13 unmissable Radiodays Europe sessions for promos & marketing people

Here in the Earshot analysis hub we ran the entire Radiodays Europe programme through a proprietary promos and marketing filter to find the stuff that will matter most to you and me.

Then, under laboratory conditions, we applied a patent-protected marine-grade wobblometer to the results and, hey presto, out popped thirteen previews of not to miss sessions at Radiodays Europe in Paris. Here they are:

Monday 14 March, 2016

KIIS and say goodbye… the big move

10.15-11.00, Track 1

The starry names of Kyle and Jackie O with ARN group programmer Duncan Campbell will appeal to many of course but this is also a gutsy story about launching an entirely new brand KIIS 106.5 with established talent from across town. The exercise was hugely successful but how did they manage the listener expectations, what were the risks and how did ARN mitigate them?

A great choice of John Simons to chair this session – he’s seen a few launches and rebrands in his time working across personality speech and music-led formats in the UK and consulting around the world.

Strike a chord

10.15-11.00, Track 3

The UK’s Radiocentre leads the world in the way it commissions and publishes insight-based help for radio advertisers. Its new “Strike a Chord” study shows how brands can use music to enhance their brand presence on air.

While judgements about use of music ultimately are creative choices and essentially subjective this study will show how a framework of structured decision making can further enhance the power of music in radio advertising.

Shame this clashes with Kyle and Jackie O but the presence of the ever-thoughtful Mark Barber, planning director at Radiocentre, will make this a worthwhile session.

The little green dragon can sell everything

Follows on from Strike a Chord, Track 3

Here’s intrigue, pickled in mystery and sealed in a pot of bizarre. Serbian creative director and former radio host Uroš Bogdanović invites you to join him “and his little green dragon” as you enter into a new field of story-selling.

Uroš says you can “get revenue with usage of advanced mind techniques”. Crikey. Then he probes “where and how to put that little green dragon?”. No, me neither but bring a map of Serbia just in case.

Emotional marketing: audio’s impact on your brain

11.20-12.00, Track 3

Another session that applies science to art.

Martin de Munnik, a (possibly the only) Neuromarketing and Neurensics expert from the Netherlands, will explore the subconscious impact of music on buying behaviour while Emma Rodero, radio researcher and professor, Pompeu University, will discuss speech strategies in radio commercials, cognitive processing and the results of a US study about attention and memory to different prosody strategies applied to radio commercials.

I do hope their findings support those of Mark Barber or we could bear witness to an unseemly international incident of white-coated academic fisticuffs which will do nothing for radio, let alone EU harmony.

“Prosody” is officially Earshot’s word of the day.

‘The producer’ masterclass

14.00-14.45, Track 2

This session explores the skills of a great producer and what they bring to a radio programme.

Ninette Brick from Radio 24syv in Denmark and Helen Thomas of BBC Radio 2 share practical tips and techniques on planning, talent management and booking guests.

A timely session for anyone involved in the new speech radio stations entering the UK market this month or who wants to up their game in the face of this new competition.

Radio branded content in a multi-platform world

14.00-14.45, Track 3

Steve ‘Tetley’ Taylor, Creative Commercial Director at Bauer Media in the UK explains how Bauer uses different touchpoints to engage with audiences, develops meaningful results for their clients and generates revenue.

You’ve heard Kiss, Magic, Absolute Radio, Heat Radio and their metropolitan stations around the UK – now discover how they develop branded content across multiple platforms.

Actually, we don’t really care what this session is about – it’s Tetley presenting it and that makes it unmissable.

Viberté, Jingalité, Imaginité

15.00-15.45 Track 4

You can’t beat a good ‘show and tell’ session to understand how creative producers are using imaging to help distinguish their stations.

Here, Matt Fisher from BBC Radio 1, Steven Lemmens of Studio Brussel and Diederick Huizinga from PURE Jingles promise some imaging case studies with examples of stations of different formats who are using original imaging in unique ways.

LBC: Talk that matters

16.50 – 17.30, Track 1

Talk is a newly-energised battleground in the UK and LBC is one of UK radio’s speech radio success stories. In this session LBC breakfast host Nick Ferrari and station editor James Rea talk about what makes great speech radio and how you can create content that really connects with your audience.

