need to be asked. Marketers want their customers to want their products, but are they really talking to and engaging them?

It is important to consider whether customers are receiving brand messages in a way that holds enough meaning to potentially influence their behaviour. And if the message is being received, is it getting through in a way that works for your customer now and in the future?

Emerging from a global recession creates opportunity to rethink strategy. The tide is set to turn again, as it does, and the market could boom or we should at the very least see an upswing. But with this turning tide, we also face a new-age society. The industry is humming with buzz-words like “disruption”, “millennials”, “Gen-C” and “Artificial Intelligence” because these are the very factors demanding that we rethink strategy.

The post 2020 consumer base – the inhabitants of the new-age society; are not as concerned with brand heritage stories as they are with real-time solutions and services that ease the mundane daily load and allow for an easier life experience.

Cue Apple’s “Siri”, the Google Assistant and Amazon’s “Alexa”. So here we are, trying to engage with this post 2020 consumer, trying to disrupt enough to get some attention but not necessarily with a product that can include the best of AI such as Siri and Alexa.

Every business in each sector still needs to find ways to engage their audience though and I believe the key is to look at the relevance of the message as well as the means of communicating the message. We know the customer pool is bigger, younger and bolder than ever before. We know that they are all connected and that technology and social media are at the hub of the inhabitants of this “new world”. My colleague at The MediaShop, Richard Lord, wrote a very interesting article on the social media angles just recently http://www.mediashop.co.za/blog/item/256-are-foogle-the-enemy

To my first point – is the message itself relevant? The post 2020 consumer wants value-add so brands should ensure that the message communicates that. Disruption is a requirement to catch attention but attention span is a valuable commodity these days and so it is imperative that the message is made clear as soon as possible.

When I think of the current and future society, I have a laugh at the old joke about the “3-second rule”. In my circle if anyone dropped a morsel of food but managed to pick it up in 3 seconds or less – it counted as being still edible. This rule also applies to messaging – if your message manages to hook attention in 3 seconds or less – it is relevant. If not, your customer has moved on – moment forgotten, message? What message?

If this is the current landscape, then surely as AI and technology make life more streamlined and experiences more convenient every day, the demands on messaging are sure to increase.

To my next point though, how the interesting and relevant messaging is delivered needs to ensure that it is seen by the relevant eyes at a time and place that is as meaningful as the message itself. New digital platforms are constantly sprouting in the online landscape and whether a business is operating in the online space or not, leveraging this is essential.

Traditional platforms still show some return but continuity is absolutely required. A golden thread running through all platforms needs to be created in order for the consumer base to have multiple interactions with the message. The concept of “experiential” contact needs to be turned inside out and reinvented so that consumers experience a brand’s message in ways that are relevant to this time where the landscape changes literally from day to day. Consumers are selective to what content they consume and we need to talk to them in moments which matter to them in order to have their attention.

I say let’s do our best to engage on every platform, create a golden thread that runs through all points of engagement and get creative about the future. Let’s imagine the science fiction version of our audience 12 years from now, using current statistics pulled from the last five years, we can get as creative as we like in imagining the version of our audience in 5 and 10 years from now and we will more than likely still be hitting a conservative version.

So many questions and so few answers, I know. So then, just as inventors in every field scratch their heads at a challenge until a totally “crazy idea” provides the answers (think Edison, Newton and Musk), advertising and marketing needs to try some crazy ideas to get the message out there in a meaningful and engaging way. Let’s go! To Infinity and Beyond!

Cosmos Mashego, Creditors Clerk at The MediaShop asks a pretty important question…

With Mandela Day on 18 July, most South Africans were doing what they normally do on this day, and that is stuff they don’t do on any other normal day. Local celebrities, politicians and every day citizens were visiting old age homes, orphanages and the homeless to dish-out food parcels, assist with home renovations or painting, cleaning and spending the day with the less fortunate in the spirit of Mandela Day. Of course there were also the selfies for social media platforms as proof – because if it’s not posted, did it even happen?

Some companies also embark on blanket knitting projects a month or so before Mandela Day, or allow their staff to go and participate in any of the many 67 minutes events that take place around the country for this occasion, offering their helping hands with the hopes of being tagged in pictures.

