London

Owning Big Events

| jamesstodd

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Tonight sees the Brit Awards in the UK. Unlike the Grammy Awards (with over 100 different awards), the Brits are a more manageable affair – celebrating mostly British artists and talent with a few overseas categories thrown in (to make it a bigger show).

For many radio stations, this is a huge deal – particularly for stations Capital FM and Radio 1.

There was a time when the whole of commercial radio got involved with helping choose the British Single (essentially the biggest songs played on commercial radio that year). Now, it’s purely the preserve of Capital FM listeners to have their say. And it’s surely one of the biggest days in Capital’s music calender – along with the Summertime Ball and Jingle Bell Ball.

Back when I worked at Capital, it was a pretty big deal. We’d run packages supporting the voting, have weekend giving away tickets and of course do a couple of shows from backstage too. But now, it’s way bigger than that. Take a look at their website and it’s nothing but Brits. Listen on air for the last couple of weeks and its been all about the tickets. And today, it’s everything Brits. And let’s face it – it’s all about the music that (on the most part) is at the heart if their playlist.

They are absolutely owning it online already – watch this great backstage video

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But as well as being jammed full of relevant, relatable content for their listeners, it’s obviously a huge opportunity for Capital to shout about their brand to anyone who listens. It’s live on ITV, so expect to see their current TV advert at every opportunity as well.

As with any radio brand, it’s all about talking abou t the content that’s relevant for your listeners. There are still many sales people in particular who have a lack of understanding of what brands would work alongside their radio brand. I doubt it happens as much now, but there was a time when even the sales team at GCap bought us promotions briefs for a dog food winning weekend.

And whilst Capital will be getting its branding in everyone’s face tonight at the Brits, I doubt you’ll see any of these on the tables – which I actually think are their best piece of targeted visual marketing ever. Beans Means Hits..?

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How do you promote your best content?

| jamesstodd

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I just saw this on Twitter from @dannywallace and think it needs sharing.

http://soundcloud.com/the-xfm-breakfast-show/behind-the-scenes-documentary

http://soundcloud.com/the-xfm-breakfast-show/behind-the-scenes-documentary

There’s a tendency, particularly in commercial radio, to run a breakfast show promo that contains a quick clip from the show. The normal reason for this is that the show is sponsored, and as part of the deal, the Sponsorship team have added in promo trails. The real reason it’s there is to get across a sponsor message. And the breakfast show clip is essentially the filling in the sponsorship sandwich.

Often, the promo is pretty rubbish. The reason; it’s pretty hard to distill the essence of a great breakfast show into a single, punchy clip.

So why do shows insist on doing it? Would it not be as effective to use the trail to give a tease of some great audio that’s actually worth listening to, and maybe direct listeners online to hear the whole section? And now that a significant number of your consumers are online, maybe there are new ways to promote the show too.

I like this “behind the scenes” “documentary” because:
It’s funny.
It’s irreverent.
It’s probably something extra that wouldn’t necessarily appear on air.
It’s really shareable too.

I’m constantly amazed why more stations don’t use clips of content from interviews in on air promos and imaging to drive the listeners online to hear more. If you’ve spent the time recording and editing a great interview with a guest, don’t assume your listeners were actually listening when you broadcast it. Why not use it to promote your show and then reward the listeners with more content online.

Make That Change

| jamesstodd

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There are some times in your career when you need to make a change.

Sometimes it’s because an amazing job comes up. Sometimes it’s for personal reasons. And sometimes (and more and more often), its because it’s enforced. When these times of change come along, you can either bury your head in the sand and despair. Or you can embrace the change and see it as a force for good.

Next month, I’m leaving the BBC.

It’s been a hard decision to make but one that is right; for me, for the family and for various other reasons. I’ll post news of where I’m going and what I’m doing next week.

Throughout my career, I’ve almost always been involved in hands on radio production. Whether producing programmes and events, managing production teams or co-ordinating projects. This is what I love doing and this is what makes the day to day job worth doing.

