Brands, Guest posts

Listen are you gonna listen? by Glyn Britton from Albion

July 28th, 2008

Posted By admin

It’s an interesting branding challenge this one.

A name change usually signifies wanting to leave a product behind. Here we want to keep the spirit of the product the same, but have to change the name anyway. Tricky.

What it means is we really have to understand what it is that makes the radio station broadcast from One Golden Square great, and do our best to make sure that spirit is captured in the new name / logo / advertising. While, at the same time, demonstrating progress. Hmm.

Getting to that nuanced understanding in a really aggressive timescale means listening to some experts. By experts we mean staff, presenters, VIPs, listeners, and people we wish were listeners. The people who make the radio, those who listen to it most, and those who listen to it least.

First we listened to some ‘typical’ listeners (people who listen to Virgin Radio on FM, for a couple of hours a day, or in the background at the office). We went to Southgate and New Barnet in North London and Shirley in Birmingham.

Then we listened to some of the most loyal listeners – the VIPs. We’re hanging out on the forums, and we also met some face to face.

Here’s a photo of a group we did at out office. Half the people are VIPs and half are people who don’t listen. In the background you can just see my cobbled-together quiz show-style board of topics. I was trying to get them to debate and disagree with each other, so see what people were really passionate about. But they ended up violently agreeing on most things!

 

Here’s another group, this time of VIPs, non-listeners, and also a couple of members of the OGS crew who you might recognise – Anthony off the forums, and Andrew off the news. (I’ve not shown the faces of our VIPs or listeners, because we said we wouldn’t use them publicly, but I did want to show you how much fun we had!) We wondered what would happen if we put staff into a research group together with listeners. The answer was that they all got on very well and agreed on pretty much everything again.

 

Along the way we’ve talked to (and continue to talk to) loads of staff at One Golden Square too.  

And across all of these groups, we’ve heard some remarkably common themes:

  • The music. It’s about proper songwriting, performance, guitars, classics, done with passion… it’s hard to find one word to describe it (’rock’ is problematic) but everyone agrees what it is and that it’s important.
  • A less predictable, more distinctive playlist. This has already been well discussed on this blog.
  • A ‘2.0′ approach - whatever it is that’s going on here on this blog, with the public discussion of the takeover and transition. That openness feels very contemporary, but also very right for OGS, which already has an unusual level of connection with its customers.
  • The fun, irreverent attitude that exists within the building, but hasn’t leaked onto the air as much as everybody (listeners and staff) would like recently.
  • The connection people feel with expert, passionate, intelligent broadcasters – and how rare it is to find that these days outside of indie and dance radio.
  • And lots more besides…

Be assured we’re listening to all this intently, and it’s informing the product and brand decisions that are starting to take pace now.

If you have any other ideas / concerns to share, then feel free to do it in the comments here, or by emailing me on glynb at albionlondon.com (replacing the at with ‘@’) if you’d prefer to remain anonymous.

Glyn

7 Comments

  1. The thinker,
    July 28th, 2008 at 9:10 pm:

    I’m interested - so far not of your commercial people have posted on this blog.

    Clearly for the purchase to make sense they need to be on board. The audience and programmers seem keen - but what are the sales people saying?

    Maybe they can give us better ads?


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  2. Marty from new yawk,
    July 29th, 2008 at 4:20 am:

    As a listener, these are my concerns:

    1. Leave the presenters alone. I don’t want to see anyone get sacked. For that matter, leave all the personnel alone. If you must sack someone, do it now and don’t give people false hopes. You might find this hard to believe, but I’ve been sacked a few times myself.

    2. As someone who listens considerably more than the average listener (and possibly VR employee), the play list must be expanded. If it is not expanded, let the presenters play tracks that interest them. I can’t tell you how much it means to me when a presenter plays something different. As an aside, that Noah & the Whale song is really pissing me off.

    3. Why can’t a list of presenter birthdates be published on the website? You can leave out the year of birth as I think there is one that might have a year with a suffix BCE. Howabout a presenter lookalike contest of some sort, perhaps for Halloween? In this way, the presenters can connect more with the listeners.

    4. Take one day in the programme schedule, put the names of the presenters for a 24 hour period in a hat. Pull out names at random and reassign them starting with breakfast. Mix it up.

    5. Sort out the MW location on the dial. Yes, it’s 1215. Down the road it’s 1245. Somewhere else it’s 1265. This is a huge problem. You need one place on the dial. If you can’t readily fix it, then have people bring their radios to Virgin Radio in exchange for DABs generously provided by a sponsor. Then donate those radios to a charity.

    6. The Apple iphone is sold worldwide. How can you show the Apple people that there are people outside the UK listening? They s/pay a higher rate for a worldwide audience.

    7. I don’t care what u call the station. Nobody listens to a station because of it’s name. In the States there is Jack FM. How many thousands of dollars was spent for that? Maybe call it CAD radio (Clive, Adrian, Donnach, computer assisted design, cad- “triple entendre”). Spend your money on other things.

    Bottom line, more thinking outside the box is necessary. More pushing of the envelope is required. Take the shackles off the presenters. Who knows, perhaps the UK equivalent of Howard Stern will emerge?


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  3. Ashley Brown,
    July 29th, 2008 at 9:05 am:

    Single most entertaining feature on Virgin Radio - Geoff’s podcast party with Jonathan Coulton. And it all started when Geoff went off-playlist and played one of his songs. Yes, the playlist needs expanding (the music seems to have had more variety in the past week or so - co-incidence?) but going off-playlist is also a good thing.

    More please.


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  4. Rachel,
    July 29th, 2008 at 12:48 pm:

    In response to The Thinkers comment. What ads would you like to see on the site? We are always looking for new ways to integrate relevant brands on to the site so any ideas will be gratefully received!!


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  5. Niko,
    July 29th, 2008 at 3:12 pm:

    And, just to mention it, perhaps not just a wider playlist but a quicker refresh of the playlist? Some songs back there are so old, or at least have been played to death already, so regardless of whether it’s good, it just isn’t the one you’re expecting to hear.

    Again, did this make sense? It’s weird typing this at night…


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  6. David Wilding,
    July 30th, 2008 at 2:21 pm:

    Just wanted to wish you the best of luck with this project. In many ways a dream brief and one I’m sure you’ll have a lot of fun cracking.


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  7. Jonny Cockles,
    August 4th, 2008 at 7:47 pm:

    Is that Tom Whatsisface formerly of CanWest in the 2nd photo? Ye Gods!


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