Shell Like

Woolies going to the wall, MFI collapsing like a badly constructed flat-pack chest of drawers. The next big name on the high-street or retail park to bite the dust is anybody’s guess.

I don’t pretend to have all the answers, but Woolies missed a trick in trying to beat Tesco at selling cheap toasters, DVDs and games, instead of concentrating on what it did best. Namely the Pick’n'mix and spectacularly surly assistants.

Seriously though, as company’s fold, then so do potential clients for us, and that is worrying. The less players there are in the market then the less accounts there are for us to work on. As any biologist will tell you, diversity is the key to allowing life on earth to adapt and prosper. That is why we have a competition commission.

But as companies go then new ones will come along to replace them. They may not be on the high-street in the same way as before but the new guys will still need to differentiate themselves from the competition in some way. Advertising is one way of doing this and radio should be part of that. In fact, when you think about it, if everyone else is fighting to catch people’s eyes as they are surfing the web (surely there must be a better name for this activity now?) then why not go for their ears instead?

I was talking to a mate the other day, and he said he was annoyed to have missed Ian Hislop’s BBC4 programme about Dr Beeching. He said that he had seen a trailer for it, and had meant to watch it, but had forgotten it was on.

Aside from the fact that he can watch it again on i-player, it got me thinking about tagging. Very few of us have time to read through the schedules and set our PVRs or SKY+ to record what we’d like to watch later.

Some EPGs from SKY and Virgin Media in particular have a reminder button, but that only pops up when you are watching TV to remind you to switch over. Surely a good idea would be that every trailer has a ‘red button’ function embedded in it to automatically set your PVR, or at the very least a schedule reminder, when you actually happen to catch the trailer. That way if you happen to catch a trailer for something, but are just on your way out to Salsa class (we know who you are) you can just touch a button once and it’s all sorted for you.

The same goes for radio too. Radio manufacturer PURE recently launched a DAB set called FLOW that apart from loads of really cool functions, also apparently supports tagging. It means that the set itself has a button/function on it, which the listener is able to press whenever they hear something that piques their interest and that they want to come back to later. This has massive potential for advertisers. Offers and details can be picked up later by listeners. Money-off vouchers too.

This could also mean that (in an ideal world) the dreaded T&Cs could be read later along with any additional info about prices and stockists etc. It could be made compulsory to include them. This would mean more time in the 30″ slot for the creative bit (excellent!), but perhaps a dip in gigs for those clever fast-talking T&Cs (which is all done by time-compression now anyway!). Clip here is from Jonathan Kydd - if you need to book him then speak to Another Tongue and tell them I sent you.

Just been reading in Marketing about an expected double digit fall in circulation for weekly celebrity magazines. Heat, Reveal, Closer etc. The article didn’t say why this fall might be happening. There’s the obvious competition from the freesheets and internet, but it strikes me that as the effects of the credit crunch ripple through the UK economy and we all begin to tighten our belts, the ‘Sleb’ press will be hit in two ways. Firstly, the obvious fact that spending on non-essential purchases will drop (whether your weekly dose of Pete’N'Katie Inc., or BB slanging match-ups is essential or not I’ll leave up to you to decide). Secondly, if we are all being asked to avoid conspicuous consumption, are we going to want to read stories of celebrity excess anymore? In a way I hope not, but you could argue that it’s always been the ‘Have-nots’ that want to read about the ‘Haves’. So if there’s more of us who ‘have not’ then sales should be rising. Its an interesting paradox. Meanwhile, why not try Heat radio instead? Its much the same heady mixture, won’t take up as much room in your handbag, and it carries advertising too apparently… - Mike

You know when you have one of those brilliant moments of clarity and a really excellent idea rears its head? Ideas that are simply perfect, so perfect in fact that you say to yourself ‘ surely somebody must have thought of this before? ‘ Well imagine how the guys that came up with this must have felt -

Apologies if this is old news to any of you. Thanks to Sparky for sending me the link - Mike

Virgin Radio was bought out recently, by Bennett, Coleman & Co, owner of Times of India newspaper, and Absolute Radio. But the Virgin name will not be part of the sale as the tidy-bearded Mr. Branson objected to it due to Virgin’s other interests in India. Full story here.