For you and me in the world of promos and marketing, it’s worth nothing that engaging communication via speech is the bedrock of radio advertising and station promotion. We have to understand how to use the power of words in order to maximise its promotional potential. This session, and Nick Ferrari’s enthusiasm will help.

Tuesday 15 March, 2016

The main event

9.00-10.00, Track 3

Early on day 2 this looks like a great session with practical take-outs you can apply immediately from Paul Sylvester of Absolute Radio and Alex Kind of Germany’s Star FM.

From multi-artist concerts to a Morning Show on tour, we’re promised ideas and inspiration to help us build a successful events strategy.

The new generation of listeners

10.00-10.40, Track 2

Understanding the motivation of audiences is the starting point for any promotions work.

Here, Patrick Collins from the BBC shares share the results from a recent ethnographic study that aims to get underneath the statistics of youth media usage in the UK.

Generation instant pay off

Follows on from Patrick Collins’s session

Tina Skov Gretlund and Lene Heiselberg are audience researchers from DR in Denmark. In this session they present results from a pan-Nordic survey of media habits of 13 – 29 year olds that suggests, among other things, that very few respondents would miss national public service content if global brands could fill the gap.

Branding radio – how to make our medium large

12.00-12.45, Track 1

I like Ralph van Dijk from Australia’s Eardrum agency – he plays lots of illustrative audio in his presentations. This year, he returns to Radiodays with a lofty promise to make radio relevant to the brand managers and media planners who don’t listen.

Ralph also asks how can we make the world’s largest quality brands to finally feel at home on radio and if there was a global campaign for commercial radio what would it look and sound like?

30 ideas in 45 minutes

15.20-16.05, Track 1

When you come up with that brilliant, career-defining idea you’re on cloud nine. Trouble is, it doesn’t happen very often unlike stealing building on the ideas of others which is an annual occurrence thanks to thanks to this session led by Nik Goodman.

This year Nik introduces creative ideas in programming, promotions and sales from Valerie Geller, Turkey’s Ali Abhary, Christian Schalt from Germany, Spain’s Emma Rodero and Britain’s Steve Taylor.

Beyond the sessions

Imaging exhibitors

Alongside the equipment manufacturers, research organisations and digital platform enablers who exhibit at Radiodays Europe, the major imaging houses always put on a good show.

I’ll be looking out for the latest from Reelworld, Wise Buddah, PURE Jingles, SOB, Brandy, Benztown and others as they continue to sell the benefits of bespoke packages alongside the increasingly sophisticated imaging services like Production Vault and IMGR.

Workshops

You can book onto these optional workshops.

Creative leadership programme

Apply at radiodayseurope.com

Creative people are not normal. Leading them requires special skills. Radiodays Europe has organised a two day Creative Leadership programme for people who want to get greater results from the creatives they employ.

Reinventing radio advertising

Sunday, 14.00 – 16.30, Workshop Room 1

Ralph van Dijk of Eardrum in Australia leads this workshop. Ralph’s always good value and illustrates his points with some great audio.

Valerie Geller

Sunday, 14.00 – 16.30, Workshop Room 2

Create powerful radio – if you’ve seen Valerie perform you’ll know the thrust of her message is centred on a handful of brilliantly true timeless principles about effective communication. Although Valerie’s pitch is mainly aimed at content creators the thinking behind it is equally valid for promotional work and advertising. Go see.

Summary

Radiodays Europe promises many riches for promotions, marketing and production practitioners and it’s good to see numerous positive contributions from the UK including those from Radiocentre, Bauer, Global and the BBC.

If you’ve been put-off European radio conferences by the impression that they’re stuffed with American consultants waiting to tell you how to do radio then this fact might help – last year, only 9% of delegates were hungry consultants. The vast majority of delegates were equally split between practitioners from commercial and public radio, just the way UK audiences are.

I’m also reassured to see Paul Robinson hosting the event again with Alice Petrèn from Sweden. These events always work best with solid anchor talent and Paul and Alice will be great.

Hook-up

If you’re attending and would like to hook-up in Paris do get in touch via steve@earshotcreative.com

Banner image on site homepage: Paris by Moyan Brenn. Used under Creative Commons licence.