MUMBAI: Radio One's Bangalore station, the city's only Bollywood-driven offering, turned four, with some memorable achievements – internal record revenues for a month at a never-before Rs 75 lakh in October 2010 (up from Rs 65 lakh over the same period a year earlier), and an attrition rate of less than 5%, with all MJs and key people across critical functions remaining unchanged in a highly incestuous market marked by headhunters on the prowl.
The station invited colleagues and advertisers from agencies and corporates along with other business associates for a celebration with a drum jam on a balmy Sunday afternoon in the Garden City.
Why a drum jam? Surely it wasn't to literally tom-tom its achievements through guests jamming along in crescendo of djambes and congas? Shyju Varkey, National Marketing Head – Radio One, and Station Head – Bangalore, laughs. The drum jam was symbolic of how 94.3 Radio One has, over the past 4 years, created its own beat, with the support of not just listeners and its associates, but also with its employees and its clients....
Everyone who walked into the party was given a percussion instrument. Once people settled into the party with their drinks and their starters, a moderator -- Roberto Narain, who claims to own 20000 percussion instruments – kicked off a beat, and everyone had to follow. Says Varkey, For the next hour, there were changes in beats, rhythm and cadence, and the crowd responded as one. Mid-way into it, all our MJs took over and created a beat which the crowd had to follow. It culminated into one monstrous beat which could almost be heard in the skies!...
On being asked how the Bangalore station had achieved its best monthly revenue of Rs 75 lakh, Varkey said, Firstly, there's buoyancy in the market, which peaks during the festival season – so partly, I suppose we rode on a wave. But the other – and what I consider the primary -- reason is our property-based approach to sales. Music Ka Shahenshah is one of our most premium properties. It's an on-air quiz where listeners could get to win as much a Rs. 1 lakh every minute. We time this around Diwali every year and it's paid us spectacular dividends. Not only has Chocoliebe partnered us for the second straight year, we were also able to rope in prestigious national clients like LIC and Lufthansa....
Of the local initiatives of Radio One, Varkey is particularly pleased with some very interesting work we did with the Brigade Group, where the Radio One team went and celebrated Diwali with all the residents in 3 of Brigade's largest properties....
He says that in October 2010, Radio One Bangalore cut across all categories of advertisers. In FMCGs, we have Perfetti and Wipro, in real estate we have Puravankara; Biocon in Pharma, Joy Allukkas in Jewelry, Lifestyle in Retail, Titan and Tanishq in Lifestyle....
Varkey counts out the first-time advertisers on his station: Kalyan Jewellers, President Groom, Forum, Nova Medical, Jyothi Labs, Acer, Fiesta Vacations, The Rolling Stone Magazine and among Qatar Airways, are first-timers for us....
On being asked how they were brought into the Radio One Bangalore fold, he replies, It's tough to pinpoint any one reason about how we got them into our fold – it's usually a combination of our differentiation as a Bollywood station, the ideas we put together to help tackle a specific brand issue that they have, the work that they've seen us do with other brands and, more often, just the sheer persistence and initiative of our sales team!...
About the specific ad sales initiatives and innovations that helped his team in October, Varkey says, As I mentioned earlier, we are a station driven by properties and innovations when it comes to client solutions. I don't think any other station comes anywhere close to the number of effective studio shifts that 94.3 Radio One has put together for store openings, as far as retail goes. We pursued Biocon's initiative against Diabetes like it was our own, and gave away over a 1000 glucometers to listeners, and also helped conduct tests at various retail outlets. Also, as I mentioned briefly earlier, the Brigade Group wanted to something special for residents in its properties. We sent our entire team there, and spent a whole evening playing this game called the musical tambola which was hosted by our MJs.
Customization has been at the core of our growth in Bangalore....
What is the percentage of FCT sales: innovations in the RO Bangalore revenue pie? Varkey says on an average, it is around 70:30 in favour of FCTs. The honest truth is that the market is volume-driven and hence, hugely FCT-driven. Our quest in the year ahead is to increase the premiums on our properties, thereby enhancing our value too....
Varkey says his station would like to extract more value from the Bangalore market as even though their volume second pages are high, they need to be able to increase rates just like competition already has We would like to grow beyond the Rs. 6 million monthly average to at least Rs. 8 million a month by April 2011,... he says.
While other radio stations in the Garden City "shifted and tinkered" with programming from Hindi to Kannada, Radio One latched onto Bollywood music only to be different from the herd.
"We were, after all, the first ones to launch a Kannada station, proving that there was, indeed, a huge market for local music. When the rest followed us, like lemmings off a cliff, we took the path less taken"
Varkey claims that other radio stations have been trying to create music association spikes off-air..., but their on-air product has done justice neither to the music lover nor to the music creator.... The vindication of their approach in Bangalore, says Varkey, has been that the radio station with maximum music and maximum choice has also made its maximum revenues of Rs.7.5 million during the Diwali month....
What, all said and done, is the one feature that sets his station truly apart from the rest in Bangalore? People!... says Varkey. People have been our greatest asset. It's a matter of great pride that our attrition rates have been less than 5 percent, and our entire core team, including our MJs, has been with us since Day One. In an incestuous market like ours, I think it's a staggering achievement. Consequently, we've been able to build on one another's strengths and fill up for one another's weaknesses in putting together this edifice called 94.3 Radio One that just turned four!...
Click here for the event slideshow
With inputs from Tarachand Wanvari in Bangalore