So thirty million dollars will be invested in renaming. Which made me think about station names in general. UK station names appear to derive from local rivers - Trent, Clyde, Forth etc. with Ocean FM taking it a bit too far, and River FM a bit literally; from the music they play - Rock, Smooth, Classic; or their broadcast frequency - 2Ten, Ten17, and perhaps even Signal 1 & 2.

Certain fauna are a big fave, presumably ones that have some significance to the broadcast area - Bee, Eagle, Fox, Kestrel, and Bear. Then you have the ‘picked it out of a hat’ examples - Delta, Dune, Fire, Home, Oak, Pirate, and The Edge (wonder if they play a lot of U2?).

Two that I have absolutely no idea about are Lantern FM and Ivel FM. But then they both hail from the west country, which has a long history of bonkers names, as the residents of Piddletrenthide and Affpuddle will testify.

Whatever they come up with, expect the new name for Virgin to end with a dot com. This will be done to highlight the multi-platform aspects of the station and its output in the modern media landscape, or to save on printing costs.

Ever wondered why US radio stations all begin with K or W? No? Well it’s the kind of thing that keeps radio geeks like us up all night. Way too much information about it can be found here.
- Mike

A new Sony TV ad is about to break with lots of foam floating around Miami. Which, apart from reminding me of some night club visits that I’d rather forget, is beautifully shot and has a really ‘nice’ feel about it.

Now, you may have thought Cadbury’s ‘Trucks’ was more ‘Grease 2′ than ‘Godfather 2′ in terms of sequels, but how can the current trends in TV be reflected (i.e. effectively ripped-off) on radio? It would be a brave man to try and make a radio commercial entirely of cake, but my recommendations would be: -

• Pacing. All the TV examples that I’ve mentioned are slooow. This may be a clever tactic to combat PVR proliferation, but in radio terms ‘slow-ness’ makes your commercial stand out amongst the wall-to-wall shouty-voice dross, and it means clear communication. If your script contains dialogue, time allowed for pauses and reactions will really help with the believability and comedy (if there is any). Try and push for the longest slot you can get, and if you only have 30” don’t put more than 90 words in it and leave a decent amount of time for sound effects.

• Music. All the TV examples use music to up the cool factor. Pop music can be expensive for radio, so go for composed. There are loads of young composers spewing out of music tech courses who would jump at the chance to write for you. Also studio engineers are often closet composers. They might have a track in their drawers that’s right for you. Ask.

• Brand Vs Offer/Promotional. The cooler TV spots never scream offers, indeed sometimes it’s hard to tell what the product is, but if you think radio is just for price / sales promotion because its quick to turn around, that’s a misconception. It’s an undoubted strength, but Brand ads can work just as well as on radio. A cool piece of content is something people will want to talk about and share, no matter what the format.

Cheers! - Mike

…is something we pride ourselves on here at Shell Like. I mean there’s just not enough of it going around these days. Look at this, taken this very morning up TCR on my walk in. Its probably the result of the road painter not actually being English (can’t you just hear the Daily Mail readers sharpening their quills?) but its indicative of a malaise in today’s society. Much of what’s produced (not just in our industry I hasten to add) is bodged together in a ‘oh that’ll do…’ type way. Now - I’m not suggesting a magical return to halcyon days when cute bunny rabbits frolicked across Haywain-like fields and all was right in the world. Imagine if you will, everyone making a personal note to take just a little bit more time to check those fine details and add a little finesse to the things they make and do, then we would all benefit as a result. Be the ball! Make it work Charlie! The campaign starts here people! - Mike