Who Killed Radio?

by Jon on 2009/12/16

in social media

Are radio ads a thing of the past? I think so.

I met with clients yesterday in Stockholm to discuss whether or not they should go with a radio advertising campaign early in the new year.

They’ve gone with something similar the last couple of years but this year they weren’t keen. It’s partly the economy and tightening budgets, but also they’ve started thinking differently since embracing social media in the summer.

Has social media killed the radio advert?

Has social media killed the radio advert?

The Back Story

Having built a community around their company blog, Facebook Fan Page and on Twitter this client can now see that social media is a great way of connecting with customers.

“I’m not convinced an expensive ad is the way to go?” the senior executive who used to love bombarding customers with interruptive marketing messages admitted over coffee.

Without going into the nitty-gritty of our discussion, they ended up deciding to go with short series of targeted ads on Spotify and put the rest of the money back into the social media kitty. Spotify lets you choose who hears your ad unlike radio.

This decision was largely based on the data that’s been collected from the social media campaign I’ve helped them with.

But it was also a direct response to what the community told them.

Listen to your community

Over the autumn we polled the community about whether we should run a radio ad like last year. The community overwhelmingly said “no”.

In a separate study we asked them what the least successful marketing venture had been over the last year and they replied: “Radio ads.”

We asked them for suggestions as to what else we might try. They urged us to look at Spotify.

Social Media strategies are filtering through

So now, after two years of coaxing, this client is starting to think in terms of “social media strategies”.

Interruptive advertising – a very brutal communication strategy, if you ask me – is losing ground.

Do you see this happening too? Is the message getting through?

Image: FlickrCC

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Jon Buscall - Communications Consultant

Communications Consultant Jon Buscall

I'm an available-for-hire online communications consultant based out of Stockholm, Sweden.

What I do:
  • Online Marketing and Communications Strategy
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  • Jon
    @Ari
    That's a great question. I know the sales agent my client was in discussions with basically went down to the absolute minimum they could do the ad for; they really tried to get them onboard.

    But at the end of the day it just didn't seem viable to throw what was still a pretty large sum at interruptive radio advertising that isn't exactly super targeted.

    When Spotify can ensure that all your target group on their network have to hear your ad in order to use the service, it's a no-brainer. And the knock on effect is that radio suffers.

    They'll have to look at different income streams. I know here in Sweden the big radio stations run a lot of events. In other words, they're using the same model as bands, making sales from appearing live.

    Mind you, I'm not convinced this works very well for radio.
  • I'm glad you raised radio because here's the thing: If you agree radio content and the salaries of people who create the content is paid the same way as newspapers and TV; namely, without ads (and subscribers to a lesser extent), there'd be no content... my question is what happens if there are no radio ads. Will radio stations fold? Then what does every car in the world do with its radios?
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