The heavyweight media types – gathered for the big launch of Nova’s 2007 activities at Sydney’s swank Quay restaurant yesterday – spat champagne at the news. Lucky it was only non-vintage.
Because when the gasps finally subsided, it was revealed that they were only kidding. After all, could anything announced by Merrick and Rosso be taken other than in jest?
With the joke explained, nervous giggles broke out and the party resumed, more spumante was poured and the more serious business of selling the two – count ‘em, one, two – ads in a row to the buyers of such ads continued apace.
The point being made was that Nova continues to be committed to “sounding different” and will strive to sound even more differenter in 2007.
Apart from the marquee announcement of their brand new drive show with Akmal Saleh and Kate Ritchie (a media coup given the troubles with Matt Newton only days ago), Nova wanted to emphasise that they play five times more new music than any other station.
This ties in with their alliance with iTunes whereby new music heard on Nova can be downloaded from iTunes via the Nova website. While this may not sound like much for the moment, given the vast numbers (not) who listen to Nova online, it does set them up for the launch of digital when listeners may be able to download songs directly from their radios.
To illustrate their point the crowd was treated to a live performance by a hitherto unsigned band called the Hip Tones that Nova have been promoting and who now have a single called “I’ve been loving you for too long now”. The band had driven over from Adelaide especially for the performance – a great sound with blues and rock influence. We’d certainly buy their album.
Nova also told us that podcasts are up to 2 and a half million from virtually zero the year before. And like most other stations are keen to engage advertisers in cross-media activity through sale and promotions, on air and online.
They were also keen to emphasise thier Cool to Care initiatives supporting such vital issues as youth suicide; the Environment and drug and alcohol abuse; on Tuesday they donated the profits from all the spots booked between 9am and 4 pm yesterday to drought relief, to coincide with their promotion of the Woolworth’s donation of profits from all their Tuesday sales.