Knowing which medium to use for specific broadcast PR campaigns can often be confusing: some stories are clearly better for television or online than they are for radio and vice versa.
Use our handy guide to figure out whether to invest in radio, TV, online or a combination.
Radio
Radio is a great medium for research stories that can be difficult to translate into pictures for television. Even one good statistic can give you a headline that will work for radio. You also get more air time than you do on TV. A radio sound bite will be edited down to around 20 – 30 seconds, but it will often be used in several bulletins. Live interviews, meanwhile, can last several minutes if the spokesperson is good.
For some spokespeople, TV can be very intimidating; radio, therefore, can be a good way of putting your toe into the broadcast water for the first time. Once the story is booked into a radio schedule, it’s much less likely to be dropped than it is on TV. Radio has more minutes to fill than TV for a start and – believe it or not – isn’t always as last minute as TV when it comes to booking in interviews.
There are also lots of options for tailoring your story. For example, you might particularly want to hit a younger audience in which case you could target stations like BBC Radio 1 or Capital.
TV
National and even regional TV reaches a massive audience. Why all the excitement when a story gets in print? It pales into insignificance in comparison to BBC News at Ten’s audience of 5.4 million or even ITV’s London Tonight news programme with 400,000.
Aside from BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, which still sets the news agenda for the day, TV coverage gives a campaign the most credibility.
TV can be good for explaining more complex issues: it can employ graphics and pictures for a start. Also, a TV audience is more likely to give the medium its full attention: when you listen to the radio you’re generally doing something else and the radio is on in the background.
Finally, TV is the icing on your PR cake. This is the piece of coverage that has the ‘wow’ factor and the client will remember for months to come.
Online
Radio and TV are literally here today, gone tomorrow. Online coverage, however, gives a longevity to a campaign: once on a website it can be there forever.
Online is also great for reaching a targeted audience – there are so many niche websites, all crying out for video content, that the opportunities are massive. It’s particularly good for targeting a younger audience, but is extremely effective for campaigns centred on sensitive issues that television and radio consider unsuitable for a mainstream audience.
You can easily cross-promote with online – connecting a website, LinkedIn, Twitter and so on – and it’s cost-effective: the same video material you film for an online video package can easily be re-edited into a B-roll for television or a marketing or corporate film.
Take a look below to see an online video we produced for Turner Classic Movies or read the full case study.
Combination package
Ask for our rate card and you’ll see our fixed prices – but we can always come up with a combination package if you prefer an integrated campaign: a mixture of television, radio and online.
Take a look below to see a video we did as part of integrated campaign for Princess Cruises or read the full case study.
Want some expert advice for your campaign? Call a member of the team on 020 7240 7373 or fill out our contact form.