But one has to wonder if the general population really understands the true meaning of Mandela Day or what this great legend really stood for? I mean Mandela Day is on July the 18th, so do the less fortunate only need our help on that one day? We make it seem so because by the 19th of July most ordinary people go back to their normal lives and seem to forget that there is still an orphanage in Ivory Park or homeless people at Coronation Park that still need care.

It does make me wonder if some local celebrities, politicians and a few companies use this day or month purely as a PR exercise because they know the day receives so much attention locally and internationally. Less is said about many corporate’s actual participation in helping the less fortunate except during those official 67 minutes of Mandela Day.

This behaviour is normalised in such a way that most people are not even embarrassed to only visit the homeless on Mandela Day and give them food parcels or the blankets they have knitted a month before. The same people won’t even allow the same homeless people to wash their windscreens at a traffic light to earn some money.

It’s quite worrying that most of us seem prepared and willing to help the less fortunate only during the official 67 minutes of Mandela Day and seem to care-less as to what happens to these people on the other days of the year.

We live in a world of social media but why is it necessary to post the pictures of what we really embarked on for the day. For some of us maybe it’s only a matter of Lenna ne kele gona (I was also there) or are we trying to encourage other people to give a helping hand and to have the spirit of Ubuntu?

If one could take away the pictures, the official 67 minutes and the 18th of July from the calendar, would we still have the same enthusiasm of helping the needy all through the year? I don’t think so.

One could surmise that Mandela Day is treated the same as Valentine’s Day – for some the thought is that it’s the responsibility of the policy makers to ensure that the day is honoured.

I believe that more needs to be done by our citizens regardless of our status in the society whether in rural or metro areas. But the question remains “what happens after Mandela Day?”

 

Craig Wallis, Business Unit Manager at The MediaShop offers a snapshot

The South African OOH (out of home) industry never ceases to amaze me with the incredible growth of media types, and its concomitant innovation. There are so many young, and passionate entrepreneurs out there that it bodes well for our country.

Possibly the most noticeable “new” media type is that of digital out of home (DOOH). If truth be told, dealing with all the various media owners that offer DOOH media can be rather daunting for a buyer like me. The reason for this is that the media owners have “skinned the cat” a hundred different ways when it comes to their media offering to prospective advertisers.

In order to get some semblance of understanding of all of these DOOH offerings, I decided to consolidate as many of the media owner’s offerings in order for me to have more of a global view of what’s digital in SA’s OOH industry.

What did I find?

Well, digital screens can be found in many different environments, so I took the liberty of classifying them all into four broad categories:

1. Place Based Screens – Transit (airports, commuter nodes, taxis, buses, cars, Gautrain and forecourts)
2. Place Based Screens – Non-Transit (salons, pharmacies, retail stores, clinics, medical rooms, pubs, restaurants and golf clubs)
3. Roadside Digital Billboards (freeway and main arterial roads)
4. Malls (screens, video walls and way finders / directory units)

N.B. I have not included sports stadia digital screens in the above.

There are around 50 media owners with Digital OOH platforms and almost 7 000 screens in their inventory. These screens vary in size from massive large format digital billboards to much smaller ones like iPads in Uber cabs. (I wonder what the total capital investment would be for all of these 7 000 screens?!?!)

I also calculated the total media value of all DOOH inventory at Rate Card rate and it came to just under R1.2 billion.

Factoring in varied discount rates, as well as likely annual occupancy levels for each of the above four categories, I calculated that the annual billings of the DOOH industry could be around R500 million. I must add that I feel that this figure is the very top end of possible DOOH spend.

What else did my “magic” Excel spread sheet reveal?

• Roadside digital screens total around 160 screens which accounted for under 3% of all screens in SA, yet Roadside generates almost 40% of all DOOH media revenue. The reason for this massive variation is due to the fact that these small number of very large screens reach a massively large audience. This means that the media rental that a roadside digital screen can generate is astronomical when compared to that of a screen in a doctor’s waiting room or in a hair salon.
• Place Based Transit screens comprised roughly 50% of the screens in SA, and they generate around 36% of total media rentals.
• Place Based Non-Transit screens total about 38% of all screens in SA, and surprisingly generate less than 10% of all media rentals. This is possibly due to the relatively small audience reached per screen (think one screen in a doctor’s waiting room versus one massive screen in a taxi rank).
• Mall screens on the other hand, comprise 10% of screens in SA, and generate around 16% of the media rentals. This is possibly due to paying a premium to reach top end shoppers at point of purchase.

