Radiocentre targets John Lewis marketing chief in latest ad championing radio

John Lewis is Radiocentre’s latest target as it launches a campaign today (26 May) to convince its customer director Craig Inglis to invest more in the medium.

The radio ad is part of a broader campaign by the Radiocentre that directly addresses high-profile marketers in a bid to convince them to put more of their advertising budgets behind the channel. The new ad, a ballad, takes its inspiration from John Lewis’ famous Christmas ads and asks Inglis to “give radio a go”.

The jingle includes the lines: “Craig Inglis, where have you been, we thought we’d lost you. It’s been driving us mad, brought tears to our eyes, we’ve been so sad. Why don’t you give radio a go?”

The 60-second John Lewis spot will run across national commercial stations including Classic, Smooth, Magic, Heart, Capital, Jazz FM and Heat. It will also run on a number of local stations around the UK. The campaign is supported by outdoor, online, print advertising, PR and social media.

Earlier this month, the Radiocentre targeted Unilever’s CMO Keith Weed in a hip-hop song, praising the reach and return on investment that radio advertising offers.

In response, Unilever put together a short video that it posted on its PG Tips account showing the PG Tips monkey rapping and inviting Radiocentre to #keepittea. That was then retweeted by Weed, who thanked Radiocentre for reminding him about “the power of radio”.

Speaking on its latest ad, Radiocentre’s client director Lucy Barrett says: “Despite being kept completely in the dark beforehand, Keith Weed reacted to his rap really well. [We’re] hoping Craig responds to this homage to his ads with equal amounts of humour.

“On a more serious note, we hope that like Keith, we have given Craig a powerful reminder of radio’s ability to build fame and stimulate mass response amongst the millions that tune in everyday in their cars, homes and offices.”

Earlier this month, Lucky Generals co-founder Andy Nairn acknowledged that using a broadcast medium to reach specific individuals could appear counter-intuitive. However, he explained that the aim is to be “disruptive” and “noisier” about the benefits of radio.

“There’s a general feeling that radio advertising isn’t quite as exciting as all the other [media] out there,” he said. “[Marketers] tend to diminish the role that radio advertising can play. They tend to talk about it as a tactical, small-scale, promotional medium, rather than something much bigger that we think it can be – much more creative, much more fame-building, much more exciting.”

Recommended