Florence Fischer, who is a host at SRF in Switzerland, started the
session by discussing fake news – and how to avoid it. She said, don’t
share something you don’t know is 100% trustworthy. Double check
things first.
Wade Kingsley, founder of The Ideas Business in Australia spoke about
making on-air promotions better. He suggested that delegates remember
than contests are content and deserve to be interesting to not only
the winner but to all listeners. And he said that stations should
focus on the surprise element of competitions, not just the prize.
There has to be something that listeners don’t expect. He advocated
emotional giveaways over transactional ones; winners should remember
that they won with your station forever. And he talked about going
‘high’ or ‘low’ with giveaways – so that if you’re giving away
£10,000, you should give it to one person, or to 100 people, but not
to 10 people, to get the most impact.
Judith Spilsbury, Head of Training and Special Projects at the
Radiocentre in the UK, talked about selling radio to radio-sceptics.
She advocated surprising them with facts like ‘radio is bigger than
Facebook in the UK’. She encouraged delegates to bring radio to life
with examples of adverts that have really worked for similar clients
before. And she said that radio should invest in advertisers in the
long term – because if their first experience is a good experience,
they’ll be back.
Adeline Beving, who works in Developing Open Innovation at Radio
France, discussed boosting innovation. She said that radio stations
should ‘forget [they’re] in media’ and think of themselves as tech
companies. And also, collaborate with other stations in order to grow
together.
Filipo Solibello, a host at RAI in Italy spoke on facing challenges in
2019, with a particular focus on smart speakers. He said, ‘they’re not
so smart’ and they ‘make us more stupid’ since we rely on them to do
basic things like switching on lights! He advocated putting
intelligence into smart speakers in order to create smarter listeners.
Another way to do this, he said, is to ask listeners the question –
and to give them the answer.
And Rune Born Schwarz, Innovations Manager at Bauer Media in Denmark,
closed the session. He talked about encouraging media agencies to buy
radio advertising and told delegates to remember radio’s reach – and
to make it matter. He shared the Bauer’s theory of ‘branded
campaigns’, which combine podcast production with adverts to give
podcasts both reach and engagement. He says agencies can understand
this more easily.
Delegates took away much more than 30 ideas in 45 minutes!
