Charmingly silly: Mark Barber on 25 years making the case for radio
The Media Leader Interview
One thing I’m sure we’d all love to say about our lives is that we get to do a job we love for as long as we can.
For Mark Barber, planning director at Radiocentre, he seems to have managed just that. And now, after 25 years in the role, he is preparing to step down.
Barber joined the Radio Advertising Bureau, later incorporated into Radiocentre, in 2001, having previously worked as a strategic planner across a range of media agencies. Over the past two and a half decades, he has helped develop much of Radiocentre’s award-winning research, making the case for radio’s effectiveness and its place in the media mix.
His advertising expertise runs deep and his passion for radio is palpable; alongside missing the “brilliant, funny, clever” people that he works with, Barber says he will miss “the idea of representing a medium”.
His work has included research projects such as Radioguage, ROI Multiplier, Generation Audio, Re-evaluating Media and High Gain Audio, and he has presented these studies to audiences worldwide.
One particularly memorable moment came following the release of the 2011 study Radio: The Emotional Multiplier, which examined the emotional impact of radio compared with other media and led to interviews with Victoria Derbyshire on BBC Radio 5 Live and Vanessa Feltz on BBC Radio London.
“I think I’m proud of being able to get a sense of how our work has had a positive impact on ad revenue,” he says. “There’s always more work to be done. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complacent. But it’s nice to be able to say, I think the stuff that we’ve done has made a bit of a difference to the industry.”
“I guess I also better say being awarded the MBE in 2015 was nice,” he adds.
Barber admitted to having reservations about accepting the honour, as it didn’t align with his views. However, once he had decided to accept it, he was touched by the positive feedback he received from across the industry.
So, why leave now? After 44 years working full-time in advertising, Barber says he has started to feel its effects. Over the past six months, he has increasingly felt compelled to spend more time investing in his interests outside of work.
He does not intend to disconnect from the media world completely, but running, playing guitar, and making music are among the pursuits he looks forward to spending more time on.
How radio has changed
Reflecting on his career, Barber acknowledges that while the way audiences consume audio has transformed, the core proposition of radio has remained remarkably consistent.
“The whole medium is designed and built around the listeners and continues to be so,” he says, pointing to the flow of music, entertainment and connection that broadcasters build around listeners’ needs and moods throughout the day.
Technology, however, has fundamentally changed how audiences access that content. When Barber joined Radiocentre in 2001, radio listening was predominantly analogue. Since then, digital listening has grown, on-demand audio has expanded, and podcasts have become an established part of the landscape.
Commercial broadcasters have embraced these developments, Barber notes, including through digital audio advertising platforms such as DAX and AudioXi. Barber believes the ability to offer more targeted advertising has appealed to advertisers and helped bring new ones into the medium.
For him, the opportunity now lies in multi-platform audio: combining the reach of broadcast radio with the added targeting and flexibility of digital listening and podcasts.
Broadcasters increasingly offer advertisers the ability to plan across these formats, and Barber expects this growth in commercial multi-platform audio to continue over the coming decade, with broadcast remaining relatively steady while digital drives expansion.
He is particularly convinced by the proposition because he has spent much of his career looking at radio from the perspective of a sceptical media planner.
“A lot of my job I’ve spent thinking: when I was agency side, how would I have tried to undermine this argument? How would I have pulled this apart? How would I have challenged this claim?”
With multi-platform audio, he believes the evidence is there.
“There is substance to the case, which is broadcast gives you the mass reach, but you can then enhance and build on top of that to fine-tune and maybe direct a proportion of your budget to do a specific task within that. So you’re getting the best of both worlds: long-term and shorter-term impact.”
Radio: a missed opportunity?
Having spent much of his career researching radio’s effectiveness, Barber has a clear recommendation for advertisers: give the medium a greater share of the media budget.
“If you are using a little bit of radio, increase radio share of your total media budget, because that’s going to increase your campaign returns,” he says.
“In some ways, I get frustrated that it isn’t happening.”
Barber describes increasing radio investment as a “relatively risk-free approach”, arguing that advertisers do not necessarily need to commit a large budget to test its contribution to a campaign.
“Keep testing and learning and refining all the time. It really is a missed opportunity for so many advertisers.”
His argument is that radio should not be viewed in isolation, but as part of a wider media plan in which broadcast reach can be complemented by other audio formats to support different campaign objectives.
Audio drives profit and trust when included in marketing mix, global study finds
Career hurdles
Barber’s time at Radiocentre has not been without its challenges. He recalls the development of ROI Multiplier as a particularly demanding project, taking almost a year to obtain the detailed media delivery data and effects outputs required from agencies.
The process involved extensive negotiation, but the experience reinforced his belief that meaningful research is worth the challenge.
“Nothing good comes easy,” he says. “I think if you really want something that’s going to cut through and make a big difference, it isn’t going to be easy.”
As he prepares to leave, Barber hopes the industry will keep working to win back a more appropriate share of advertising spend from pure-play digital platforms.
He explains that ten years ago, multi-platform media like radio, TV, news and magazine brands, and out-of-home represented about 50% of total ad spend. Last year, he says, they represented 20%.
“Now, admittedly, ad spend has more or less doubled in that time, and we’ve got a lot of small businesses coming in that are funnelling money into social and search for understandable reasons. It’s like the first step on the ladder,” he says.
“But at the same time, there’s clearly been a shift within bigger national advertisers to shift more money into pure-play digital platforms, and I’m not sure there’s always the evidence to back that up.”
Reallocating search and social budget into audio could add £1m to profit, Radiocentre research finds
Charming, silly and effective
Barber’s passion for radio isn’t confined to his work, and he recalls how his own listening habits have evolved over the years.
In the early 1980s, he would wake up to Chris Tarrant on Capital, remembering the presenter’s energetic and humorous style as the ideal start to a cold winter’s day before setting out on the morning commute.
These days, he starts the morning with Classic FM – “it eases me into the day” – and often listens to Classic Calm while working from home.
Among his favourite radio campaigns are Codacolour Gold’s “Symphony”, featuring Jimmy Nail, and a British Airways advert built around piano and sitar music.
He praises how both use audio creatively to communicate a proposition, drawing listeners in and letting them make connections themselves rather than spelling everything out.
For more contemporary ads, he cites Compare the Market and Twix campaigns as examples of effective advertising.
“My view, and I mean I’ve kicked around in this industry for long enough, is that all the best ads, whatever the medium, are charmingly silly,” he says.
“I think, if I have an observation about what’s changed, it’s like the industry’s almost become a bit embarrassed about being charmingly silly, but I think it’s its biggest weapon.”
Barber’s affection for the “charmingly silly” is characteristic of the warmth he brings to his work at Radiocentre – qualities that are sure to be missed as he steps down from the role.
His final piece of advice to the next generation working in audio? “Keep the interests and the needs of the listener at the heart of everything, because that’s what makes radio in particular, but I think audio more generally, unique as a medium.”