Radiocentre News

Former TUI Marketer on why radio can help travel brands fly

Tuning In Travel, Radiocentre’s specialist livestream event for the travel industry, explored the challenges and opportunities for the sector, with a line-up of presentations from the travel and media worlds.

Jeremy Ellis, former Marketing & Customer Experience Director of TUI UK & Ireland, provided an overview of coronavirus’ impact on the travel industry. He emphasised that consumers are now looking for reassurance: “I have no doubt in the medium to long-term that demand remains. But the main challenge is about rebuilding trust with travellers.”

This also presents a communications opportunity: “Brands firstly have to be completely open, contactable, and authentic. When talking about their brands it’s important to focus on media [channels] that deliver emotive messaging – media such as TV and radio will be important moving forwards… Radio, in particular, is on all day, providing an opportunity to talk to people in a much more emotive way with consistent messaging.”

Lucy Barrett, Radiocentre’s Client Director, outlined the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, and demonstrated how radio can help the sector convey key communications messages and regain consumer trust.

She described the growth of commercial radio listening in recent months – an audience of 36 million, listening to an average of 13 hours each week, and 38% of this audience has increased time spent with commercial radio since March.

Her message for travel brands, in light of Radiocentre research that shows pent-up demand for social activity and travel as lockdown restrictions ease, was clear: “Radio can play a very important role in helping [consumers] make decisions, and in helping you regain trust among your customers.”

Mark Barber, Radiocentre’s Planning Director, considered how the travel sector could best use radio advertising to boost share of voice and ROI. He cited the importance of advertising during recessions, due to the opportunity to drive brand growth by achieving excess share of voice through spending ahead of market position. This works especially well for travel brands because they can buy a higher share of voice on radio than any other media – spending £1m on radio achieves a 6.6% SOV, more than 40% higher than the next media (OOH). And campaigns that use radio grow market share four times faster than those that don’t.

Radio also boosts the cut through of travel campaigns – awareness grows 58%, relevance 20%, and consideration 10% when the medium is included in the mix. It’s a responsive channel too: uplift in online browsing for travel brands averages 59% among those exposed to radio ads. Most vitally, ROI is higher in radio for travel brands than any other medium, paying back £5.70 in revenue for every £1 spent. Barber concluded:

“Radio helps travel campaigns cut-through more effectively and has an immediate effect on influencing behaviour… It’s clear that incorporating radio into the mix can really make a difference in helping travel businesses take off again.”

Judith Spilsbury, Head of Training and Special Projects at Radiocentre, focused on ways of optimising travel campaigns through targeting people at the right place, and the right time: “For travel brands there’s a real opportunity to speak to people at key times when they’re thinking about booking a holiday, or even about to go online to book.” Because other tasks accompany 9 out of 10 radio listening occasions, it’s worth including context that’s relevant to the listening moment to boost impact. Spilsbury cited Radiocentre’s Hear & Now study to show that radio advertising that relates to specific activities increases engagement by 23%, and memory encoding by 22%, which is important for improving decision-making and purchase-intent.

Jo McCrostie, Creative Director at Global, emphasised the flexibility and agility of radio advertising, describing how lockdown led to a surge in people’s need for information and explanation, reassurance and connection, and distraction and escape. She then highlighted how ABTA had worked with Global on audio identities that helped to build trust: “Our moods and attitudes will continue to change and it’s radio’s ability to address the needs of the nation in a tone that reflects the mood of the nation that has been driving success for our advertisers.”

Siobhan Kenny, Radiocentre’s CEO, spoke about the role of commercial radio during the crisis, drawing examples from the Commercial Radio: A force for good report. She outlined how people are listening to commercial radio for an additional 2 hours each day since March, driven in part by an increased demand for news, and how commercial broadcasters are responding with 25% more news bulletins, which are, on average, 28% longer.

Kenny also described how radio is the most trusted medium for news – 77% of people trust news on radio, to TV’s 74%. This drops right down to just 15% of people trusting the news they consume on social media. In addition, radio’s mass reach, together with its ability to target specific demographics (such as BAME and C2DE audiences) makes it a powerful medium for brands, alongside the main reasons people listen to radio – it’s trusted and it keeps them company: “That’s a good environment for your brand to be in, and of course, your ads will be unblockable and unskippable.”

Fleur East, the Hits Radio Breakfast Presenter and music artist, spoke with Paul Gerrard, the Hits Radio Programming Director, about providing a relatable experience that connects with listeners, and how brands are innovating to reach the breakfast audience in a real-time, live environment.

The Tuning in Travel stream concluded with Kamilah Kamara, Radiocentre’s Insight Manager, who explored how the travel sector could make the most effective use of consistent audio brand assets including musical cues and use of sonic triggers. She highlighted that distinctive audio assets make radio advertising more effective by 3.44 times, and showcased how brands such as Jet2.com, Travelodge, Disney, Ryanair, and British Airways have made strong use of audio branding.