Ever since I left Capital FM in London in 2008, I’ve been working outside of radio stations.

I worked on documentaries for Wise Buddah. I created imaging for a production service and shows like the Ronnie Wood Show whilst at Puretonic Media. And for the last 2 and a half years, I’ve worked across some pretty challenging marketing projects on radio as part of BBC Creative Marketing.

But every job has taken me away from day to day radio.

And each job has required fewer of my core craft skills to be utilised.

Now, one can argue that as you progress in a career, you’d normally expect to do less doing and more managing. And this has certainly been the case with my current job. And it brings both challenges and rewards. But also it brings frustrations. I’ve sometimes had to manage the creative process when deep down, I’ve really wanted to make the finished product myself. In fact, recently, I was worried that I was beginning to lose some of the creative craft skills I’ve developed over many years simply by lack of “doing”.

So the new job is in some ways a step sideways. But the rewards that it will give me personally are far greater. Greater personal satisfaction. More family time. And a broadening of my production network too, as some of it will have an International element.

So, if you’re sitting in a job and are getting frustrated, maybe it’s time to think back to what it was that attracted you to radio in the first place. Are you still getting your creative buzz from what you do now. If you are – that’s great. But if not, then what are you going to do about it?

The New Sound of BBC Radio 1

| jamesstodd

For radio imaging readers, it’s worth checking out the new sound of BBC Radio 1. On air since the beginning of April, there’s a new punchiness to the sound – and the station has a real feel of energy and progression  to it – particularly in the new shows in the afternoon.

Dan Mumford, Radio 1’s Station Sound head worked with the team at Pure Jingles in the Netherlands to create a new sonic identity to the station. And what’s interesting is the way the team at Pure Jingles work.

Dan tells me they initially worked on a ton of music beds in loads of different styles. These then get passed to another producer in another studio who decimates the tracks, creating short burst of musical energy – often unlike the original track. These music elements then get thrown to the next studio where the audio mangling happens to the Voiceovers – giving them a final set of idents.

I love this idea of collaborative production – it seems very different from the production process I came across when working with companies such as Wise Buddah and Groove Addicts years back. They have a completely different (and equally valid) way of working. But for Radio 1’s sound, this new way is certainly a fresh approach.

The new imaging sound also includes 2 new station voices. Both have been discovered by the station rather than through traditional ways of going through agencies etc. The Female voice was discovered whilst auditioning for a TV show, and the new male voice was found through the annual search for the voice of the awards session at the the Student Radio Association annual conference.

Even if Radio 1 isn’t your bag – you can check out a montage that Dan created of the station sound here.

And there’s another montage of some more of the imaging on the Pure Jingles website.

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Global Radio finally living up to their name..?

| jamesstodd

Two pieces of news yesterday finally cemented Global Radio’s ambitions.

First, they announced “an unprecedented long term partnership” with News International – creating a range of partnerships. The UK Press Gazette reports

Capital Breakfast will partner with The Sun
Classic FM’s More Music Breakfast will be presented in partnership with The Times and The Sunday Times
Heart’s Club Classics on Friday evenings with The Sun and Fabulous Magazine
LBC 97.3 will run special features, news round-ups and advertorials with The Times and The Sunday Times
The Big Top 40, the chart show syndicated across various stations UK-wide on Sunday afternoons, will feature Sun advertorial features.

They also announced a “new media opportunity” with Clear Channel Media in the US to create the Official World Premiere across Global Radio and Clearchannel airtime and advertising assets across the UK, Europe and the USA.

According to Radio Today

Ashley Tabor, Founder & Executive President of Global Radio said: “This is an unprecedented partnership between Clear Channel and Global Radio. The combined worldwide reach of over 150 million people, as well as the innovation of combining radio & digital outdoor, together with the geographical spread of this initiative, is truly eye watering. We’re delighted to be partnering with Madonna and Universal music for the very first ‘Official World Premiere’ today.”

