A feature of the renewed interest in radio today, is that more advertisers are tailoring their radio messaging to specific communities than ever before. Radio is no longer being motivated onto media schedules as a trickle-down tactic to make up the flagging audience numbers on TV: although it can certainly do that.
Radio is being strategically integrated into holistic advertising campaigns as a trickle-up activation tool for building community engagement.
We know from Edelman Trust Barometer insights over the past 20 years that the closer the medium to the community it serves, the higher the levels of trust. And the higher the level of trust, the higher the level of ad-response.
No medium in South Africa is trusted more than community-centred radio.
How should we respond to this as advertisers?
As we move into the era of agile media insights, we should remind ourselves that the absence of new audience data should never be an excuse for strategic inertia. If there’s no new data, then we can always interrogate the old data from a different perspective.
It’s vital that we rethink traditional geo-segmentation in South Africa. A radio station footprint is not restricted by the town in which it locates its studio, or the geo-political boundaries on a political map of South Africa.
For instance we often think of Algoa FM as an “Eastern Cape station” and yet it has 12% of its listeners in the Western Cape’s Garden Route. Radio listeners in the Garden Route have a higher listenership affinity to Algoa FM (Index 1057: BRC RAM 2023D) than a full basket of the Top 4 Western Cape regional radio stations.
Algoa FM is talking to an economically active regional community called The Cape Coast. Living, working and travelling between East London and Gqeberha, to George and even the City of Cape Town.
We often think about OFM as a “Free State station” and yet only 37% of the listeners to OFM are found in the Free State.
What binds radio listeners into a community is not geography but the station itself. It’s the station that reinforces cultural and commercial bonds. Listeners who often don’t recognise themselves collectively in terms of demographics, begin to recognise themselves in terms of shared language and lifestyle. In terms of shared concerns about service delivery and commercial realities, like good rains and a good harvest.
For instance, the Sedibeng district lies within the political boundaries of Gauteng. But its economic affiliation is far more aligned to the Agri-economy of Central South Africa. Radio listeners in Sedibeng have a higher listenership affinity to OFM (Index 218: BRC RAM 2023D) than a full basket of the Top 7 Gauteng regional radio stations.
The combined monthly household spending power of The Cape Coast and Central South Africa is almost 5 times bigger than the Greater Durban Pietermaritzburg conurbation.
Great theory you might say, but where do we find them in the BRC databases?
One of the most under-utilised lenses for re-evaluating the contribution of regional radio is utilising, not just the metropolitan areas, but also the Stats SA Category C district municipalities which are already reported in existing BRC databases.
By grouping together the core listening districts for each station, we can create “station listening zones” which are far more representative of the actual listenership footprint to any station.
This week both Nielsen and TelmarHelixa will release a data over-code which will be reflected as Algoa Cape Coast and OFM Central South Africa under Demographics in the District or Metropolitan Municipality dropdown tab in the available BRC RAM Amplify database.
There’s no such thing as boring media research. Only boring media insights.
– Gordon Muller, The Media Coach
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