Ireland’s mainstream radio stations have a lot to say for themselves. But which contemporary sounds are painting the most distinct brand images? Regular Marketing.ie readers often ask what prompts the subject matter for the Stray Thoughts column. Sometimes the question is posed with a degree of natural curiosity and sometimes with a barely-concealed veneer of incredulity. Doesn’t matter which really; it’s the interest that’s important.
The answer is that inspiration comes from a myriad of sources, including my head, general and specific observations, magazine articles, industry seminars, occasional whistle-blowers – and gossip doing the rounds. By way of example, the lead in this issue stems from an article sent to me by the editor of Marketing.ie which ran in the Irish Independent’s new Insider magazine.
Seán Moncrieff of Newstalk speaks interestingly and honestly about 21st century man and his struggles with gender equality, social behaviour and an ongoing love of women’s boobs. We will return to Moncrieff’s philosophical musings later, but what stirred most interest was how the broadcaster and writer is impacting on the radio scene in which he is best known.
Is Moncrieff a maverick, or does his eclectic self-deprecating approach represent a challenging departure from the norm? Does his quizzical sense of radio style offer a hint as to the mind-sets of his listeners and, if so, should advertisers try to regularly replicate that tonal quality in all radio spots? In making these observations, it’s well to note that these are personal opinions.
They have no statistical validity, unless a lifetime of radio listening boosted by a professional interest in media provides authenticity of some form or fashion. These stray thoughts are my own, shared but not meant to hurt. Let’s start by looking at Irish radio’s icons.
For what seemed like decades, the defining sense of Irish radio was the sound of two RTE voices – the indomitable Gay Byrne and the combative Gerry Ryan. Both were Big Beasts in the Sound Jungle, Kings of the Mid-Morning, with a vast following of a predominantly female audience. The breakfast shows and the evening drive-times also pulled in the punters, but they relied on reporting stuff and occasionally breaking controversial news stories.
Gaybo and Gerry were different – they created the stuff of imagination, they talked of dreams and spoke of tragedy; they were a life within our lives. For their RTE employers and for advertisers and agencies, they were voices sent by the gods, delivering huge revenues as they captured adoring audiences. To get 30 seconds of words in edgeways into their conversations was a chance to talk to the real Ireland where real buying decisions were made.
And then Gaybo retired slowly and Gerry departed suddenly and a great void opened throughout the whole land. Pat Kenny ably filled one sector of the void, while Ryan Tubridy disappeared into the chasm of 2fm. People talked to Joe Duffy at enormous length but it was never quite the same. No one ever confided in Joe in the way seemingly-shy women complained to Gerry about the absence of orgasms on Saturday nights as only he could ask about “sinkin’ the salami”.
Seán Moncrieff is building up an audience on Newstalk on weekday afternoons. Perhaps it’s all part of Denis O’Brien’s master plan for the talk station, which sees retired rugby megastar Brian O’Driscoll join the Off the Ball team in September. But the Newstalk schedule is heavily male-dominated and could do with the likes of RTE presenter Claire Byrne for more gender balance.
IS SOMETHING STIRRING?
But now something is perhaps stirring in radio land. Worryingly for RTE, the greener sound-shoots do not appear to be emanating from leafy Montrose. Scheduling an RTE 1 morning consists of mostly wall-to-wall politics, often of the petty variety. Apart from a short sharp shock of sunniness from John Murray, the station output meanders from early breakfast to late lunch via a miasma of middle-aged men discussing the minutiae of life in Leinster House.
The dividing line between news/current affairs and entertainment content focused on the comings and goings of a world beyond the Dáil becomes blurred to the point of indistinctness. Seán O’Rourke is good but fails to tickle our emotional hotspots. He’s expert on current affairs, on the ball with sport, but a trifle lacking in soul elsewhere. O’Rourke reports facts. He’s not a presenter of thoughts and one expects his audience will slowly shrink with time and through age.
Over on 2fm, the talented Tubridy has morphed from the cocky boy-wonder into a latter-day version of Oisin I nDiadh Na Feinne. He seems out of time and out of place as he seeks to interject an artificial robustness into his natural laid-back demeanour. Tubs is the elder filling in the 2fm sandwich, trapped in an aural sliced pan of what used to be called youth programming. One doesn’t need research to intuitively suspect that the ‘yoof’ are not impressed. It’s clear to hear desperation in the voices of the wacky presenters helicoptered in from Telly Republic to replace Hector’s rural hectoring. Stop pretending to sound as if you’re having off-the-cuff fun guys; it’s the seventh circle of hell in that studio and we know that you know it.
