In Judith Spilsbury’s workshop this morning delegates learnt how to pitch radio to advertisers. Judith discussed the challenge for radio and identified that, while radio does well at reaching large numbers of people and is a very cost effective medium, it struggles from its bad perception.
Radio is perceived as performing less well than other mediums. However, as Judith pointed out, there are many studies which show it as being the second most popular medium (TV is the most popular medium).
Advertisers also think radio isn’t very good at reaching the right people in the right place at the right time. But again, Judith showed everyone several studies which suggest the opposite – it is one of the best mediums for this.
“Radio still has a bigger media share than social media” said Judith.
So what does radio need to do when working with advertisers? Well, advertisers tend to spend too much time on brand activation and not enough time on brand building. This is an area that radio is good at and is a real opportunity for radio. But the challenge is changing the perceptions of advertisers.
There are four pillars to this: context, evidence, inspiration and experience. Young advertisers don’t always understand the value of radio as they may not be consumers. As an industry, we really need to work at convincing them to use radio in a meadingful way, using data ROIs and, of course, examples.
