As part of our training and development, the Curzon team recently stepped out of the office for a media and brand training day in London. Our first appointment was at Global Radio in Leicester Square which was organised by the lovely Heidi at Meerkat Works.
Understanding Radio
Global radio is now Europe’s largest radio company and home to the biggest names in the business. Their brands include Heart, Capital, Smooth, Classic FM, Radio X and LBC. These stations are broadcast to a staggering 25.4 million listeners every week and aired to every area and to every demographic you can imagine.
The tour began with a walk around the Global offices guided by Sarah, one of the Analysts at Global Radio. The offices were incredible and to be honest exactly what I expected them to be and more. They were like the ones you see in an American movie – huge TV screens on the walls, security key card passes to get through every door and a stunning rooftop terrace bar with breath-taking views of the city.
We were lucky enough to be shown almost all the studios in the building and even managed to see some of the presenters live on air. We were really surprised just how calm and friendly the presenters were as they waved across to us from the studio mid-show. It was also interesting to hear from Sarah that quite a few of the presenters actually produce their own shows.
We discovered that each studio was very different from the next and had its own unique branding and colour scheme. There were some very obvious differences between the stations. For example, Capital FM, known for offering a greater and wider variety of weekend and evening club music, is listened to by predominately females (59%) aged between 15-34. The branding had more of a younger appeal and felt quite urban and contemporary.
In comparison to this, Classic FM is predominately listened to by a mixed ABC1 audience of two core age groups – the 35-50-year olds and 50+. The branding shown was more refined and elegant.
The tour finished with a trip up to the Global Radio roof terrace where we took the time to take some group photos and enjoy the spectacular views of London.
Whilst in the area we also listened in on a phone call where we had the opportunity to hear potential radio scripts and were given a number of options for background music. We then had to discuss what we thought worked best and was on brand and then feedback to Heidi at Meerkat. The radio advert is to help promote Gressingham Duck’s new bistro range that has recently been launched in supermarkets. Be sure to listen to the new campaign, which will be advertised on Heart FM in London in Autumn.
Exploring Packaging Design at Wholefoods
After our tour around Global, we were all feeling rather peckish. The team all headed down to Wholefoods and enjoyed a delicious lunch from in-store café. Afterwards, we were given the task to pick out 2 products in the store that really stood out to us. The reasons these products were chosen were either because they were a new product, had an unusual/special packaging format, had a quirky flavour or just had super great branding.
These were the items we purchased from the shop. See the photo below.
Monty Bojangles – Incredible branding and design work by Springetts in London.
Tapped Birch Water – Unusual packaging format. The product uses natural colours, is made from birch water and the packaging is also recyclable.
What a melon – Really clever branding and packaging instantly tells you what the product is.
Boundless Nuts and Seeds – Cute pouches perfect for snacking or sharing. Similar packaging format to the larger sharing bags.
The World of Outdoor Media
Clear Channel UK is one of the world’s leading Out of Home media owners with more than 40,000 sites nationwide.
The young team were very friendly and professional and started off their pitch with a tour around the ‘playground’.
They showed us a variety of different out of home media options for Adshel bus shelters which used 6-sheets, billboards and digital screens. There are some examples below.
After this, they gave us a presentation on various projects they had worked on with some big brands including Walkers, Unilever, Lurpack, Coke and Cadbury’s.
Here are two projects that we absolutely loved from Clear Channel.
Walkers ‘Tweet to Eat’ PR Campaign
‘Tweet to Eat’ turned 3 bus shelters into crisp vending machines to excite 16-34-year olds about the return of the ‘Do us a Flavour’ promotion. This campaign was a really great way to get the nation talking about Walkers and eating unusually flavoured crisps.
Lurpack smell-o-vision Christmas Campaign
The smell-o-vision screens really let you smell the gingerbread. Amazing!
It works by continuously feeding odours from vaporising gel pellets into four air streams, one in each corner of the screen. These air streams are blown out parallel to the screen’s surface by fans and varying the strength and direction of them manoeuvres the scent to any given spot on the screen.
One of London’s most popular Indian restaurants!
After a busy media day in London, we finished the day with a delicious dinner at Dishoom in Kings Cross. We tried lots of different dishes from the menu which were all incredibly tasty. I would definitely recommend to anyone who is visiting the area to try it out! You won’t be disappointed.
