So Radio 2 have created another brilliantly conceived, yet simple TV ad to showcase what the station is all about.

There have been many attempts to create compelling TV ads for radio stations and radio shows. Some worked and some didn’t. Coming myself from a commercial background, the only one recently for my old station Capital 95.8 that I feel worked  was the one we created to launch Johnny Vaughan’s breakfast show. It showed him dancing all over London to a version of “Maybe it’s because I’m a Londoner”. This was fairly big budget and designed to create an affinity between Johnny, Capital and London.

This new Radio 2 ad is a mash up of songs they play on  the station; Blondie’s ‘Atomic’, David Bowie’s ‘Sound and Vision’ , James Brown’s ‘Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag’, plus  Run DMC’s ‘Walk This Way’ and KT Tuntstall ‘Black Horse and the Cherry Tree’.

To me, you get hooked in by the clever cutting of the music, plus visually how the video clips are cut and recut, as if to mimic sampling of the songs. 

The ad features many of the stations star names including Jonathan Ross, Russel Brand and Chris Evans (though no Wogan). 

The clever part will be to see how they extend this message this time. I’d expect the clip (now available on You Tube) to be a viral success. They are running a version on air which includes the musical soundtrack, cut together with audio clips from all the shows – taking the idea in a different direction, but making it work on the radio station. Not quite sure how it would translate into print…talking bus shelters anyone?