At a glittering event at Sydney’s Ivy function centre tonight, smooth FM staff and advertisers celebrated the station’s first birthday.

DMG CEO Cathy O’Connor was upbeat about what the station has achieved so far, telling guests: “Only 30% of people know about us and yet we have got a 5% share, so once we get more awareness you can expect so much more.”

The message was not lost on the many ad agency staff who were there, with radioinfo speaking to several who intend to put smooth on their ad booking roster in coming months.

“Our company will support this brand. It has the potential to grow even further.. Agencies like to see a few surveys of upward growth, so the message to agencies now is, we are here and we will be here for a long time to come.” said O’Connor.

O’Connor shared a story from the first days of smooth in her birthday speech:

“DMG moved to the smooth brand after a number of false starts for the 95.3 frequency, so doing more of the same would not have worked for us. But we saw an opportunity to build Sydney’s first true easy listening station on FM.

“We wanted it to be a contemporary station, not one that was old and daggy, so when I walked in here tonight, 15 months later, I thought, ‘I think we’ve pulled it off.’ We have on our hands a brand that is not just appealing to the target audience but has the opportunity to be a lot more than radio… it will be a place for people to go to unwind and chill out from the pace of city life.”

Smooth plans a number of lifestyle promotions in coming months that will link closely to its brand.

Smooth presenters David Campbell and Richard Wilkins hosted the function.