A further thought came to mind whilst looking at my data and it was that it is fairly easy to compare a digital billboard with a similar static billboard. I wondered what the total media rental would be if I treated the current Roadside digital boards that I have on record as static billboards.

The current Roadside digital sites generate annual media rentals of R200 million (using my calculations, and assumptions as detailed above), however costing them as static billboards, they would only yield about R50 million in media rentals. Interestingly, it looks like converting a billboard from static to digital could increase revenues by at least 400%. Obviously, a large chunk of this revenue needs to fund the massive capital outlay for large format digital screens.

Given that advertisers pay a massive premium to be on digital screens, and the fact that they share it with other advertisers (around six other advertisers per screen) means that DOOH is way more expensive than static billboards. If an advertiser’s creative is not maximising the benefits that DOOH offers, then they could be wasting quite a lot of media spend.

Sadly, I still see many examples of creative that fail to utilise these benefits. Having said that, there are hundreds of examples of poor creative being gleefully posted on static billboards as well, but that in itself is a story for another day…

DOOH is going to keep on growing in SA as it has the world over, so brace yourself as you will find more and more environments becoming “digitised” allowing advertisers to target niche/sought after audiences.

Facebook and Google are the biggest media owners in almost every market across the globe and they seem to be heading for world domination says Richard Lord, Head of Digital / Business Unit Manager at The MediaShop. But, is that so bad?

One of my favourite TV shows growing up was Pinky and the Brain (you’re humming that tune now aren’t you?). The best part of every episode was when Pinky would ask: “Gee, Brain, what do you want to do tonight?” and Brain would reply: “The same thing we do every night, Pinky – try to take over the world!”.

Over the years there have been a few companies that have made a play for world domination, but in the last decade or so two, in particular, stand out…Google and Facebook. According to Statistica, as of Q1 2018, Facebook had almost 2.2 billion global monthly active users (that’s a third of the world’s population, give or take a few hundred million people). Google is so ubiquitous that “googling” became a verb in both the Oxford English, and the Merriam Webster dictionaries as far back as 2006.

These two global giants are so big that in 2017, according to an article in the Financial Times, they commanded 84% of global digital ad spend between them. In the US, Google and Facebook account for a quarter of ALL ad spend revenue – not just digital! As a result, more and more people have been expressing a concern about this digital duopoly.

Locally, PWC and the IAB tell us that 70% of digital ad spend goes to search (read Google), and we know from our own TMS billings how much we spend with Facebook. So the global picture is very definitely mirrored in South Africa.

So while one would think that things are looking rosy for the world’s two biggest media owners (they don’t call themselves that, but let’s call a spade a spade), the reality is that it hasn’t been all plain sailing. They have both been hit recently by scandal and controversy…

Cambridge Analytica. Two little words, but one gigantic can of worms! Add in Fake News, Rigged Elections, and they have given rise to senate committee hearings, threats to boycott Facebook, and campaigns to encourage people to delete their Facebook accounts.

What about Google? Well remember those YouTube ads that appeared next to ISIS recruitment videos in 2017? This is still an ongoing problem, and it’s not just terrorists either. Ads have been served next to content promoting white supremacy, Nazis, paedophilia and North Korean propaganda.

But here’s the rub…each time there is a scandal, there are threats by consumers to leave these platforms and delete their accounts, and advertisers vow that they will pull ad spend. But just how credible are these threats?

The reality is – not very!

In a Reuters / Ipsos poll conducted in April, half of Facebook’s American users said that they had not changed the frequency with which they use Facebook. A quarter actually said they were using Facebook more, and only the remaining quarter claimed that they were using Facebook less, had stopped using it, or had deleted their account. Facebook claim that new subscribers in the US grew by 2% in Q1 2018 which, they say, is in line with previous years.

