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Ideas and technique to help you promote and image radio

Are you on the Minecraft platform yet?

Posted by on 23 November 2015

For this parent, Toys R Us is a horrid place. But even its pink plastic Arcade of Hades is moderately redeemed by its decision today to unlabel what it had previously classified as “toys for girls” and “toys for boys”.

Of course toy manufacturers have target audiences. Ben 10 appeals to a different market from Disney Princess but they’re not gender exclusive.

Similarly, in the digital world it’s just not the case that only boys play Minecraft while girls go on Etsy to look at handcrafted owls.

Oh yes, Minecraft. A game so distracting and addictive for children that it has spawned parent help sites.

But if your radio station targets children and needs to be in all the places your audience is then Minecraft should be one platform on your list.

That’s why Fun Kids has made a representative build of its studios by breakfast host Sean. Representative of your expectations, that is. The Minecraft construction looks just as you’d want Fun Kids to be – a colourful reception area, a live studio, a treehouse and garden and all topped off with a DAB transmitter mast.

But even if you’re not active on Minecraft (or can’t find Fun Kids on it) you can enjoy the tour thanks to this YouTube video, narrated by Sean:

As an dull middle aged adult I’m thinking that some of those unguarded stairways shouldn’t get planning permission in the real world and there’s a lot of hard surfaces for an acoustically-tight studio. Luckily radio station engineers love a challenge and kids don’t care.

Fun Kids Creative Director Matt Deegan says:

We want Fun Kids to be wherever our audience is, whether that’s the radio, mobile, events or on video sites. YouTube is clearly an important destination for kids and we want to create content that’s native for that platform in addition to stuff that’s ‘versioned’ for it. Sean’s channel – N60Sean – is connected to his personal passion for video games. We use some of the station’s access for guests on the channel, but the main focus is the content Sean creates.”

Matt has written critically of BBC Radio 1’s recent video work, suggesting that it fails to drive audiences back to the core radio product.

By contrast, Fun Kids is actively cross-promoted in its YouTube work but it isn’t a dominant focus. For existing listeners it’s a way to share an experience with one of their favourite presenters while new audiences can subscribe to Sean in a familiar environment and then learn about the other spaces in which he and his radio station operate.