The relationship between the programming and sales team is always a tense one at radio stations. They often have different ideas regarding how to make it work. Presenter and Comedian, Dermot Whelan, Today FM, Ireland, gave an entertaining explanation about how for him, the creativity is always the most exciting thing.
‘On average only 1 in every 9 listeners will enter a radio competition’. For Whelan, he thinks that as you’re already alienating most of your audience by even running a competition, you may as well keep everyone entertained in it’s execution. This view, for Dermot, is shared by his sales team, and allowed him to have a lot of fun designing competitions.
Through the session we see that if the sales teams loosens the reigns and gives the production side room to have fun, it usually leads to a creative, fun and exciting competition. And that usually generates more positive listener responses that make brands much happier.
Finally, Dermot urges sales teams to get presenters into a project early, as the relationships you make could make ‘killer not filler radio’ for many years to come.
From the other side of a radio station, Gary Mey, Director of Brand Partnerships at Talpa Radio in the Netherlands, highlighta how the best competitions are always the unique ones.
Gary shows a documentary from hip-hop duo Sunnery James and Ryan Marciano, in a campaign with Talpa Radio and T-Mobile, broadcasting live from a moving bus around Amsterdam. They invite listeners to share the party on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, and if they’re lucky, the band will gatecrash the party and present the show from the house. This creative angle on a fairly ordinary bit of sponsorship went viral, and perfectly highlights how a little bit of outside thinking can produce unique results.
‘All killer, no filler’, that’s the way to keep presenters excited about competition reads, according to @DermotTodayFM #RDE17 pic.twitter.com/qLYHtTSVK1
— Radiodays Europe (@RadiodaysEurope) March 20, 2017