With the Marketing the Marketers series, New Digital Age talks to the marketing and comms leaders behind the success of our leading companies. Next up is Steve McGoldrick, Head of Marketing at Radiocentre, the industry body for commercial radio in the UK…
What exactly does your job entail?
At Radiocentre we work on behalf of the UK’s commercial radio sector to challenge people – at advertisers and agencies in particular – to see radio differently. That’s our mission statement, which I love, because what we do is all about challenging misperceptions about the medium and the wider audio sector. It’s also a call to action for advertisers to be more ambitious with audio.
We have an amazing insight team who produce heaps of evidence on audio effectiveness. It’s well known that it offers reach (commercial radio alone reaches 40m people a week), but they dig deeper into the reasons why audio has been shown to work so well for brands, whether they’re driving sales or building a brand that lasts.
It’s my job then to promote the research and to inspire our audiences, banging the drum for best practice media planning and creative. How do we do that? Everything from ad campaigns, events and partnerships to digital tools and training programmes. I love that no day is the same, and despite working for a small organisation we get to work with some of the best and brightest talent in the industry, both on- and off-air.
What campaign or piece of marketing/communications are you most proud of in your career and why?
Advertising Amplified – our latest campaign, voiced by Diane Morgan of Philomena Cunk fame. We have plenty of data showing the different ways radio can amplify ad campaigns, from driving web traffic to uplifting the performance of other channels and improving overall ROI. But we needed to communicate these messages in an engaging, memorable, right-brain way, which we know does much more in driving memorability and emotion than focusing too much on the figures.
Working with Radioville on the audio, we took a humorous approach, aided by Diane’s classic deadpan delivery, and I think the campaign feels light-hearted, natural and works for everyday listeners as much as media decisionmakers. Also, Diane was hilarious in the studio, and it was an honour to meet her dog Bob.
Who has been your biggest inspiration in your career to date and why?
I can’t honestly say anyone other than my manager Lucy Barrett, our Client Director. As an ex-journalist she has an amazing editorial instinct. She works tirelessly on behalf of our members. And she’s kind, surely one of the most important leadership characteristics, plus so much fun to work with.
What is the biggest challenge in your sector and how is your company helping to address it?
A lot of the people we speak to, especially when they work for agencies or exist in the London or Manchester bubbles, don’t share the same media habits as most Brits. They’re often surprised to hear how much radio audiences have grown in recent years. So, there’s a big education piece there.
We’re also working hard to make sure that radio and audio remain front of mind in the era of big tech. Some of this is about challenging the last-click attribution mindset, showing the power audio has to drive online response.
What is the biggest opportunity in your sector and how is your company helping to make the most of it?
Audio is booming and within that radio is going from strength to strength. But its right to acknowledge that there’s loads of excitement around digital audio. Podcast audiences are growing steadily, offering more opportunity than ever. We now look at audio as a real multi-platform offer, each part of audio working complimentarily, and digital is helping with both targeting and measurement. Partnerships are also another great opportunity – the sector has gotten better at working collaboratively and innovatively with brands, and podcasts are learning a lot from radio on this.
How important, and why, are the following in helping you promote your own company:
The press
Trade press is extremely important for us to reach as many advertisers and agencies as possible. I think we’re lucky to work in a sector where our audience is generally pretty switched on and plugged in. We’re aware of the growing importance of earned coverage in the LLM era too.
Events
Events are a fundamental part of our outreach strategy. We run our own conference series Tuning In, and we work closely with other media companies to get our messages out there to a wider audience. One of the great things about events is the long tail of content that follows, from Linkedin engagement to write ups.
Your company’s owned media
For such a small team, we produce a lot of content. As the ultimate destination to read our research, use our planning and creative tools and find out our latest news, our website will be key for us for the foreseeable. Our newsletters are popular, and we have an active user base. Linkedin now seems to be the main game in town now on socials, and we use Youtube a lot to share videos but we’re always looking at other platforms to spread the word.
