Sometimes you stumble on something that catches your imagination and fills in some of the blanks.
That happened listening to Millie Riley a broadcast assistant who was talking on BBC Radio 5’s Review of 2013.
She was talking about how under 24-year-olds consume their radio and how their radio is online, face-to-face, shared… and on the radio.
It reminded me that you can learn things from people outside public relations and I was listening thinking of how this affected me in my job as local government public relations.
Listening to Millie talk about her radio was like listening to someone talk about a foreign country. But that’s fine. I’m not in that generation born post 1982 that are known as Millenials.
Just think of it all as content without boundaries.
As Millie says:
“It’s just to do with great content. Wherever there is great content we will be. The main understanding is that it can be funny, it can be news, it can be documentaries. We can put lots of different hats on. There’s a misunderstanding that we want really funny stuff or just music. Actually, we can do all sorts of things.
“As clichéd as it may sound, wherever there is great content that’s where we’ll be.
“They’re listening to the radio and they don’t even realise they’re listening to the radio. They’ll be listening to clips on the BBC website or whatever. They’ll suddenly realise: ‘oh, that’s radio.’ Everything out there is just an amalgamation. It’s just stuff to be interested and enjoy. It might be radio. They may not even realise it.
“We do have lots of options. But if you create content that’s multi-platform and multi-media and Radio One are really good at this. They’ll create a video and then they’ll talk about it on air and people will watch it online and they just bring the two together and I think that’s the way to do it.
“The more their content becomes ubiquitous and the more they become a name on YouTube and that’s the main platform that they’re using the more people will become connected to Radio One as a brand. They’ve definitely upped their game at the beginning and end as that tells them that it’s Radio One. They’re getting better at that.”
You can hear Millie’s contribution on Soundcloud too here…
https://soundcloud.com/millie-riley/millie-riley-bbc-5live-radio
So, that leads to this kind of content. A Muse track with a homemade video and 60,000 views.
So, what does that piece of radio advice mean for my corner of communications?
It made me think of something Julie Waddicor wrote on comms2point0 about making friends with creative people from colleges as part of a campaign. That makes sense. There may be some rough edges but you’ll get a different perspective.
By thinking of something more creative you may open the door to something like Melbourne Metro system’s ‘Dumb Ways To Die’ which saw a 21 per cent dip in track incursions and 67 million views on YouTube.
So, it begs the question, what are you doing to get a message to under 24s? And others?
Are you really sure that press release of yours is making it?
Or should there be different talents in the team too?
Picture credit