Southern Cross Austereo (SCA) is banking on the star power of its new Sydney breakfast team, Rove and Sam, with head of marketing and communications Nikki Clarkson telling AdNews that promotions around the duo this year will be focused on them being seen - and then hopefully heard.
The first campaign for Rove and Sam came out last week to coincide with their return to radio on 4 January - a full two weeks ahead of the start of the official ratings season.
It is centred around multiple tongue-in-cheek television commercials, featuring Rove and Sam correcting a radio voice-over who describe lavish call-in prizes, sexual tension between the pair and referring to them as “Sydney's most listened to radio show”.
Clarkson says the aim of the campaign is to set up the pair as a breakfast team, outside of their existing public personas.
“They're both well-known and they're both great TV talent so our campaign and our marketing will be absolutely vision-focused for the whole year, particularly in a social perspective around video,” Clarkson says.
“Our challenge from a marketing point of view is to really communicate that Rove is back on the radio, that Rove and Sam are together on the radio, and that Rove and Sam are together here on 2Day.”
While the TV launch marks the first official campaign for the pair who started on Sydney breakfast on 2DayFM in November 2015, Clarkson says it is actually the second half of a marketing launch, which saw a PR-led campaign at the tail end of last year, saving paid media until 2016.
She says the next phase will be a heavy social focus.
“As we move through the year we'll have a really strong social plan in place that will be vision-led and focus on frequency of content,” Clarkson says.
“There is a whole second tier on that which will reinforce the show, whether it’s vision out of the studio, or vision of what they're doing on the streets, but it will given listeners as many reasons as possible to come in and listen to the show.”
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