So consumers, despite the threats, keep their accounts open and if anything, are spending more time on these platforms. But what about advertisers? The simple truth is that Facebook, Google, YouTube (and the rest) are simply just too big to ignore for any extended length of time. They may boycott for a month or two, but in the end, they keep coming back. These platforms are just too valuable to ignore!

Why are they so valuable? Because they simply are the largest media owners in every market across the globe (except maybe for China). In South Africa, Facebook is approaching 18 million monthly active users…a third of our population. We can reach 8 million South African’s a day on Facebook. YouTube has almost 12 million monthly active South African users. This makes both of them bigger than the majority of “mass” media owners in SA. And before you all start saying that they only reach the top end, consider this…the SABC puts episodes of Skeem Saam, Generations and Uzalo onto YouTube after they run on-air (a ‘poor man’s’ Catch Up service if you will). Every episode is generating in excess of 200,000 views, some as many as 350,000. That is more viewers than the average episode of Carte Blanche!

Not only that, but with every click, comment, like and share, these platforms learn more and more about their consumers – and much of this data is available to us, as advertisers, to use and to help ensure that the right ads are seen by the right people. Looking to speak to people in the market to buy a new car? No problem! Wanting to sell gym equipment to cross fitters? Absolutely! Want to get households with gamers in Fourways to sign up for super-fast fibre to the home? Couldn’t be easier.

The plain and simple truth is that Facebook and Google HAVE taken over the world! Should we be worried? Maybe! But they have so much to offer us that, in my humble opinion, the benefits far outweigh the negatives…for now!

Does your brand matter? Jedd Cokayne, Business Unit Manager at The MediaShop asks some tough questions

More and more brands are finding it difficult to trade in this ever changing and difficult market we find ourselves in. The biggest challenge is remaining relevant to a core target market.

Consumers are becoming more and more fickle with very little brand loyalty, and with easy access to a vast amount of information at a click of a button, they’re able to do their own brand and product comparisons before consuming a product.

This leaves brands in a very precarious position where they not only have to remain relevant to their consumer but most importantly have to relook their business model and what they stand for in order to ensure they set themselves apart from their competitors. Brands need to be able to trade in tough economic environments but also have a little fun along the way.

Personally, I think it’s more about making stronger connections with the exact consumers a brand is trying to reach over a period of time rather than offering a unique product or service. Does your brand resonate with its core needs and desires? Pushing brands, products and services onto consumers without a core consumer insight has become a thing of the past – brands need to really connect with their consumers.

So as brands go through the process of reinventing themselves and developing their new Vision, Mission and Value statements that will determine their next 5 to 10 years of development, one area that brands often neglect before any of this is done is the Brand Purpose. Your brand purpose is the reason your brand exists, something you can offer your consumers that no one else can, and that becomes not only what your brand stands for but also a philosophy that the staff live by. It needs to be actionable and impact the lives of the very consumer you are trying to reach.

A key area that tends to be neglected when developing the brand purpose is the buy-in from internal staff, stakeholders and service providers, ensuring they are aligned and the ethos becomes part of their daily trading habits. It may sound very cliché but employees need to live the brand to fully understand the impact they have on the consumer’s lives. It needs to become part of the company’s DNA. This is a lengthy process and should not be taken lightly because to ignore this vital step is to inhibit your brand growth twofold.

Brands need to remain authentic – ask what it is that you do or offer that is better than your competitor and remain dedicated to that. Often this entails combining forces with like-minded brands that can offer and add-on service or product combined with yours that will lead to a competitor’s edge and enhance the brand stickiness in the eyes of the consumer. Often this co-existence will further develop the brand and its reputation as it is seen as progressive and forward thinking.

But often building your brand through its brand purpose is not enough. The brand stickiness is not complete…….

What we really want is to create a brand movement, create a brand experience that consumers are drawn toward and have an emotional connection with, that’s the real relevance. Brands are moving from offering traditional products and services to delightful engaging experiences and communicating your value in the market in a powerful way. By doing this, brands will develop a passionate and loyal customer base that will not only continue to use your brand but also become brand advocates, not something a lot of brands can boast in the current trading environment.

