Pages Navigation Menu

Ideas and technique to help you promote and image radio

The year within Earshot

Posted by on 30 December 2012

Steve Martin writes…

Thank you for being within Earshot during 2012. Jonathan and I hope you’ve enjoyed the stories we’ve unearthed and the range of voices we’ve shared with you on this site and through the Earshot Creative Review podcasts.

It’s been quite a year for us too, with the site growing in traffic significantly, outreach work with media students in England and Scotland, an exclusive first listen to the new BBC Radio 2 jingles, an edition of the podcast from South Africa and the ambitious yet successful Hobsons Voicesearch competition running through much of the year, supported by teams in the BBC, Global Radio, Reelworld and the RAB.

As a result of this work our pageviews are up 71% year-on-year and the total number of unique users (people and devices) has more than doubled*. Results like that encourage advertisers to support the site so I’d like publicly to thank Hobsons, Pure Jingles and Radio Ideas Bank for advertising with us in 2012 and therefore helping us to develop Earshot Creative as an independent hub of good radio promotion ideas and practice through this period of growth.

It’s not all about the numbers though – we value your personal comments and feedback. Much of it is positive but we know there is room for improvement – we’ve bitten off a bit more than we could chew a couple of times especially as I’ve been away on business a lot, our use of Facebook comments isn’t good enough, we need to change the domain. We have plans for enhancements in the weeks ahead to ensure we can keep the quality of the posts consistently high and the overall site looking ship-shape and Bristol fashion.

Above all, we will strive to share ideas and practices through Earshot Creative to inspire us all to make better promotional radio. If we’ve helped you in that direction this year then listeners have won already. If you’ve earned a career promotion or an award from your work then that’s even better.

As we segue into 2013 please continue to share with us your latest audio productions, your radio promotion, marketing and imaging stories and, of course, any ideas from your station that could inspire others around the world.

Finally, if you like year-end countdowns then look – here is one. Relive our hits of the year as we count down the top ten most popular stories from the Earshot Creative site over the last twelve months.

Earshot’s Hot 10

 

10. Capital TV’s outdoor ad campaign

25 October, and Jonathan reviews the outdoor ad campaign supporting the new Captial TV channel, complete with examples of the main executions.

9. Testing our loyalty

It’s 2 October and Steve has commissioned some research analysis on the number of stations listened to by platform. Digital listeners are more promiscuous.

8. Pinterest – what’s in it for radio?

As Pinterest experienced popular growth Jonathan explained how radio stations might use the platform to further engage with listeners.

7. Six tips for using Skype on the radio

Our seventh most-popular post this year was posted by Steve in November 2011 but it enjoyed a resurgence thanks to some linking around the internet.

6.  How Heart and Capital TV learned from radio

On 12 October Capital TV and Heart TV launched. Steve opined that only radio people could create tv channels like this.

5. Great radio station marketing roundup

It’s August and Jonathan has collected some splendid radio promotional spots from around the UK and beyond.

4. The Hobsons voicesearch competition is launched

In April we launched a competition to find and reward new British voice talent with Hobsons. Unsurprisingly, the competition was rather popular. The result was announced in December’s podcast.

3. Capital FM’s 2012 ad revealed

Just two days into 2012 Jonathan got his hands on the latest incarnation of Capital FM’s tv ad, complete with regional variations.

2. Earshot Creative Review, July

Chris Reay from the BBC and Steve Martin share an exclusive first listen to the new BBC Radio 2 jingle package produced by Wise Buddah.

1. Just One Cornetto voted catchiest jingle of all time

18 June. Jonathan listed a top-ten chart of most catchy advertising jingles with examples of almost all of them, mercifully omitting webuyanycar.com which came eighth.

*Source: Google Analytics