How Cliff helped launch Absolute Radio 60s

The launch of  the latest decade station from Absolute Radio – Absolute Radio 60s, last month saw a blaze of PR activity centred around the fact that the stations playlist would be focusing on the influential bands of the 60s … But not Sir Cliff Richard.

Sir Cliff wasn’t happy – the PR machine went into overdrive!

Numerous national TV interviews on the subject, coverage across national tabloid and news websites aswell as targetted viral videos plus a flurry of social media buzz on Twitter and Facebook led into a PR attack of Olympic proportions – all because of the playlist of the radio station that hadn’t launched!!

There’s a fantastic run down of what happened and how it just kept on going on Francis Currie’s blog. Francis adds four key learnings from the PR launch:

1. Simple things done well can be very powerful, 
2. You rarely need to reinvent the wheel, 
3. You can’t keep a good story down 
4. No matter how strong the plan, never forget the importance of execution.

The team at Golden Square have released a review video which looks back at the media storm created by their decision to ban Sir Cliff from the airwaves… a great lesson in Radio Station PR for us all!