Best Marketing & Station Sound

URNs marketing took huge steps forward in 2010 and 2011, both on and off-air. We created a fantastic
website, explored exciting new ways to brand ourselves on-air and developed a positive ethos that is integral to
everything we do as a station. This year we have tried to consolidate the best of everything weve learnt over the
past two years in order to create an exciting brand thats full of energy and bursting with character.
On-air we have created an extensive new suite of idents which, for the first time, are entirely voiced by students
and reflect the energy of our programming and the music we play. We have also experimented with new ways
of integrating listeners voices into our imaging, putting our audience at the very heart of our on-air sound. We
have continued to focus on the creative scripting that made our station sound so unique last year, building trails
and promos that are brimming with personality and humour.
Our off-air mission has been simple: to ensure that no student on campus makes it through their first year
without knowing about URN and what we stand for. To achieve this, we have focused on two key areas.
Firstly, we have continued to use outside broadcasts as our main marketing tool, taking our brand and our
programming right to our audience. Secondly, weve focused our marketing efforts on a series of extremely
coordinated, creative campaigns that stand out from the crowd and resonate with students who are bombarded
with endless marketing messages every day.

A new core imaging package

Two years ago, we decided to radically change our approach to station sound. It was time to ditch
the commercial sound of our professional voiceover artists and replace them with real Nottingham
students. Whilst these new student voices were used in trails and promos, the stations core
imaging (idents, branded beds, news themes etc.) was still branded with the old, commercial
sounding professional voiceovers. This year, we created an entire core imaging package using solely
student voices for the first time. This included new idents, a re-voiced news package and branded
beds.
The package of 15 student-voiced idents was created from scratch, in-house [01:56, 04:50]. The old
imaging sounded dated and dull, so the aim was to create a set of idents that sounded exciting,
fresh and full of energy. We wanted not only to bring the genuine feel of student voices to the
forefront of our on-air branding, but also give the station a fast paced, energetic feel that would
reflect the type of music we play and grab the listeners attention.

Best Marketing & Station Sound 2011/12

Listener voices at the heart of our on-air sound

In 2008 we introduced a new type of on-air branding to the station; we started
mixing a simple three-note musical logo into the intros of songs. This year
we wanted to refresh our branded tracks with a new, simple sound, both to
keep the station sounding fresh, but also to make it easier for new audio
producers to create imaging for the station. The result was a new, rhythmic
on campus
1350am
signature element: the words University Radio Nottingham, each shouted
by a
different student voice, accompanied by sweeping FX that build on the word
Nottingham.

online urn1350.net

We built this new signature sound into the start of our most popular playlist
tracks [00:00] and soon incorporated it into station idents. Our new branded
tracks are a great example of how we have combined the best of our branding
output from both of the previous two years; we have taken the student focused
sound from last year and combined it with the polished production from the
year before. The new branded tracks ensure that our listeners have their voices
heard right at the heart of our on-air sound and by recording plenty of student
voices throughout the year we have been able to keep our branded tracks
sounding fresh and diverse. University Radio Nottingham has become the DNA
for all of our on-air branding, reminding us that our listeners are the most
important part of our programmes.

Back to basics bringing URN to a new audience

Throughout the year

we invited students
down to the URN
studios to record
our University Radio
Nottingham clips
to keep our idents
and branded tracks
sounding fresh.

As a station weve received a huge amount of recognition in the past few years for our
programming output and marketing efforts. Whilst this is great for everyone involved in the
station, it can sometimes be disastrous when it comes to our marketing strategy. Its sometimes all
too easy to assume that students know about URN and what we do. In the past we havent spent
enough time covering the basics of the URN brand, and have tended to get hung up on complex
ideas. To combat this we set ourselves the challenge of promoting the most basic core values of the
station at various points throughout the year. We wanted to make sure that no student living on
campus would make it through their first year without having a good idea of what URN is and what
we stand for.

Hello!
At the start of the year we went back to basics and created a trail to introduce URN to new students arriving
at the University [00:26]. This ran on most shows throughout the first few weeks of term and was
played at live events to thousands of students during Week One. We made sure to avoid squeezing
in all the ins and outs of our schedule, or berating listeners with a barrage of show names
and timings. We didnt include any contact details, any calls to action or even our web
address. Instead, we wanted to pass on the simple message that URN exists and is all
about entertainment, lively discussion and amazing music.
on

Campus-wide poster campaign

We followed up our initial back to basics on-air efforts with a campus
wide poster campaign featuring a cloud of words that describe URN. We
wanted to make students aware of the huge amount of content that we
have to offer them and the wide range of things that are covered on the
station. Again, the aim was not to draw listeners to a certain programme
or online feature we just wanted to promote the station in general.

