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Rivals in arms
06 September 2009
‘Challenging times make for interesting bedfellows." This was Willie O’Reilly’s explanation for why he, chairman of the Independent Broadcasters of Ireland group, was delivering a joint message with Clare Duignan, head of radio at RTE.
The two senior radio executives, who compete daily for dominance of the airwaves, came together last week to explain why they were both funding a campaign to demonstrate the power of radio - marking an industry first. The most tangible proof of their alliance will come on Wednesday, when 36 radio stations nationwide - from RTE Radio 1 to Today FM and Tipp FM- will all transmit the same 70-second advertisement for their own medium, just after 9am.
With everyone under pressure to win their share of a much-reduced pool of advertising revenue, it seems that, for once, public service and private sector radio stations have a great deal in common. Created by script writers at Cawley Nea/TBWA, with the support of Carat Ireland, the ad is designed to demonstrate how effective well-written radio campaigns can be. The ad paints a picture of an unusual individual - a seven-foot tall, 300-pound Pacific Islander raised in Ireland - in an effort to show radio’s ability to catch the imagination. The concept will attempt to maximise radio’s visibility at a time when advertisers and media buyers are allocating budgets for the last quarter of the year.
‘‘We wanted to remind buyers there were strong and attractive reasons to choose radio," said Duignan. ‘‘We wanted to come together and encourage people to consider the strength of this medium." O’Reilly added: ‘‘It’s almost like good housekeeping for us. It’s going back to remind ourselves what our offering is to advertisers and why we’re in this business in the first place.
‘‘The key ingredients are that radio is an easy medium to get into, it’s relatively inexpensive and it’s flexible, in terms of the messages you can get across and in terms of your own structures. You just don’t have big, upfront costs." Duignan said that radio was a perfect choice for straitened times because turnaround could be so rapid. ‘‘You can decide to do it on a Tuesday, and be on the air by Thursday with a new campaign. It’s a very, very fast medium."
Radio has, in fact, proved relatively resilient in the present downturn. Duignan and O’Reilly said that spend on radio dropped by about 25 per cent between May 2008 and May 2009, a relatively modest figure compared with what has happened in television. They agreed that there was no immediate reason to expect things to get worse. There has been an almost total collapse in motor industry and financial services advertising on radio, but this is already factored into the figures - and there has been some compensation for the industry in the shape of extra retail services advertising.
They also said their sponsorship and promotions business had been much less affected than air-time advertising. ‘‘The big challenge for all of us is the lack of visibility," said Duignan. ‘‘Everyone is hoping things will get better. But with people leaving decisions so late, it’s hard for us to tell." O’Reilly said: ‘‘Advertising is a barometer of the economy and, within that, I suppose, radio is doing well.But as shepherds of this industry, Clare and myself are saying that we don’t need to be complacent.
‘‘We need to be out there when Q4 spends are being decided. People can reflect for themselves on radio’s appropriateness for their own needs, but we need to be out there." Duignan and O’Reilly go back some way - they took part in an RTE radio production course at the same time, when they were starting out their careers. O’Reilly went on to produce the Gerry Ryan show, before moving on to Communicorp. Duignan, meanwhile, moved into RTE television, before coming back to radio in February.
Now Duignan has taken on the job of rescuing 2FM from what seems like terminal audience decline, largely due to tough competition from a growing number of popular local and regional youth radio stations. But she said she had nothing but ‘‘huge respect’’ for RTE’s competitors in the independent sector.
‘‘They have enriched the broadcast ing lands cape around the country with the range of radio stations we now have and the relationships they can bring to audiences," she said.
‘‘That’s a very good thing for radio and for media in general. Radio listenership at 86 per cent is a reflection of the range of radio that’s available from the public service to the commercial, and from the national to the local. The totality is a very good offering.
‘‘It is in RTE’s interest to have a strong, independent commercial sector.We compete healthily, but it keeps us on our toes and, overall, it makes the radio offering a richer one. And if that makes more people choose radio, if it makes more advertisers choose radio as a medium, it means we’re all laughing."
O’Reilly said that the independent sector ‘‘absolutely accepts the funding model that RTE has’’, but that ‘‘money is tight at the moment and we don’t want more people coming to eat our lunch’’.
The ‘Choose radio’ advertisements will run for two weeks on all stations
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