Getting Vocal

How voice-activated devices are increasing radio listening & elevating audio branding.

Many people have experimented with voice-activated assistants such as Siri and Cortana since they were first introduced in 2011, but the screen has remained the predominant interface for the devices on which they are found. Getting Vocal, co-funded with Radioplayer and Global, set out to capture a UK perspective on ownership and usage of screen-less voice-activated devices, explore their impact on radio listening, and consider how brands might adapt to an increasingly voice-activated future.

Read More Here

Radio: The Brand Multiplier

This study uses theories presented in Byron Sharp’s How Brands Grow to reveal compelling new evidence about radio’s ability to drive strategic brand growth. The findings reveal that audio plays an important and distinct role in enhancing the brand level effects of advertising and offer some practical guidance for advertisers seeking to optimise these effects.

Read More Here

Radio industry tackles over-lengthy advertising terms & conditions

The UK commercial radio industry is tackling lengthy terms and conditions at the end of radio advertising, which make it harder for consumers to absorb and recall information.

Radiocentre, the industry body for commercial radio, has published new Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) Confirmed Industry Guidance to help advertisers execute more concise terms and conditions in radio adverts while complying with regulatory obligations. Focussed on one of the most complex sectors, car finance, and the radio advertising carrying over-lengthy financial terms and conditions, this guidance will benefit consumers, listeners and advertisers alike.

Read More Here

Radio is the only medium without visuals. As a result, it doesn't require the primary attention of the listener to be consumed as intended. These factors have several benefits for advertisers:

Listeners create the pictures themselves
Enhanced personal relevance of messages

People use radio to accompany them when engaged in other tasks
A different targeting opportunity

Radio provides emotional support to help enhance people's mood when engaged in other solitary activities
Radio is a powerful means of influencing how people feel about an advertised brand

Radio is perceived as a more benign medium, not eating into primary time
Advertising is also felt to be more benign in this context leading to low ad avoidance on radio

Radio has a unique collection of media characteristics that mean it can play a valuable role in almost any advertising strategy. 

1. Gets your message across to the right consumers at the right time
With over 270 analogue and 130 digital stations in the UK, coupled with the use of the medium to accompany tasks across the day, the radio audience can be segmented into very specific niches based on a number of different criteria, e.g.

• Demographics
• Communities of interest (e.g. rap music vs. Rachmaninov)
• Geographical communities (from local to regional)
• Consumer moods and modes (e.g. getting ready for work or driving to the supermarket)

• Higher frequency build
• Radio accounts for a large proportion of time people spend with media
• Lower cost of radio vs. TV advertising
• High share of voice opportunity in most markets
• Reaches people across the whole day

• Real time communication
• Low ad avoidance levels
• Ability to communicate with out-of-market customers

The radio industry has invested significant resources into measuring radio's advertising effectiveness, which have demonstrated radio's strengths in delivering results in terms of the following criteria:

1. Raising awareness - The Awareness Multiplier Study conducted by Millward Brown in 2000, demonstrated radio's cost-effectiveness in generating awareness compared with television.
2. Increasing sales - The Sales Multiplier Study conducted by dunnhumby revealed an average sales uplift of 9% attributable to radio advertising.
3. Driving response - Case studies and research highlight radio's ability to get people to respond to advertising messages. Radio is especially effective as an indirect response medium, alerting people to respond via other media, e.g. online.
4. Building a brand - Case studies illustrate the power of radio in influencing the listener's emotional impression of a brand.
5. Multiplies the effects of other media
   

• Radio with television. 10% of a TV budget redeployed onto radio increases overall ad awareness by 15%
• Radio with newspapers. Partially substituting newspaper exposures with radio exposures dramatically increases unaided and prompted brand awareness and improves the consumer's ability to recall advertising messages
• Radio with online. At any given time, one in five online users are also listening to radio. Radio is highly effective at enhancing response online (57% claim to have gone online to find out more information after just hearing about something on the radio)

1. Radio advertising offers efficient targeting - Radio targets audiences efficiently because different stations attract different listeners – Kerrang listeners are worlds apart from Classic FM listeners etc.This allows advertisers to talk selectively to the groups they are most interested in. Added to this is radio’s regional/local structure, which means that brands can focus their activity very effectively onto key market areas.
2. Radio advertising reaches people at relevant times and places - Most radio listeners are engaged in another activity, and this means that advertisers can reach listeners at key “touchpoints” – when they are on the school run, surfing the internet, before going out on Friday nights, and so on. And now that radio can be heard on mobiles, on the internet etc, these touchpoints are becoming even more widespread. 
3. Radio reaches out in an ad avoidance world - Research shows that radio, together with cinema, has the lowest level of advertising avoidance – people rarely switch stations, and are available to listen to any message that is relevant, creative, intriguing etc. This is a great opportunity for advertising who want to reach out to new customers, or to tell existing customers something they didn’t know.
4. Radio has a “multiplier effect” on other media - Radio’s way of multiplying the effect of other media is a feature of multi-media research studies. The original Millward Brown Awareness Multiplier Study showed how radio multiplies the effect of TV, and since then the finding has been re-echoed in the joint OAA/RAB study into radio & outdoor, and also the US RAEL study into radio vs print. Radio’s multiplier effect seems to originate in the fact that it is an audio-only medium, and therefore stimulates a different part of the brain.
5. Radio advertising creates a large “share of mind” for a brand - In the same that radio stations create chart music success, they create a sense of ubiquity for a brand. This is for two main reasons – firstly, because radio ads are on frequently, and secondly because listeners tend to spend so long listening (on average 14 hours per week). A brand which is big in radio can create a disproportionately large share of mind for itself. 
6. Radio drives response, especially online - Radio has always been a strong “call-to-action” medium, and this is even more true in a world where consumers access brands via the internet. Recent IAB/RAB joint research revealed that at any given time a fifth of internet surfers are listening to radio – so they are a click away from interacting with a brand. 
7. Radio is “a friend” - Listeners use radio for emotional reasons – to keep their spirits up, to stop themselves from feeling bored in a car or isolated while doing daily chores. This leads to them seeing radio as a kind of friend, and this is a valuable context for an advertiser to appear in. It is even more powerful when advertising extends through into branded content – sponsorships & promotions. When a radio station presenter talks about “our friends at Company X”, the listener is hearing about a friend of a friend – this has a strong effect on bringing a brand closer.