SCA: 'engage with intimate scale'

“Intimacy at scale” is the catchcry shaping Southern Cross Austereo’s (SCA) roadmap for success in the digital economy as the media company strives to turn listeners into fans.

The digital landscape offers content producers opportunities Jules Lund of SCA’s Fifi & Jules radio show says he has never seen before in media.

Lund, who hosted SCA’s Engage Live event on Wednesday, said social media has allowed the program to have an “intimate” conversation with its listeners who now help curate its content.

“They are now contributing, commenting, suggesting all of our content. We now shape our radio show around the conversation. For the first time in history our community, our Fifi & Jules tribe, now hears themselves back,” Lund said.

Clive Dickens (pictured), SCA’s new director of digital and innovation, said his ambition in the role he’s now held for four months is “to engage with intimate scale”.

“We see this disruptive change as a real beginning of the best of times for a content business like ours,” Dickens said.

“Everything that we produce and everything that we do has to aspire to be remarkable and we have to earn people’s attention and we have to absolutely make sure we drive that engagement and encourage our community to share.”

Dickens, who joined SCA this year from London, said SCA’s new “mission can become advertising and marketing that people want”.

“People don’t dislike advertising. They dislike too much advertising,” he said, adding that people want ads that are more relevant to them and “want the opportunity to have advertising as content”.

He also dismissed the notion that connected cars could be a threat to radio instead viewing it as an opportunity for the medium.

“People are used to being engaged in the car with radio,” he said pointing to the fact that 60% of all radio listening now happens in the car.

“The connected car gives us the chance to have even more opportunities to engage with them. We are building products to allow people to pull that AFL content on demand when they are in the car and get the update from the Scoopla and shows.”

For more from Dickens and Lund see The Brief next week where they discuss in more detail plans for music streaming service Songl, how to turn listeners into friends and how they avoid coming off as contrived in their social activity.

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