New sound & imaging for Bauer’s Place portfolio

The team at Bauer’s Place Portfolio gets a new sound and station brand based around the idea of “your music, your life”.

Designed to reflect the listeners’ connection with their local station, the new station sound, sonic identity and imaging package has taken months of research and planning.

It will run across 16 of Bauer’s northern English and Scottish outlets, including Key 103 in Manchester, Radio City in Liverpool, Forth One in Edinburgh and Clyde 1 in Glasgow from 6am on Monday February 17th.

The strapline

The new strapline, “your music, your life” features alongside a new five-note sonic identity for the portfolio. The strapl will also feature on all graphic imagery and logos across the stations’ multiple platforms.

Does it work? Well it’s very similar (albeit the other way round) to the positioning line used by another radio brand which is currently undergoing some changes. There’s only so many ways you can make a line from the words “life”, “your” and “music”.

The imaging

Wise Buddah picked up the brief to lead on the imaging, station sound and sonic identity, winning  a four-way competitive pitch.  They have been working on the project for the past three months.

It’s a complete station sound refresh including new Top of Hours, Power Intros, Sweepers, Out of Breaks as well as a brand new set of News and Sport imaging based around the five note sonic logo.

Take a listen to the new production short showreel here:

The team and its stations

Owen Ryan has a long job title as Bauer’s Place Portfolio North of England and Scotland Group Content Director.

He led the production and imagery for the project while Catherine Gort, Marketing Director, led from an insight and branding perspective.

Chris Ward, Head of Production for Bauer Place, led the development of all the imaging assets with Wise Buddah and his in-house team developing the sound together for all 16 stations.

The full list of particpating stations is:

Key 103
Radio City
Rock FM
Radio Aire
Hallam FM
Viking FM
Metro Radio
TFM
CFM
Clyde 1
Forth One
West FM
Northsound 1
Tay FM
MFR
Radio Borders
Bauer’s charity, Cash for Kids

Wave 105 (South Coast) and Cool FM (Belfast) are not part of the project.

Benefits

Ahead of changes in the local marketplace that will result  from the Global Radio / Communicorp deal it’s interesting to see Bauer stamp a solid, consistent identity on all its assets in the portfolio.

The big aim of Bauer Place is to deliver relevant local programming and to unite listeners in the places they live. The research conducted by Bauer has fed in to a new identify does that is designed to reflect just that.

From a practical point of view having a single identify across the network makes it easier to develop and expand the network programming now launching across its England and Scotland stations.

Earshot asks…

It’s new, fresh and highly-produced and will sound great on the air, but we’re left with some questions:

Can you really research imaging without drawing attention to something that to listeners should be largely subliminal?

Can’t gut feeling lead the development of the creative or can you justify the investment in research through some measurable return?

Can a single identity work across all TSA’s without compromising the localness that Bauer says is so important to listeners?

Does the listener care?

Perhaps Chris Ward would come on a future edition of the Earshot Creative Review podcast to answer these questions and reveal more about this exciting and confidently-delivered project.

Jonathan Jacob is a Solutions Manager at Global Radio with varied experience across commercial radio S&P, events, marketing and PR. He was listed in the inaugural Radio Academy 30 under 30, is a Student Radio Awards judge and sits on the Events Committee for The Radio Academy. Views are personal.