Industry News

Tuning In 2018 – event summary

A vocal impressionist, a Government minister and some of UK radio’s top radio presenters took to the stage at Picturehouse Central last week for Tuning In, Radiocentre’s annual conference.

Over 300 delegates from radio, advertising and media flocked to the event for a morning’s immersion in the latest industry thinking.

Optimism was high in the auditorium in advance of the next day’s RAJAR figures, which showed that commercial radio had its highest audience ever at 35.9 million listeners a week in Q1 of 2018. In a further boost, ad revenues for radio were up 12.5% in Q1 to a record £179.3m. Against this positive backdrop, a fascinating series of presentations followed.

Early on the agenda was the man who runs Twitter in the UK and Europe, Bruce Daisley asking whether stress is killing our ability to be creative. Bruce’s New Work Manifesto looks at the impact of modern life on wellbeing, especially in media and advertising. He said: “Anytime you have any fear, or any anxiety in an environment where you are expected to be creative, it kills that ability.” He spoke of work as being chained to your desks, that our wellness is being damaged from working longer hours with less time to enjoy the things in life that make us happy.

Daisley’s talk followed the radio industry’s Mental Health Minute which had taken place the day before. At 10:59am on Tuesday 15th May over 300 radio stations had played the same minute-long message voiced by stars including Lady Gaga, Dame Judi Dench and Their Royal Highnesses the Duke of Cambridge Prince William and the Duke of Sussex Prince Harry. The message, coinciding with Mental Health Awareness Week, encouraged listeners to talk about their own mental health, and ask other people about theirs.

Four of the UK’s favourite presenters gathered on stage to be quizzed by wannabe radio presenters. Radio 1’s Matt Edmondson and co-presenter Molly King stood side by side with Kiss breakfast’s Melvin Odoom and Rickie Haywood-Williams. They answered questions about how to make it big in radio as they launched The Young Arias, a new awards scheme in association with The Radio Academy to celebrate radio and audio created by under-18s. Their message to newcomers could be summed up as “keep it fresh, keep it fun and keep on learning.”

Given radio’s healthy ad revenues, one of the morning’s biggest topics was commercial radio’s contribution to brand building and how advertisers can get an even greater return on investment.

Gareth Jones, Marketing Director of eBay, was joined by his MediaCom Business Director Charlotte Mullan to share how eBay is using radio to spread its message and boost sales. The brand, which increased its radio spend by 600% in 2017, has sponsored Capital Radio’s Breakfast Show and has run tests on radio, TV and outdoor advertising in the Midlands and Scotland. “We gleaned that radio is a very strong medium for getting across our message and has a strong multiplier in terms of Return on Investment,” Jones said, adding: “Radio advertising had a significant impact on people’s view of eBay as a terrific place to shop. They were more confident and more reassured in terms of pressing the buy button, and that was a very interesting insight for us because establishing those retail credentials is very important moving forward.”

He said that two years ago, 90% of eBay’s marketing budget was spent on tactical Direct Response (DR) advertising through digital media. But he quoted management guru Peter Drucker who said that long term health cannot be built on short term investment. Digital DR has fallen to 65% of eBay’s budget, with increased spending on traditional media and branding.

Backing up his claims about the effectiveness of radio advertising, Nick Pugh from media consultancy Ebiquity said that radio ads offer strong return on investment.

Pugh showed that radio is delivering a better ROI for advertisers than four years ago, rising to a £1.61 return on every pound spent from £1.48. He presented a series of response curves showing the benefit of increasing investment in advertising. This showed that UK brands would benefit from increasing their radio advertising budgets by £135m a year.

Michael Hill, founder and managing director of Radioplayer, explained how he had been meeting with car manufacturers to have the Radioplayer installed in new cars. Jo McCrostie, creative director at Global, made the case for advertisers to get better at audio branding. She showed how brands pay attention to the colours and fonts they use on their packaging, but most lack a strong aural identity. To highlight the importance of audio branding, she brought vocal impressionist Duncan Wisbey to the stage to give his version of how different brand colours and fonts would sound vocally. McCrostie said too many brands were “mute” and needed to find their voice. By 2020, 50% of brand searches will be done by voice, she said.

Margot James MP, Minister for Digital and the Creative Industries, confirmed that the Government would review the future of analogue radio once digital listening hit 50% – a figure which was then confirmed a day later by Rajar figures – and will make further announcements in due course. She also highlighted that the Government will press ahead with proposals to deregulate commercial radio.

“Primary legislation on deregulation will be brought forward when Parliamentary time allows and we have decided what needs to be done,” she said and added: “In the interim, we’ve asked Ofcom to explore what scope there is to relax the current regulations within their powers to help commercial radio stations so they don’t have to wait for Parliamentary time.”

The morning finished Magic’s breakfast show co-presenter Harriet Scott interviewing Dave Berry, who takes over Absolute Radio’s breakfast show from the departing Christian O’Connell in June.

Berry talked about the challenges of running a breakfast show and joked that he would be looking to steal Magic FM’s water cooler as they have the studio downstairs. He also talked about preparations for the new show.

“We’ve secured an amazing guest, we had a really nice idea and have just the person to do it. We’ve written some nice sketches and have called on actors and comedians and musicians to help us so there are going to be some nice visual bits as well as audio bits in the first week. Then we can settle into getting to know everybody and the audience can get to know who we are which is key. Then you come up for air in six months’ time and hopefully it is all OK”, said Berry.

Tuning In went down a storm with delegates. With hopes riding high in the radio industry, it will be fascinating to see what further successes the coming year brings.