So, Barack Obama won. Yay democracy! Hoorah for change! Yippie kay ay for a president not named after a shrubbery! It has been interesting to see how he has done it. This week as we start our first OPEN MIC session where we ask the community what we have done well and what we can do better.

Although it may seem like a small thing, items like the Obama iPhone app that went through your address book so you could phone anyone who wasn’t already pledging their support for Obama, and keeping donation lines, news, video and events all in one place help to organise grassroots support in an easy, entertaining and modern way.

The links between the US presidential race and our radio station don’t seem to be that obvious and one might even laugh at my audacity of drawing any comparisons, but hey. But in the end both a presidential candidate and a radio station are trying to get the same thing – public support. Obama got it through votes, and at Absolute Radio– we get it through listeners, and not only by keeping the ‘voters’ we have – our core listeners, but by getting the ‘floating voters’ who haven’t committed to a radio station yet, converting supporters who are getting tired of the radio station they used to be loyal to – and even persuading people who never ‘vote’ to start voting – by listening to the radio.

So, what did Obama, a 47 year old first term senator, do to become president? His message was clear – one of change. He and his team projected that the political system in the US had become stagnant and needed changing. In many ways, UK radio has become stagnant too – there hasn’t been a big shake up in radio since Radio Caroline illegally broadcast from international waters in the 60’s – some stations have become predictable and stale – and with modern technology, people don’t have to settle for what large organisations decide they should listen to – and Absolute Radio believes we can change the way that commercial radio is structured in the UK, and we would like to set the benchmarks for how other radio stations should behave – as Obama has done in the US.

Barack also spent a lot of time listening to what the people of America wanted. With our playlist sessions and open forums like this one, Absolute is doing more than any other radio station to try and listen to the people who are listening to it. Just as Obama’s message has been clear and simple, ours is too – we’re putting the listener first. By making a station that works for our audience and users, we’ll get loyal listeners – and if we have brand loyalists – they will get their friends to become listeners as well, who in time will become loyal listeners, and in time will convert others. More important than any adverts that we could buy, more important that the $2 million half hour advert Obama ran is the groundswell support of a loyal public base. So the most important thing for Absolute Radio is you, the person that listens to us – we need you to tell us what we can do to improve the station, and tell others to listen. With the best station, and the most listeners, then the industry can change, and people can get what they want from a radio station, not just what people think they need. The more listeners that Absolute Radio has, the more chance there is that the industry and the world will sit up and listen.

At Absolute Radio, we want to change the nature of commercial radio. We want people to listen to Absolute Radio on DAB in car. We want to have the most highly regarded line-up of presenters on any radio station. We want to be regarded as funny, relevant and up to date. We want to embrace new technology. We want to pay attention to detail, not forgetting the little things when we change the big ones. We want to create a sense of shared involvement so that people listening think of this as their radio station. We want those people to become ambassadors for Absolute Radio. And we want world domination and a billion dollars.

OK, everything apart from the last two.

Perhaps it’s just the election, but Absolute Radio does seem to me more than a business. Like Barack, we’re the ‘new kids on the block’, the upstarts fighting against the establishment. We have something to prove – that commercial radio can be a great medium again. It needs a fresh approach – which we think we have. It also needs support – which you can provide.

I was recently sent this file by David Wilding from Mindshare with the title ‘what can brands learn from Obama’ I think it makes fascinating reading. Just like the people who have voted for Obama, and are hoping that he can live up to his promises, all we can say is listen to us, and we promise that we will do all we can to live up to ours.