Boom Radio plans ‘more effort and money’ for marketing

Independent commercial radio station Boom Radio has launched its “largest-ever” campaign.

Founded in 2021, Boom Radio bills itself as “run by baby boomers for baby boomers”. It dedicated a budget of more than £500,000 for the campaign, which includes TV, OOH and social media activity.

The work will run for two months and includes the station’s first TV appearance on ITV1.

Analysis: ‘Money in the bank’

According to Phil Riley, Boom Radio’s CEO, even though the station had previously run promotional activity, the team decided it “wanted to put a bit more effort and money” into marketing this year.

He told The Media Leader: “We’ve been going a bit longer and we’ve got more money in the bank, and so those two things coalesced into: right, have we got a good creative idea to make a great TV ad? And have we got enough money to put behind it to make it into a decent campaign?

“We came to the conclusion at the back end of last year that we did have both of those things — and so we got on and did it.”

The company spent “most of Q1” working with creators on the new TV spot, with Medialab planning the campaign.

‘Heavyweight’ marketing

Riley added: “If we make a profit, we recycle it into marketing. That’s what we’ve been doing. That’s what we plan to continue to do. Our goal is to try to grow the audience because, in the end, the bigger the audience, the more revenue we take. So our goal is just to try and grow our audience as quickly and as hard as we can.”

In addition to ITV1, there will be activity on ITV3, Channel 5, Channel 4 digital stations, select music stations on satellite TV including Now 70s and some “more niche” satellite channels with heritage programming.

“That is pretty heavyweight for us, but it should deliver good audiences for us,” Riley explained.

For OOH, Boom Radio created 10-second carousel ads made “very similar to the TV ad” that will run across Ocean Outdoor’s digital estate in Birmingham, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Leeds, London and Manchester.

Meanwhile, social ads will appear on Facebook.

Riley said: “Everything at the moment is going well. We’ve just got to fight off the BBC, who want to launch a Boom challenger — but that’s another battle for another day.”

Real-life experience

The spot is based on a listener’s experience of a Beatles concert in Leeds in 1963.

The tagline is: “We’re here because you were there.” It was created by writer and creative director Graham Daldry, who came up with the well-recognised “Should’ve gone to Specsavers” line.

Boom Radio plays 1960s and 1970s classics serving an audience aged 55-plus and is available on DAB and online. There are also spin-off stations Boom Light and Boom Rock.

According to the latest Rajar figures, Boom Radio has 627,000 weekly listeners — an increase of 18.1% year on year.