Radio

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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BBC2 Christmas Animation

(C) BBC
| jamesstodd
(C) BBC
BBC 2 CHRISTMAS. IMAGE (C) BBC

I’m now feeling more Christmassy having seen the new animations for BBC2’s Christmas idents. The Jack Frost character seems to have been thawed out and replaced by scenes from an animated town.

The idents, created by Red Bee Media with 15 Badgers feature a number of iterations including “Turkey” and “Scientist”. They are slightly off the wall, but have a real sense of fun to them. I particularly love the intricate sound design and little design details in the animation – the sort of idents that you’ll see loads more in every time you watch.

Take a look and see what you think.

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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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Be Brave. Be Bold.

| jamesstodd
James Stodd & James Rennie - C4 Radio Canterbury Summer 1992

There are some things that you need to see.And some you don’t.

Me in shorts with a dodgy haircut is fairly inexcusable. But it was when I was a student. And that makes almost anything forgiveable (apart from wearing headphones on a photo shoot).

This photo was taken during the Sunday lunchtime show that James & I used to do on C4 Radio in Canterbury (now long gone and part of CSRfm). The programme was called “Crucial FM” (ripped off from the name of a Lenny Henry show sketch). It featured music, talking rubbish, stories from the Magic Roundabout and other old records we found in a second hand record shop in town.And occasionally the appearance of 2 characters called “Pat and Val”(loosely based on the cleaners who used to clean our halls – Thorne Hall if you really want to know).

This was the Summer of 1992. That was the year I spent my summer working as the Management Runner at BBC Radio 1. That was the year that I blagged the most free CDs and gig tickets ever. That was the summer that I paid daily visits to McDonalds on the “bloat up” run for Steve Wright. That was the year that I took Simon Bates’ dry cleaning to the dry cleaners. That was the year I won my Student Radio Award.

It was a very long time ago.

My Original Student Student Radio Award (with others)

My prize for winning the award was a box of CDs (there was a Jimmy Nail CD in there) and a lovely certificate. I still have the certificate. It sits in our home office next to a few other awards and my Doctor Who picture. (Who has always been cool ever since the time I met Tom Baker aged 6. End of).

Tonight (November 9th 2011), this years Student radio Awards take place at the IndigO2.

There is some debate about the history of the awards. Before the SRA there was NASB. I’m sure something happened at some point and it was disbanded. I remember attending a meeting when the SRA was set up. It may have been at Hatfield Uni. It may have been in Hull. Whatever the history,the Student Radio Awards have been around in a few guises for a number of years. And winning one, even back then, meant a huge amount.

This is a Cassette. Better than Minidisc.

I still have my entry. Luckily for you (and me) it’s on antique technology. No, it really is. This kids is a cassette. It’s what we used to pirate songs off the radio before the Internet. I listened to it a couple of years ago – and it was pretty average. But back then, being a DJ was what I wanted to be. And Student Radio let me do it.

The problem with student radio is that many people now, like me then, wanted to emulate what is curently on the radio. Back then, when I ran the station, I wanted it to sound like the local commercial station. I had jingles from America. I had an American Voiceover. And there was a team of specialist DJs who hated all of that and wanted to do things very differently.

I wish I’d have listened to them.

Student Radio can be about making the station sound  the best it can be. It can be about being the best presenter. But  what it really offers is the opportunity that you may never get in a professional radio career.; to experiment and fail. To try new things. To experiment. It may well give you more creative freedom than you’ll ever get in the real world. But, hopefully, it’ll allow you to create something new and inspiring to those people currently running radio.

One of the reasons I’ve been a judge for the last few years is that I think these awards have such a huge ability to encourage potential. The fact that Radio 1 and much of the UK’s commercial radio support them is testament to that. I’m looking forward to meeting some of the new winners from this year; who knows where they will end up?

So to all of you nominated at the awards this year and to all of you aspiring to succeed in the coming years; be brave; be bold. And most of all, never have a publicity photo done with you wearing headphones.

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What’s your Red Cup?

| jamesstodd

The Red Cups are about to return in Starbucks branches around the world.

20111103-081230.jpg

For years, every Christmas, Starbucks have added the red Christmas Cups to their stores with a number of special Christmas flavours. Christmas music appears in the stores (they also sell the CDs) and it feels a little bit closer to winter. Over the past few days, the number of mentions of Red Cups in my Twitter feed has been increasing. I’ve noticed loads of video ads at Underground station telling me the Red Cups are Coming. There’s even a dedicated websitefor them counting down to the big day. It feels like Starbucks (just like Coke Christmas ads ) are doing their best to “own” Christmas.

In the UK, Smooth Radio have  again launched Smooth Radio Christmas – non stop Christmas songs and a great way to cross promote to Smooth Radio. I’m guessing the thinking is that people who don’t necessarily think that Smooth Radio is for them might like a Christmas station. Add in some cross promotion and hopefully gain some listeners.

Christmas stations are nothing new. There are loads online. Many AC format stations in the US flip format in November and December to do the same thing. In Denmark, Radio Soft – sister station to Radio 100 becomes all Christmas too.

But can Starbucks teach us anything about brand extensions?

The Red Cups work because they tie in with a specific time of the year where it’s easier to create a Mood. I’m not sure Starbucks summer cups would have the same effect.
With radio, it’s easier to do brand extension with musical decades (such as Absolute 80s and the like).

But whatever happens – in a crowded (coffee) market, the sight of the Red Cups instantly makes me think of Starbucks and Christmas.

So what’s your Red Cup moment?

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Educating advertisers: avoiding the “creative abyss”.

| jamesstodd
Photo by James Stodd on Instagram

Does radio really suffer from a “creative abyss”? Are there a lack of ideas? (hence the tenuous light bulb reference..)

Long time radio commercial producer John Mountford, from commercial production house JMS thinks so.

You can read his blog post here .

In the post he says;

I believe the progressive devaluation of radio creativity is in great part down to the radio industry itself. Whereas it should be actively encouraging creativity, its own systems run directly counter to this.

I have often worked alongside some huge advertising agencies. Some of them “get” radio and some don’t. And their “big ideas” (often TV based to tie in with big TV campaigns) aren’t necessarily always big enough for radio. We normally help them get to a good place – it’s a bit of a collaborative process.

We make great efforts to help these agencies to understand radio, and also the uniqueness of BBC radio. A snall number of the people I meet admit they don’t listen to radio at all. So education in what’s special about radio is often needed.

We bring them in for creative sessions, take them into the radio networks to see how radio is actually created. It’s a two way process, and needs to be collaborative. But with persistence, it can pay off too.

In answer to John; I feel your pain – particularly with some smaller scale local advertising.

Stations are to blame in this – but sometimes it’s down to a lack of understanding by advertisers. There is a need for radio stations to educate their clients, and it seems the RAB are doing a lot to assist in this area.

But it’s down to educating sales teams too. And if they don’t have a love for the medium – we’re stuffed.

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Utilising User Generated Content

| jamesstodd

Photo (C) Metro
Here’s a fantastic example of using user-generated content to make a really interesting looking TV spot for BBC Radio 1’s Teen Awards. It’s a simple idea – but executed really nicely.

Vodpod videos no longer available.

There’s a little more background on the Earshot Creative review blog here.

I think there are huge opportunities for making great sounding, highly effective promos and imaging using this method. There are countless examples online of contests where bands have let fans download elements from their songs to create alternative mixes. There are also examples of online games where fans can “create” their own programme trails – like this one for the BBC’s Doctor Who from a few series back.

So – how about someone publishing some imaging elements online and giving their listeners the chance to create the idents for the station. Just imagine the creative treats that might emerge.

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