Monday, 16 December 2013

My latest keynote offering “Leading a high performance organisation in the 21st century
If it ain’t fun it ain’t happening…” has been very well received in the market place.
For more information please contact me at stanbkatz@gmail.com

Tuesday, 22 October 2013

          

 Mp3 killed the radio star


There is a worrying trend which could impact radio listening and, ultimately, radio advertising. My work involves quite a bit of travel in Africa, not least in taxis to and from airports. The first thing I do when I hear music in a taxi is ask what station they’re listening to. On three or four occasions I discovered that they weren’t listening to radio at all, but to MP3 players which they’ve generally loaded with over a thousand of their favourite songs. The more affluent music lovers, as we know, favour the iPod, which together with iTunes is one of Apple’s greatest triumphs. Apple is in the business of selling gadgets. Tens of millions of them. iTunes was a way to make it easy and cheap to buy music. Apple sold billions of songs at 99 cents each.

Mp3 players have been around for a long time. But in the midst of a technological revolution that’s causing seismic shifts, these little Mp3 players with huge capacity are relatively cheap.They plug conveniently into the vehicle’s cigarette lighter and play through the radio. These are not the latest model vehicles either. Ford’s interior designer, given the ubiquity of Mp3 is talking of not including CD players in their new models. We know that growing numbers of kids are getting their music from the internet and not from radio, or from that endangered species known as CD/DVD stores

It’s not the uptake of these gadgets that one finds worrying. What concerns me is the uptake by an older generation who spend long hours in their vehicles. They no longer find radio interesting or entertaining. The potential fallout from this is, as listenership declines, so will radio advertising.
Traditional radio needs to kick it up a notch if it wants to hold onto its audience.

Unlock Millions in Untapped Revenue
 

In a world first analysis of cross-agency data, new research from the UK Radio Advertising Bureau (RAB) reveals that brands using radio for their advertising get eight times the return on investment (ROI).

Data was collected from the world’s leading econometric specialists representing all of the major global media groups.

The study reveals that using radio can boost overall campaign ROI. Currently radio carries 6% of all advertising budgets, but if budgets were reallocated a 20% share of total – with no increase in in overall expenditure – the total ROI would rise by over 8%. For the top 100 radio advertisers, this is equivalent to 1.4 billion Pounds

The data also reveals an important finding about best practice in radio planning – campaigns which maximise weekly reach up to and beyond 40% (rather than optimising on frequency), deliver significantly stronger radio ROI. This suggests that coverage is the new touchstone for optimising radio effectiveness.

Simon Redicam, Managing Director of the RAB commented: “When Martin Sorrell calls econometrics the ‘Holy Grail’ of advertising, you can be sure agencies place high importance on it. With data sourced from all the world’s major agency groups the RAB analysis provides the most detailed and robust perspective on radio ROI in the world. We wouldn’t be surprised if the game-changing findings prompt Finance Directors to ask their marketing teams ‘Are we allocating at least 20% of our media budget to radio?’”                          

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