This is pretty clever strategically for Global on both counts.

With the NI deal, there’s a tie up with a huge publisher, giving a tie in with the editorial power of a huge newspaper group. I’m guessing the showbiz-loving Sun will happily be featuring the sort of content that Global breakfast shows will be talking about, and featuring stories about Global’s huge events. I’m sure there’s no compulsion to do this – but an alignment like this certainly won’t harm either if them. One wonders how impartial reporting of Rajar day stories will be – but I’m sure the benefits will outweigh the challenges.

With the Clear Channel deal – the benefits are far more rooted in music partnerships. The recent Official World Premiere of the new Madonna track tied up the Capital Fm Network, Clear Channel’s Radio stations and billboard sites. The event trended worldwide on Twitter – driving traffic back to Capital and helping build the Madonna Brand. I’m guessing this will be sold to various labels to promote their content – 150 Million potential consumers is not to be sniffed at. And I’m guessing that if Global wanted to use it to promote any of their acts – they’d get a good deal..

I’m wondering though if the CC deal will go further. Both Global and Clear Channel operate music events for their stations. Capital has the Jingle Bell Ball whilst New York’s Z100 has the Jingle Ball. In the future, will huge headliners be tied into the type of partnership deal – whereby Rihanna or Jay-Z or similar artists headline both events over one weekend in two continents? An extreme idea – but with lots of possibilities.

The challenge for radio is to constantly come up with new ideas. Global are doing this with new strategic commercial partnerships – that could ultimately create exciting and unique new content partnerships. This must ultimately be good news for all radio brands.

Boom! The New Capital FM Breakfast Show Ad

| jamesstodd

95.8 Capital FM just send me this on Twitter – the new advert for the newly relaunched Capital Breakfast Show. It’s a variation of their music brand video – but as well as the core artists they play, it also features the new breakfast show hosts. And the artists they play are all “endorsing” up breakfast and the presenters.

Earlier in the day, someone shared a link to the updated TV advert for the rest of the Capital FM network. And as before, there are regional variations for the different markets.

What I like about both of these is the consistency. They are updated versions of the advert they used last year to promote the launch of the Capital FM network. I wrote about that last January. They have taken a seemingly simple idea and they have stuck with it – adapting it and freshening it up – but not tempted to change it or go for something new.

It’s pretty rare in marketing for brands to have the bottle to keep things consistent – there are always tweaks, whether to a logo or a creative idea. Strong, simple ideas always work well. Just look at the ad campaigns for Go Compare or We Buy Any Car Dot Com. Whilst they may be annoying, they are annoyingly catchy.

Dave Berry and Lisa Snowdon - hosts of 95.8 Capital FM Breakfast

What the team at Global have done is take an idea that imprints the names of the artists at the centre of everything they do. They use them to endorse the station. They use them to promote their big events. And they now have used them to promote their biggest show. And judging by what I heard this morning, this show aims to be a big hitter. The mix of music, humour and energy was pretty much perfect this morning. News was punchy, travel was quick and on target. And they had the fastest “Pay Your Bills” execution I’ve ever heard anywhere.

Boom! – the breakfast wars are back on..!

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Fireworks Soundtracks and Mashups

| jamesstodd
Image (C) Merlin Fireworks

“James – we need you to make a fireworks soundtrack. It needs to be 15 minutes long. Oh, and it needs to be beatmixed..”.

I have only had to make one full on fireworks soundtrack mix.

It was around 2001 and was for the AXA Skyfest Cardiff. It was a huge 15 minute display to celebrate the first Football FA Cup Final to be hosted at Cardiff’s Millennium Stadium (whilst London’s Wembley Stadium was being rebuilt). It took me a few weeks to make ( through various incarnations) using a very basic setup on ProTools5 (my first ProTools Rig) and with no fancy Elastic Time tools – just clever edits a little varispeed and a lot of edits.