It is often not essential to create a movement to be successful if all the other elements fall into place but it sure does help in terms of encouraging rapid growth and adopting a creative thriving business!

 

Unpacking the era of Influencer Marketing by Ronel De Kock, Media Planner at The MediaShop

Influencer marketing is a form of communication which identifies individuals that have influence over potential buyers, then focuses marketing activities around these influencers – mainly online.

This kind of marketing uses the influence or reach that an individual has on social media to create awareness or hype around a particular brand. This can be very beneficial for brands as it captivates audiences by using individuals that consumers know and trust. As a result, marketers are finding influencer investments to be not only worthwhile but necessary. Marketers are also choosing to embrace turnkey providers such as Indahash or Webfluential for managing influencer marketing programmes as well as influencers themselves.

In the last few years, influencer marketing has grown exponentially, from being a mere tactic to being an important part of a company’s marketing budget. A study by Linqia found that 39% of marketers were planning to increase their influencer marketing budgets for 2018 and research shows that influencer marketing can provide a 960% return on investment making it an integral part of any marketing strategy.

Globally this marketing tool is being hailed as the next big thing in the marketing industry with one of the biggest advantages being authenticity. The desired target market is more receptive because it is coming from an ‘ordinary’ person they have an established social media relationship with, making the product placement seem more like a referral from a friend rather than an ad.

There are two main types of influencers, those being micro and macro influencers. The distinct difference between the two is that micro Influencers are ‘everyday’ people with less than 10,000 followers. A micro influencer will often ‘apply’ to become an influencer. Platforms such as Tribe and Takumi are communities of individuals who pride themselves on aesthetic social media accounts. These kinds of people usually have a good eye for photography and promoting content.

Macro Influencers are the famous household names. These kinds of people are often celebrities who have tens of thousands or even millions of followers. They are approached by a brand to feature their product or service on their social media profiles, with a contextual caption mentioning the brand.

By using macro influencers, a brand is positioned in front of millions of people. It’s great for visibility and awareness.In a world of DStv catch ups and Netflix where people are actively avoiding ads, influencers fill the gap by speaking to a target market in a way that exposes them to your product that they can relate to without it feeling like an ad. At the end of the day, influencer marketing provides brands with a new age form of word of mouth.

So, now you know the difference, let’s go through the pros and cons of both. These are important to know, especially if your brand only has time (and/or budget) for one.

The Pros of Micro Influencers

They’re authentic: micro influencers work in a similar way to word of mouth – when they share a photo on Instagram of them enjoying a nutribar snack after a workout, you don’t question it (even if their photos are sometimes a little staged).

It’s often easier to believe that a micro influencer has actually bought or used a featured product. They tell you the nutribar is delicious and it’s high in protein, so you make a mental note of the brand.

This kind of authenticity attracts engagement, awareness and brand recall. So, the next time you go to buy a snack, you remember that extra yummy brand name you saw on Instagram (it looked so good!). It’s cost effective and more affordable than macro influencers.

Not all of the available influencer platforms give the brand rights to use the content thereafter. Takumi, for example, gives the brand full rights to usage after the photo has been posted. Other platforms like Tribe, charge the brand an additional fee to keep and use the image in other forms of marketing.

A micro influencer campaign is easy to execute and easy to use, while free online platforms such as Takumi.com and Tribegroup.com enable in-house marketers to take the lead.

The Cons of Micro Influencers

Capped visibility and reach – micro influencers obviously don’t have the vast followings of macro influencers, and with most influencer platforms setting a 10k follower limit, the visibility and reach of content is capped.

That isn’t to say this kind of content isn’t engaging – HubSpot reports that micro influencers, on average, receive 0.10% higher engagement rates than macro influencers.

Brands have less control over a micro influencer’s output. Often, the way influencer platforms work is that brands submit a brief stating what product needs to be featured, some information about the product and a general sense of how it should be represented. For example, an organic makeup brand might write a brief which explains why their product should never be shown in an environment of bold and brash colours or plastic materials. They may instead state all photographs must be taken in natural light, outdoors and must only feature neutral colours.

