52 Radio Bites and counting

Throughout our Radio Bites series, we’ve offered up research – from both Radiocentre and other sources – and given advertisers many reasons their brands should be heard on the airwaves: from growing market share to driving online search.

Across seven months and more than 50 Bites, we’ve shown how consumers are tuning in to trusted news, creative ads and mood-boosting content –– but as the pandemic’s effects continue to be felt across the UK, and budgets are tightened, we wanted to take a moment to encourage brands to continue their spend across all media platforms. And who better to tell us why than Martin Glenn, former President of PepsiCo and CEO of the FA.

At last month’s Tuning In: Back to Business event, Martin spoke about why marketing in a recession pays dividends. As part of his session, he offered four tips for marketers to make the business case in the boardroom for continued ad spend, and recast the stereotype that marketing is “the spending department” into “the department that can build growth”.

• Prioritise the core

Martin pointed to research that showed people were looking forward to spending time with loved ones once lockdown eased, saying that long-standing values weren’t changing – so life isn’t changing that much for consumers. In response, brands should prioritise their core propositions, this goes for campaign messaging too, with Martin encouraging ‘compound interest’ as more valuable than one-off advertising executions. We’ve seen in previous Bites that consistent ads are effective ads: more engaging and able to boost ROI.

• Accelerate innovation

Every marketer dreams of a breakthrough disruption, said Martin, but the truth is that continuous improvement is a surer bet. Martin referred to his time at Walkers, as examples of how a brand can improve consumers’ experience, rather than inventing “a new shaped something-or-other”. Notably during the pandemic, innovation in the area of hygiene is likely to get an audience.

• Invest in insights

Martin called for not just maintaining, but increasing spend on insights – an area that is usually the first victim of a spending cut. Noting that “knowledge is power and right now we need it more than ever”, in a changing world where old instincts aren’t serving us as well as they used to. While in-house insights are of course important, it’s worth looking at tools across the advertising landscape, including our own Radiogauge, which as we’ve shown in a previous Bite can help you understand the effect radio can deliver for your marketing mix.

• Speak the language of the boardroom

Martin’s final tip was to encourage marketers to talk to Boards and investors and how what they do can affect future cash flows, rather than using “sanctimonious” language about how “if we do this in 10 years we’ll all be great”, as companies have to survive in both the short term and the long term. We’ve explored in previous Bites radio’s strength in both short term activations and longer term brand building. Martin also mentioned the great deals to be had on advertising space, and the opportunity Covid has presented marketers to make the case for incremental spend and incremental advertising amid scrapped business plans.

Watch Martin Glenn’s full session, including how insights informed the FA’s strategy with the England team during the 2018 World Cup, below and see our full library of Radio Bites. More sessions are available at our Tuning In hub.