It worked pretty well and it was fantastic to see the whole of Cardiff Bay lit up to a fireworks display set off and designed by the company that produced the fireworks for the Olympics ceremony at the Sydney Games. You can hear it here. I just listened back to it for the first time in a decade – and whilst it’s a little ragged in places, it was pretty epic!

I was at a party last night so missed the huge London 2012 New Years Eve fireworks display. These have become a Traditional part of each New Years celebration. My friend Will Jackson has tracked down the mix from last night’s display – so thought it worth a share here. It was mixed by BBC Radio 1 and Asian Network DJ Nihal. Take a listen here

In fact this mix was curated by Nihal and engineered by BBC Radio 1 Head of Station Sound, Dan Mumford. You can read more about how the display was put together here

My friends at the Benztownbranding Blog have also recently showcased a very clever Beatmix from David Konksy at Sydney’s 2DayFM here. 30 songs in 3 minutes!

And if you REALLY like this sort of thing – get bang up to date with DJ Earworm’s United State of Pop 2011

Now – if you have a good hangover cure after last night’s celebrations – let me have it…

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Getting Naked at Breakfast

| jamesstodd
Photo (C) Global Radio

This morning, Global Radio’s XFM did their Naked Breakfast

They took the Danny Wallace show and broadcast live from the O2 Shepherds Bush Empire. But what made this different is that they did everything live. This wasn’t simply a normal outside broadcast with some live links and special guests. Everything was be live – the music, the jingles, even the adverts.

There was a pretty impressive lineup too:

The Stereophonics were the House Band. Plus comedians Tim Minchin and Ross Noble and Paul Weller also featured.

I’m not sure I’ve ever heard of anything being done in quite this way in the UK. It would have been fairly common back in the early days of Commercial Radio in the US in the 1940s and 50s when it was common for the announcers to voice live ads within live shows. But doing something like this on a very formatted station like XFM is quite a challenge.

I’m guessing they’ve had to carefully plan what airtime was sold within the show. Because they had to perform the ads live – they had to sell some brave creative to the advertisers too – so that  the ads became part of the performance.

Whilst it’s not something you’d want to hear every day – this is a great example of creative programming that gives the listener something to really interact with. You can listen again to it here:

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Johnny Be Good (and his Jingles weren’t that bad either)

| jamesstodd
Big Ben by James Stodd

Last week, Capital FM‘s breakfast host, Johnny Vaughan left the station.

The reasons behind why he left have been discussed by people like Matt Deegan and Nik Goodman

For my money, Johnny was a great radio broadcaster, somewhat constrained by commercial radio from the start. When Johnny was in full free form mode, he was incredibly entertaining.

The Johnny who left Capital was a very different sounding one who started there. Sure, some of the gems came through, but he didn’t really fit with the punchy format that Capital now pumps out. I’m also guessing they’re looking for someone who can work equally well across the network. And Johnny is of course at heart, a Londoner – as his launch TV commercial showed.

Creating the production sound for a new breakfast show is hard. And it was for that show. Johnny was a big change from the previous Chris Tarrant breakfast show and the various interim replacements.

What we ended up with was a fairly esoteric sounding package of jingles and the like from the guys at Wise Buddah in London. They fitted his personality, his style and his quirkiness – and included the fairly memorable “Johnny on the Radio Now Now Now” theme which cropped up a number of times during the first half of his tenure.

Before we got there, we did explore other areas, and I found one bit of audio in my archives that may not have ever been heard before. Before settling on the guys at Wise Buddah, we worked on some demos with the team at Reelworld. These were based around Capital’s heritage sonic logo – and had a more US/Letterman/talkshow type of feel. Needless to say, they weren’t what was required at the time. However, I still think they are really good, and could work for someone somewhere. You can contact Reelworld here:

Johnny’s replacement is being announced tomorrow morning. I wonder if the replacement will get a song and dance number to herald in the new show? Doubting it..

UPDATE: Capital FM have announced that Dave Berry will join Lisa Snowdon as breakfast show host. Great choice – funny, punchy and full on Londoner.

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