However, once this brief is written up, approved and sent to micro that’s it. The power is out of the brand’s hands. They often have little control over outputs. A micro influencer is trusted to post a quality piece of content, without any form of sign off from the client.

In many cases, you put your trust in the quality of influencers recruited by an influencer platform and ‘get what you’re given’.

ROI is often hard to prove. Performing a micro influencer campaign can be great for getting your product in front of lots of different people – but while visibility, reach and engagement can all be easily measured and reported on, it can be somewhat harder to directly attribute influencer engagement to direct sales. This is because influencer posts are great for driving awareness, but not at directing site traffic – especially as Instagram doesn’t allow links to be posted in captions.

The Pros of Macro Influencers

Brands have more control when running a macro influencer campaign. They can often choose the exact celebrity and give them precise instructions on what to post, meaning the outcome can be almost predicted.

This control also enables brands to build a stigma or reputation around their product – for example, a cast member of Made in Chelsea may support the ‘luxury’ representation of a product, whereas an Olympian may support strong, robust and professional connotations.

However, this can go wrong – take BooTea for example. The diet brand asked Scott Disick to feature their product on his Instagram (see below caption).

 

A campaign that results in something like this can shatter a brands’ authenticity.

ROI in a macro influencer campaign is often easy to define, well, easier to define than that of a micro campaign, at least. This is because many brands will set up a unique offer code for a macro influencer campaign. The influencer will then post this along with their content. This makes it easier to attribute sales to a precise post or macro campaign as brands can easily track how many times an offer code was used online.

The Cons of Macro Influencers

People don’t believe or trust macro influencers as product placement is often obvious, and not very authentic.

People can see through a devised Instagram post, and therefore trust the content less. While this kind of marketing is great for reach and awareness, people often don’t trust that the influencer really uses the product.

Macro influencer campaigns are more expensive. These celebrities will also generally require much higher payments than micro influencers.

One piece of content from a celebrity influencer could cost you an astronomical amount, depending on their status and follower count. If you’re thinking of getting the Kardashians involved, you better have a worthy budget knocking about. Believe it or not, these endorsements now make up around 25% of the Kardashians’ income, demonstrating just how expensive they can be.

Although their audiences might be bigger, and your content will therefore see a much higher reach, you may also be able to get a lot more out of lots of single posts with micro influencers, as opposed to one expensive macro influencer post.

Macro influencer campaigns are a little harder to execute as they’ll often take longer to organize, and may require a PR agency. Getting hold of a celebrity or their manager is one thing, but standing out amongst many other requests, is another.

Celebrities can also be picky with which brands they endorse, so demonstrating how your product will raise their profile and personal brand is also important.

So, which one should you go with? Both macro and micro influencer campaigns have their pros and cons, but in most instances, I’d choose a micro campaign. Authenticity is so important – Millennials, in particular, crave it.

If your budget allows, it is recommended to trial both a micro and macro influencer campaign, starting with micro to elicit a response. Report on which does better in order to develop your future strategy. Assess your KPIs and choose accordingly.

 

 

How to get the best out of Radio Advertising: from both a messaging and a media strategy perspective by Margie Knap, Senior Strategist at The MediaShop

Let’s face it; traditional media is here to stay. TV will always be part of our daily lives. It’s the wind down medium in the evening and the escapism of the daily grind. Out of home will always form part of the urban and rural landscape, it’s not going anywhere. And radio – the news jingle will always get us to reach for the volume button, our favourite song gets us singing along and we associate and empathize with DJ’s.

Radio has strong and enviable offerings: reach, immediacy, frequency, geographic targeting, day part targeting, language targeting. Turnaround time is fast and production can be relatively inexpensive.

So how do marketers get the most out of their radio campaign? Making radio work for your company requires strategy, skilled media buying and engaging creative.

But what makes a radio ad engaging?

The creative and media strategy process starts with a clear understanding of your brand, your audience and the targeted goals you wish to achieve – whether measured in cost per leads, cost per orders or just a bump in website traffic!

Let’s start with that dreaded phrase THE BRIEF – you may roll your eyes, but THE BRIEF is a necessary element for the success of each and every campaign.

