Opinion
Strategy verdict: Sponsorship of GCap digital station Chill
12.09.2006Jonathan Barrowman, Head of Radio The empowerment of listeners is an essential evolutionary step for radio to engage with YouTube culture, and digital music station Chill has its barometer set perfectly.
A broadcast version of narrowcast services such as pandora.com, it allows listeners to customise playlists. Routed in the myspace world, Chill facilitates a platform for people to truly express themselves with their own content on the newly created “O2 Chillout Room” which wholeheartedly embraces consumer demand to design and personalise media.
The daily evening show gives listeners the chance to select, play and narrate their favourite chill-out tracks. It also demonstrates how to tread the fine line between giving listeners what they want and making the property commercially viable.
Critically, the brand fit is right. Chill’s music format is calm and cool whilst O2’s brand image has a tranquil, relaxing tone to it. Think floating bubbles - and you can see it works.
The issue from a communication point of view is the sponsorship idents are short and subtle so they – quite rightly – don’t jar with the relaxing listener experience. After all, it’s their show and it’s certainly not an environment to weave in call-to-action messages or expect high levels of WAP traffic.
If the objective is purely about subtle brand association then any evaluation of whether it shifted brand consideration could be very subjective. But either way, you’ve got to applaud the courage to test new areas and push the boundaries and O2’s Chillout Room illustrates why radio has such a strong role to play in this new space.
The Listener’s 6 Mix from BBC 6 Music launched 10th September and 4Radio is also inviting listener participation. It’s an exciting prospect and will be a lot of fun. Imagine a station letting user generated content like www.myspace.com/johnmeesings go to air. I can’t wait.
Rating 4 out of 5
