I got a lot out of the second iteration of Commercial Radio and Audio (CRA)’s events advocating for our industry, this time called The Audio Edge and held in Melbourne.

What’s not to like for radio? A roster of industry experts providing the stats and new innovations around the growth of audio in Australia, alongside some of Melbourne’s radio stars including 3AW’s Russel Howcroft and Jacqui Felgate, The Fox’s Fifi Box and the Nova Network’s Joel Creasey and event hosts Jase Hawkins and Lauren Phillips.

Quite rightly the event started with the stats and then got to the glitz. I appreciate the nerdy parts (like ARN‘s Corey Layton, I discovered) and it was clear from the laughs off stage that all the radio networks were enjoying this rare opportunity to work together.

Mark Ritson, at CRA’s HEARD event in Sydney in February, laid the framework for today by saying radio is the ultimate sidekick.

Melbourne built on that, with Effie’s Database‘s Rob Brittain and Analytic Partners managing director Paul Sinkinson showing just how well radio works with others.

A key takeaway from Rob was that investing 11% in radio was shown to double your campaign effectiveness. Radio as a component also shone in assisting in new customer acquisition and retention too. It’s not trying to be Batman.

Paul’s metrics were multipronged. He initially spoke about a trial conducted with McDonalds, increasing brand focused radio ads, not price and product marketing, to see its effects, and if it would a halo affect across other channels as a result. It did markedly and there was improving synergy across tv, socials and online as a result.

Paul, and Jo Dick, CRA’s CCO and acting CEO at present, both said the risks doing this was higher than they appeared, as McDonalds does marketing and brand awareness very well, and it is genuinely hard to demonstrate improvement.

I’ll pause here as the audience tittered a little, perhaps at McDonalds being considered any sort of gamble to work with. But if organisations see the cross market benefits that McDonalds saw from a change of approach to the style of campaign, then others will follow. Dan Murphys and Nespresso are exploring this already too.

Paul’s takeaways were:

The quality of the creative makes up two thirds of the impact and that clients are so worried about a campaign wearing out, they don’t allow it to wear in. He said:

“Make the brand creative, hold it for longer. Make it good.”

Rob’s wrap up was that radio has a good record of making short- and long-term activations work but:

“To work in the long term, it must work in the short term too.”

Jo Dick launched The Audio Edge Playbook to accompany the work done between the CRA and Analytic Partners. You can read about it here.

You can also hear Jen Seyderhelm‘s chat with Jo about the collaboration with Analytic Partners and McDonald’s below:

Pictured left to right:  Paul Sinkinson, Rob Brittain and panel host Nine Director of Sales Andrea Salmon

Jen Seyderhelm is a writer, editor and podcaster for Radioinfo