‘Confident’. ‘Super impressive’. ‘A line in the sand’. These are the overarching sentiments of media agency leaders and buyers who spoke to B&T after Commercial Radio & Audio’s annual HEARD conference.
For years, radio as a channel has failed to attract the investment that research suggests it should, but this year’s conference could change perceptions if the post event reaction is anything to go by.
The 90-minute presentation was littered with highlights.
Mark Ritson delivered a powerful and research-backed rallying cry to brands about why they should spend at least 11 per cent of their media budgets on radio rather than current levels of 7 per cent.
Gabi and Dan illustrated why regional radio is so powerful to local communities and that advertisers are missing a trick by ignoring 37 per cent of the national population.
2GB presenter Ben Fordham explained why he chose to pursue a career in radio rather than TV, enjoying the intimacy he has with his talk back audience and the stickiness of the channel. He described radio as a rollercoaster and TV as a ferris wheel.
Gold FM’s Christian O’Connell said that Australian radio is at a crossroads compared to previous years where DJs followed the same playbook and “created AI slop before AI”.
The sales chiefs of Nova, ARN, SCA and Nine, shared the CRA Audio ID roadmap, which aims to make it much easier to buy audio across all of the networks, eventually leading up to an audio exchange.
And the show concluded with a brilliant fireside chat between CRA CEO Lizzie Young and Guzman y Gomez global CMO Lara Thom, who explained how radio was pivotal in growing the GyG brand because it was cost effective, sweated the company’s distinctive brand assets, and become more effective the longer its ads ran.
“We found with radio and any type of audio for that matter, the more we used it, the more it resonated back to us, it was a momentum piece for us,” Thom said, adding that sales on the back of radio campaigns were the ultimate litmus test.
“Radio kept working, so we kept doing it…it has become such a crucial part of our media spend in terms of brand awareness.”
When Thom wanted to see what would happen if the brand switched radio off, much to the disapproval of Young, she quipped: “It was off for a week, but we turned it back on.”
Media buyers reaction
Involved Media managing director Sarah Keith believes CRA’s HEARD was a seminal moment for the radio and audio sector.
“It was super impressive,” she said. “Mark Ritson is a draw card, but there was so much more than that. Having the opportunity to listen to Lara Tom talk about GYG and audio and talk about it in such a detailed way was absolutely brilliant for the industry.”
There were many takeaways for the industry, but the two that Keith points out are Ritson’s evidence that running ads on radio for months, rather than weeks, compounds their effectiveness, and the CRA Audio ID.
“When you, when you link up the buy to actually have that unique identifier, and have a way of combining your audiences effectively, I think it is an absolute game changer,” she said.
“I think HEARD is a real moment in time for the CRA and for radio networks, a line in the sand has been drawn today.”
Head of OOH and audio PMX ANZ, Daniel O’Callaghan, agreed that CRA Audio ID is “a massive step forward”.
“It’s well needed to manage reach, manage frequency across your campaign and across suppliers. It’ll be interesting to see how that develops,” he said.
“Audio is underindexed currently, because in the past it’s been harder to track, so it’s kind of hovered around 6-8 per cent for 20 years. The improvements in the measurability and business outcomes will lead to growth in audio, so it’s important that they keep that top of mind.
“It’s important this kind of information gets out there, so we can start a conversation (with our clients) about what is holding us back from that 11 per cent… There are still other challenges to address but this is a great start and gives advertisers peace of mind that they’re making the right decision by investing in audio.”
The reason why investment in regional radio has been lagging the size of the opportunity, O’Callaghan argues, is that it has been “horrendously challenging” to navigate numerous markets, sites and negotiations between radio networks.
“We know ARN and SCA are working on making that simpler in audio and those efforts are really valued,” he added.
Collaboration is one theme that impressed the whole room. In a relatively short space of time, Lizzie Young has brought radio rivals together and singing from the same hymn sheet on important industry matters that will help drive radio forward at a critical time for the media.
The showcase clearly demonstrated the event’s theme, ‘heart, head, heard’. Now radio executives will be eager to see how much the industry listened.
