Authentic Buzz

I popped over to Virgin Radio last night and caught up with their new media supremo James Cridland. Virgin’s been the leader in radio online for a long time and much of that’s been based on constant innovation. However, in any organisation getting people to buy into the vision is vital and a key way of manging that is by demonstrating value to the staff, both your own and those in the wider company too. This, of course, is easier said than done and takes real focus for any new media team.

James has a great tool in his office to demonstrate value, he’s hung a large plasma screen above his team showing a number of different things. Half was taken up with recent activity by the users. If you got to virginradio.co.uk/interact you can see a scrolling activity wall with information about what the VIP’s (the station’s CRM’d users) have been doing. The office-version includes this ‘public’ information as well as more private data - like whose contacted the studio, entered competitions etc. He said this was brilliant to watch when their was a call to action on-air as instantly you got to see real-world responses. In a similar fashion the second section showed the current number of VIPs - a key target for any radio station.

The third section looks at the station’s streaming figures and shows the current number of streaming listeners. Cleverly it’s displayed alongside the official RAJAR listening figures for that hour, allowing them to show the percentage of listeners who are listening online right now.

Together, these features provide a great insight for the team showing instantly how their actions are being consumed by the audience and properly demonstrating the value of their contribution to the radio station.