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How Voice-activated Technology Makes Radio More Relevant Than Ever

13/01/2017
Music & Sound
London, United Kingdom
312
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INFLUENCER: Radiocentre's Clare Bowen ponders on the advents of Amazon's Alexa and Google Home

When Adam Keane of Karmarama judged the Aerial Awards last year, he called for creatives to give listeners a reason to gather round the radio by writing thought-provoking, attention-grabbing ads. Ads which stand-out. Ads that make you think. Ads that change behaviour. Too often, radio advertising is little more than audio wallpaper. 

We think of radio as an old way of advertising. It’s worth remembering though that when radios first arrived in family living rooms in the 1920s and 1930s, they were a family focus point, disruptive by virtue of being new. They were alien to the domestic environment and drew attention and astonishment for being so, much as IoT-driven technologies such as Amazon’s Alexa and Google Home do today. ‘The wireless’ was the Christmas gizmo and boy toy of its time (usually male specific - since the low volume of the speakers limited them to individual use by the invariably male family breadwinner). This all changed with the ubiquity of electricity for domestic use and improvement in speaker quality. Radio went from being a solitary status symbol to being a family focal point to be ‘gathered around’.

It is interesting to draw parallels between the dawn of radio and emerging voice activated technologies today.  In his essay ‘Radio and the rebirth of social computing’*, Simon Roberts comments on this shift of nascent radio from a personal device to a communal one and how broadcast content diversified accordingly. He notes  parallels with the modern Alexa, as use of Amazon accounts accessed by an individual are evolving into (or at least being supplemented by) a shared and invisible interface, fulfilling different functions for different members of a family or group.  One person might use it for shopping, another for fact-finding, and another for entertainment. It’s worth noting that Radioplayer, which aggregates commercial and BBC digital radio stations, is one of Echo’s initial-phase built in ‘skills’.

In an age that is creatively governed by the visual, the strengthening of audio’s role in technical application has intriguing implications for human behaviour and for commercial messaging as well. The evolution of television to personal sets watched in bedrooms onto the tablets and phones, which also heralded a virtual social as well as an entertainment space, has been challenged by Alexa and friends. As a hands- and eyes- free media platform, it is a truly ‘social’ alternative to the solitude of screens and the internet’s digitised virtual communities. Roberts calls this a renaissance of social computing. Are we moving away from hyper-personalised environment back to the communal, with evolved broadcast media reclaiming the centre-ground in a connected, digitised society?

There is a tendency for media-land to dismiss radio as outdated and for creatives to shy away from it as boring and difficult. Conceptual nous alone does not make great radio: it needs superlative craft-skills too.  If we move towards a media landscape where non-visual messaging has greater prominence, it is skilled writers, those able to think of audio concepts with cut-through and those with progressive audio production talent who will benefit. With around 90% of people in the UK listening to the radio every week in spite of the growth in entertainment platforms, radio and radio briefs are going nowhere.

Radio adapted to the advent of the internet by moving online, and to mobile by optimising for app interaction. With Alexa, radio is being helped not hindered by media’s evolution. And maybe Alexa is the justification this tech-led generation of creatives needs to gather round the radio once more to craft high-quality, contemporary and entertaining audio.



*Radio and the rebirth of social computing by Simon Roberts was published on the Stripe Partners blog on 4th January 2017.

Clare Bowen is Head of Creative Development at Radiocentre

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