Heat Radio To Relaunch With Integrated Advertising
Emap is to relaunch Heat Radio with a celebrity news format and sponsorship, promotions and ad-funded programming in place of spot advertising.
The national digital station, which is currently an automated jukebox, will be relaunched at the end of September with an “exclusive club” of five clients whose advertising will be worked into the station’s content.
Traditional day-part presenting is also being scrapped in favour of more flexible editorial-led content aligned to Heat magazine and Heatworld.com (see Heat Gets Online Presence).
The station will be predominantly music-based, but will include breaking celebrity news, user-generated content such as listener reports of celebrity sightings and celebrity takeover shows.
Andria Vidler, managing director of Magic 105.4, is leading the relaunch with Heat editor Mark Frith “intrinsically involved”.
“We have stopped thinking in terms of siloed radio brands and more in terms of 360 degree brand relationships,” said Vidler.
“Traditional spot advertising and rigid dayparting are dead for Heat radio.”
Heat radio will be the first in a number of branded Emap lifestyle radio stations, followed by Closer Radio, an extension of Emap’s woman’s weekly Closer magazine, which will launch on the second national digital multiplex next year (see Channel 4 Consortium Wins Radio Multiplex Licence).
Karen Stacey, Emap Advertising’s director of interactive and radio sales, said: “Historically we have not differentiated between our magazine branded radio stations and have sold them collectively as ‘digital radio’ alongside our analogue heritage stations.
“This has meant selling by platform rather than creating demand around a brand with multiple touchpoints.
“As advertisers try to connect with their consumers at a deeper level it will become increasingly more important to innovate in product and content, delivering opportunities for advertisers to build loyalty and trust.
“With Heat radio, we will be delivering Heat in a more holistic brand-led way, giving advertisers the opportunity to build deeper relationships with greater cut-through.”
A new hi-tech radio studio is being built within “heat towers” to enable the magazine’s journalists to work cloesly with Emap’s radio experts via “creative content hubs”.
The latest RAJARs, for Q1 2007, showed Heat’s radio offering to be up 0.9% year on year in its weekly reach, but down almost 9% quarter on quarter at 224,000 listeners (see Radio 2 Boosts Weekly Reach To Over 13 Million).
Emap: 01733 568 900 www.emap.co.uk