The power of broadcast PR
And why you need to include radio in your next campaign
“76% of UK adults don’t think it’s safe to put a loved one in a care home now.” That’s the stat we worked with in 2020, to support a client in the (you guessed it) residential care home sector.
It was a shocking statistic to read, and many PRs would have run a mile at having to sell the pros of care homes after that (not us!). We knew our client, Vida Healthcare, was (and still is) the absolute best in its industry, and we knew we could come up with a campaign that used this statistic to its advantage.
But how?..
We knew we had to follow people closely for this one – where they were absorbing the hard-hitting headlines was where we needed to be. Mid-pandemic, people wanted, and needed, up to date, constantly refreshed news. This instantly made print news less favourable. People also needed news that they could trust. For many, this ruled out social media as platforms for hearsay.
And so we arrived at the perfectly-placed news outlets for our campaign – broadcast.
Globally, broadcast audiences are in decline, but the UK bucks this trend with over a third of the population tuning in to hear regional BBC news regularly. Radio listening is at an all-time high with 9 out of 10 adults tuning in weekly. Don’t even get us started on podcasts, we’ve all got Spotify in our home screen shortcuts. (136 million listens this quarter, for those of you desperate to know.)
Healthcare rapidly became front and centre of the news agenda when the pandemic broke and has remained a continuous topic of conversation since.
As well as working with research partners to gather data and create our own headlines for clients, we regularly monitor the news and pitch our clients as a proactive source of comment as well as news jacking emerging stories which are resonating with the public. This builds great media relationships and ensures our clients are frequently featured in high profile consumer media, delivering key messages, driving brand recognition and engagement.
We secured 228 pieces of broadcast coverage for Vida in the first year of working together.
Let’s take a look at why this was so successful:
Our campaign had to build consumer confidence and change negative perceptions of care homes. This was best done by hearing directly from the source – our client, Vida. When people need reassurance, they want to hear from those directly involved. Perceptions of care homes was negative, so we presented spokespeople directly from a care home to counteract this with specific, confidence-building messages.
It worked for two reasons:
Hearing the direct voices of our client gave the public confidence that Vida was confident in its safety for residents, and left no room for questioning this. Vida was presented as the expert in the conversation, and this built resonance whenever the topic came up (which was often!).
People were actively listening. This wasn’t passive content. We knew where to place our client to reach audiences that were tuned in specifically for the kind of messages we presented, and engaged audiences quickly mean results.
We exceeded our coverage goals and Vida saw a 77% increase in web traffic on the campaign’s launch day.
How were we so confident in broadcast media?
The latest RAJAR (Radio Joint Audience Research) results include some really positive stats in listener figures. At the start of the pandemic, the number of cases of Covid were being reported daily, being broken down by local area. Nationally and regionally, we all tuned in for these updates. Almost overnight, we became active listeners. And while we’ve moved beyond this level of Covid reporting now, listeners have stayed.
LBC has broken its ninth consecutive RAJAR record – growing its audience by a further 291,000 listeners in three months – the station’s highest reach in its 49-year history. Times Radio has reported 703k listeners, with total listening up to 3.6m hours weekly. BBC 6 Music has grown by a further 9% to reach a new record of 2.846 million listeners. What a nice way to celebrate its 20th anniversary!
The BBC network has generally enjoyed great results – the BBC World Service is up from 1,240,00 to 1,517,00 listeners, BBC Radio 4 is up from 10,957,000 to 11,066,000 and a number of regional BBC stations are all enjoying excellent new listenership.
Simply put, these figures don’t lie. We had an incredibly strong audience base to broadcast to, and it resulted in a massively successful PR campaign.
A common misconception about PR is that content is aimed at print media. Much of it is, but it takes specialists like us to see where the opportunities are and use our strong relationships across the news spectrum to place our clients in the best possible places to reach the right audiences.
If you’d like to know more about how we generate successful campaigns, and what we could do for you, get in touch for a chat today. We’re always on the hunt for the next story to tell.
