RDE: 30 ideas in 45 minutes

Staff Writer

One of the final sessions on the second day of the Radio Days Europe conference was, in my view, one of the most valuable.

The concept was to offer 30 ideas in a 45-minute session, and the rules each panelist had to work around were:

– 6 speakers
– every speaker has 6 minutes to talk
– each gives 5 great ideas or tips

The session was well managed by the talented Nik Goodman (left) of Bounce (here), who balanced humour with plenty of ideas to get your creative juices flowing, irrespective of market size.

Below you might see an idea from a different market and initially decide that it won’t work in your local market.

Perhaps it won’t, but perhaps it could; my advice is to look at the list for what the possibilities might be, because there are some extremely simple and effective ideas here.

Firstly I don’t think I am biased in saying that Southern Cross Austereo’s Sam Cavanagh stole the show, very well presented by him, and of course his ideas were excellent.

Here  they all are, enjoy….

Sam Cavanagh EP SCA

1) The black out challenge. Talent are blind-folded and given no sound, they are then put into amazing situations; nipple perching, David Hasslehoffs bed.

2) Fans not listeners. Fans want to consume our content across all platforms events, by changing how you think about this, you will change your content.

3) Don’t just play music, play WITH the music. What can we do that is different with the music? Random acts of instruments, artists playing songs on different instruments.

4) Big Cash Selfie. Send us a selfie, upload on the website, pixelate it, and give you a designated time to call in and collect your prize.

5) Swap my car. Thinking of fans not listeners, give away a car on air. Print out the hashtag #swapmycar on the back of my car, follow them and swap their car. Film the swapping of car.

Caroline Graze – NRJ

1) Set up an ad server technology  – Adswiz.

2) Target your audiences – understand more details about your audiences using targeted data. Spotify will now this. Use Facebook for data.

3) Use data you collect, use it wisely – and for your own means to sell.

4) Advertise your Brand – don’t block usage, go for reach whereever it may be, don’t let international traffic stop you marketing.

5) Team up with local hero’s and sell those audiences to local partner.

Filippo Solibello Rai 2

1) Marry them. – In Italy there is a law to celebrate others wedding.  Rai ran a stunt where they celebrated the wedding of 100 people in one day.

2) Get out of the box – the host of the morning show started the show at 5.30, so started broadcasting while physically driving into work. Unpredictable.

3) If the news is boring play with it – host 1 hour game show of all the boring news items.

4) Travel Phone – if you can’t afford to send a reporter to the world cup, give the phone to a VIP and we’ll call at 10, then you had to give it to another VIP.  Will be interesting to see where the phone ends up in the world.

5) Public Participation – we got everyone to switch off their electrical items at exactly the same time. Gamification of public participation.

Vilde Batzer Head of Comedy  and Entertaianment NRK P3 – Norway

1) Boring Topic Podcast – A comedian and friend have to talk about the most boring topics, eg: 200 years of the constitution document.

2) Trainee reporter – A reporter sent a twitter note to the Royal Princess asking for an interview, she said yes come along. We sent a trainee with big pink hair and recorded it.

3) Oopa Oopa – naff song playing at the same time every day (6.30). We created a hashtag, listeners send in video of singing/dancing doing things along with the song.

4) Fundraising with a twist –  female talent dancing in oil on video, we will release if we raise enough money.

5) Massage Minister –  We gave the (female) show talent a massage on her birthday, however we had the Foreign Minister come in to provide the massage.

Sami Tenkanen Nelonen Media Finland

1) Let them promote you  – listeners vote for 10 of their favourite songs, everyday new songs, artists get their fans to vote on these songs on the station website.

2) Small is the new big – Radio Rock got a band to play in a listeners garage. Lots of people shared this and made a small event really big. Podcast it, video it, lots of social activity.

3) If they can sing, they can talk – get bands to come into the studio, and play and do a show on air.

4) Let an artist have your station for the day – tease the name of the radio station name change. Lots of competitions etc.  We coached the artist to be a radio host, and she brought her star friends in with her, and ran the station for the day.

5) Use 500 Euros to reach 2,000,000 listeners – two weeks before we went to air we sent packages to 30 celebrities containing 30 woolly hats. We asked them nicely to take a selfie and tweet this to their followers. In the following days, we had over 2 million likes and retweets with people trying to locate and buy the hats.

Tony Moorey Content Director Absolute radio UK

1)  If it isn’t broken, break it.  The PD would write the list of rules and for one day they changed them. The Breakfast host would play the cheesiest song possible (that was opposite to the rock music format). During the Olympics he played Spandau Ballet’s Gold 29 times for every UK Gold Medal.

2) #NowPlaying – communicate what our music mix is. We ran a one day competition asking listeners to tweet #NowPlaying artist on Absolute and we used listeners to communicate our music mix.

3) Don’t Just say it, prove it. – e.g.  No Repeat Workday, prove it with creative promos and link to editorial activity.

4) Rock off –  Artists compete against each other in a listeners vote. Reach out to fans of artists through their websites. Then give the night show to the artists who wins.

5) Love your loyal listeners  – keep exclusive content and contests just for them. Combine ad- server  technology with loyal fans for appropriate adds and special contests.

Dirk Anthony is at Radio Days Europe for Radio Today, Dirk is an internationally recognised radio consultant, and can be contacted here.

 

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