SOUND BRANDING
Newstalk, on the other hand, appears to be getting its broadcasting act together. Supported by a pull-no-punches marketing exhortation to ‘Move the Dial’ (everyone knows from where), the station has made the editorial decision to allow its collective of idiosyncratic presenters their heads. It’s mostly man-stuff admittedly, delivered in a macho kind of way with the notable absence of any primetime female voices. RTE Radio 1 scores far higher here with its three M&M’s – Mary (Wilson), Miriam (O’Callaghan) and Marian (Finucane).
Perhaps, Newstalk should consider another spot of celebrity poaching by waving an attractive cheque book and a primetime slot in the direction of Keelin Shanley? Gender equality aside, from Ivan Yates in the morning through to George Hook in the evening – and with Kenny showing a new lease of life in his reincarnation as a brighter version of his former RTE self – Newstalk delivers a miscellany of opinion, bravado and bluster that ranges from the liberal to the crusty but comes across as personal and pluralistic instead of corporate and considered.
Each radio man is a brand within an overall brand framework, and the strategy seems to be working. The marketing and the medium are combining to deliver many sound motifs, but one strong message. RTE’s decision not to entertain the NT ads just heightened the impact.
COMETH THE HOUR
After the midday news, comes what may well be the jewel in the Newstalk pantheon of presenters; Sean Moncrieff. Moncrieff is 21st Century Man, par excellence. He is androgynous in thought; he gets it, whatever the ‘it’ may be. He enjoys the company of women and is never nerved by them. His guests are rarely culled from the usual suspects; his interviewing style is sometimes slightly sly in that he surprises them by proving more expert or thoughtful.
When people say “that’s a very good question” to Moncrieff, it’s not the rehearsed stick of the practised politician avoiding stuff he doesn’t want to talk about; it’s far more likely to be that the interviewee is cursing him or herself for not thinking of the presenter’s perspective in the first place. It appears that the Moncrieff Show is steadily adding listeners to what must have at first appeared to be something of a graveyard slot, but if listeners are migrating from moaning about life on Livewhine to celebrating its eccentricities that can’t be a bad thing for society in general.
In the article that led to these ruminations, Moncrieff discusses how the brand of feminism has suffered from the over-application of a harsh political correctness that “scares off many women and secretly terrifies and confuses many men”. He has a bad word too for marketers, berating us for co-opting feminism for commercial gain by jamming up the media with ads exhorting women to be individual, brave and different, mostly by buying stuff which millions of other women have already fallen for head first. He also takes a dig at the avalanche of ads “depicting men as boob-staring idiots” while simultaneously confessing to his own mammary fascination.
Aeons ago, a media guru by the name of Marshall McLuhan shrewdly observed that the medium was the message. As Neville Brody pointed out at this year’s Offset gathering, that truism has now been subverted to the point where the message has become the medium.
Moncrieff is on the way to becoming that messenger.
CREATIVITY ADDS VALUE
Su Duff of the Association of Advertisers in Ireland (AAI) invited yours truly to chair a breakfast Toolkit session on the theme of Creativity Delivering a Return on Investment. ROI rarely provoked water-cooler discussions during my days as CDP creative director, but presumably challenging times are changing things. Making profit from creative excellence is a position that’s often difficult to validate but the assembled speakers did so handsomely.
Dylan Cotter of Irish International, Dynamo’s Jamie Helly and Sarah Clohessy of Wide Eye Media combined to present a strong, cohesive and well-argued case. There was none of the hyperbole one often associates with such a topic; each speaker had clearly gone to the trouble of developing a once-off personalised response to the subject.
There was no off-the-shelf stuff; it was all creative, not all new, but all interesting, authentic and honest. Everyone involved in the marketing mix has an obligation to be party to the creative process; it is an intrinsic part of the marketing DNA. All in all it was a good morning’s work.
WHO SAID IT FIRST?
It’s encouraging to see the odd crane or two poking its nervous nose back into the urban skyline as the construction industry stutters back to life. Down Dublin 4 way, two building contractors have proudly emblazoned their protective hoardings with slogans telling the wide world of their undoubted merits. Sisk claims to be ‘Building Excellence’ while almost across the road Collen equally claims to be… ‘Building Excellence’, but adding ‘since 1870’ to presumably differentiate itself from its upstart competitor. Sticks and stones (and bricks) may break my bones, but words… Now, what is it exactly they say about words?