Step One: The Creative Brief:

• The clearer the brief, the better the messaging is likely to be.
• Your ad is important to you, the marketer. Remember though – listeners don’t tune in to listen to ads. Listeners are busy and they are easily distracted.
• You have limited seconds to get a message across – those first 10” are vital. If you don’t grab the attention within those first 10”, forget it.

Step Two: The Messaging Idea:

• The idea must be clearly understood and stimulate and excite the audio senses to stir the imagination. There is no luxury of beautiful graphics and Instagram worthy pictures. Close your eyes and listen if it works.
• We say that radio is the theatre of the mind, but don’t leave too much up to the listener’s imagination. People don’t want to work too hard to connect the dots.
• The dialogue, the script, needs to be short, punchy and to the point and needs to engage the listener.
• Be careful of direct translations in other languages, key messaging can be lost in translation. Roses are love to some people but mean death to others.
• Cut through that clutter with a single-minded concept that stirs up emotions.
• Where possible and appropriate make your messaging relevant to current and trending news issues, but tread carefully!
• If you are giving away prizes, cash prizes are king.

 Step Three: Production Values and Cost:

• Your creative agency needs to look for talent, new writers who understand and get radio. Voice talent for best messaging delivery.
• Production is still relatively inexpensive so change the execution as often as required to keep your messaging fresh and keep it out of that all too dangerous “wallpaper” territory.
• Be very wary of using too many voices as it can be a very costly exercise, eg 9 ALS stations with 2 voices per script = 18 voices!

And what are the media strategy guidelines?

 Step One: Media Penetration:

• Radio is the ultimate mobile medium to reach captive commuters stuck in their vehicles, taxis, trains or buses.
• Understand and tap into your target market’s listening habits, morning and afternoon commute, school lift time, school sports on Saturdays or gospel music on Sundays.
• Understand the penetration of each radio station, each one has their regional strengths and weaknesses.
• Don’t, just don’t, flight below required threshold (reach vs frequency) weights. If you do your message will not cut-through. So determine up front what your strategy is and what element is more important: lots of people vs lots of messages.

Step Two: Station and Target Market Match:

• Choose a DJ to represent your brand based on your target market likes, not on your personal preferences. Stay on top of DJ line-ups.
• Establish a definition of success: do you want to raise awareness; want sales or more feet through the door.

 Step Three: Cost of Radio:

• Don’t just think about cost per thousand or cost of reach. Think about creating a connection with your consumers.
• Listeners love to be engaged, so look beyond the traditional 30” generic message : include competitions, live-reads, call-ins, event association, outside broadcasts and give-aways.

 Step Four: Radio 360:

• Engagement, engagement, engagement.
• Include a listener call to action to increase engagement with your brand.
• Radio continues to evolve within a 360° space. Work with this and leverage all the assets that a station has to offer along with the on-air messaging.
• Lastly, do not allow stations to “back-fit” you into their existing competitions. If they don’t work for you, make the stations work with you to deliver an exceptional campaign.

Final word, a great brief and effective media strategy led to the below award winning campaign:

Dove ‘Self-conscious’

Agency: Ogilvy & Mather London
Creatives: Simon Lotze, Miguel Nunes
Producers: Victoria Smith, Sarah Hall
Sound engineer: David Gritzman, Gramercy Park and H&O

 Script:

VO: The more someone makes you think about your body, the harder it becomes to ignore.

Your tongue, for example. Usually, you hardly notice it’s there. But when I mention it, you can feel your tongue bumping against your lower front teeth. The tip’s just resting on them. You notice your tongue feels just a little too long for your mouth. And you notice it never really lies still. You move it about constantly, without thinking about it. Backwards and forwards. And from side to side. Suddenly, it feels strangely wet and heavy in your mouth, doesn’t it?

A few seconds ago, you hardly noticed your tongue. But just one message ensured you can’t stop thinking about it. Now imagine the hundreds of messages girls are exposed to every day, subtly changing the way they think about their bodies.

See how you can help at selfesteem.dove.co.uk. Dove. Be your beautiful self.

https://www.campaignlive.co.uk/article/top-10-radio-ads-2016/1418495