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Best Marketing & Station Sound 2011/12

URNs Listener Takeover

Another way in which we tried to raise awareness of the station was
by giving listeners the chance to present their own half hour show
as part of our Listener Takeover [03:49]. We promoted the event on
campus and through social media, inviting students to get in touch
if they wanted to present a show. We ended up with over twenty
students involved on-air throughout the day, many of whom have
on campus 1350am
online urn1350.net
decided to get involved with the station as a result. The motivations
for the listener takeover were simple. Firstly, our studios are fairly
hidden away on campus and we wanted to show students what
actually goes on behind the scenes at the station. Secondly, we know
from experience with our own presenters that a large proportion
of our listeners find their way onto our website by links posted on
Facebook and Twitter. We anticipated that our Takeover presenters would
Left: All of our Listener Takeover shows are
available online at urn1350.net/takeover.
post about their shows online, and tell their own circles of friends to listen,
Right: Listener Takeover poster.
instantly exposing URN to a huge audience over the entire day.

Taking URN to our listeners

This year we have utilised outside broadcasts more than ever before as part of our off-air marketing. In the course of
the year weve carried out twenty-nine live broadcasts from various different places on campus, and out in the wider
student community in Nottingham. Organising and carrying out these live broadcasts has been a challenge both
technically and logistically, but for us the benefits are obvious.
Our aim as a station is to be where our audience is. More and more this means making sure weve got a good presence
online, but it also means bringing our programming, presenters and brand image right to the front doors of students
in Nottingham. Our studios are hidden away in the basement of the main Students Union building, but outside
broadcasts allow us to bring URN to the thousands of students living on campus who would never otherwise have
known that we exist. The response to a live radio programme happening just outside a students bedroom window or an
impromptu acoustic set happening outside the Physics building creates a far stronger impact than any poster or leaflet
and an outside broadcast doesnt cost us a penny.
We were very careful to choose locations that would give us the maximum marketing potential. This meant visiting
places that we hadnt before, and targeting first year students who had no previous exposure to the station. Below are
just a few examples of the key live broadcasts we carried out this year.
URN live from the Science Quad
As part of our Freshers Week
coverage we spent a day broadcasting
in the heart of the Faculty of Science
area on campus. We know that the
majority of students that get involved
with URN take Arts degrees, and so
we decided to target this untapped
part of the University. We had staff
from the Schools of Physics and
Chemistry doing experiments live
on-air, which not only sounded great,
but also gave students a reason to
come and see us in person.

The Pulse: Whose Lenton is it?

Throughout the year we realised
that a lot of stories being covered
by our news team were all linked to
relations between students and the
City Council in the popular student
area of Lenton. We decided to host a
special programme looking at these
issues, but instead of doing it in
the studios we took the show to a
pub in the heart of Lenton so that
students could not only come down
and share their opinions, but also see
that URNs news programming was
relevant to them.

Best Marketing & Station Sound 2011/12

URNs Hall Tour

In the last two weeks of term, students living in halls on campus are left with no exams, no lectures and essentially
nothing to do. Theyll generally wake up late, lounge around in the sunshine and listen to music with their friends. We
saw this as an ideal marketing opportunity and a chance to reach out to thousands of first year students before they
moved off campus into rented houses. We decided to do a series of outside broadcast events from 125pm at various
halls of residence over five days. We set up in the most visible places, playing out music to the students who were
gathered outside. We took requests and got them involved in on-air games, ensuring that it wasnt a Spotify playlist
that they were listening to but their very own radio station instead.

Creative campaigns - Marketing that stands out from the crowd

Our on-air marketing efforts last year were focused around unique, funny and cleverly scripted promos aimed squarely
at students in Nottingham. They stand out from the crowd because they surprise our listeners and become pieces of
entertainment in their own right - theyre not just thirty-five seconds of audio to fill between two songs.
This year we used exactly the same approach in our off-air marketing campaigns. Students are confronted with
hundreds of pieces of marketing every single day, whether thats a text from Dominos pizza with a new offer or a flyer
being thrust into their hand on their way to a lecture. Generic flyers and posters just dont grab the attention of an
audience thats highly skilled at ignoring irrelevant promotion. To get through to students, we created campaigns that
were based around imaginative ideas, with multiple elements, launched in a highly coordinated way for maximum
impact. Our Students Union Elections campaign and our Hallward Fever project are the two
best examples of this and proved extremely successful for the station.

Students Union Elections

For our coverage of this years Students Union Elections period, we created a
huge Anchorman inspired campaign with campus-wide branding and highly
coordinated online and on-air elements [02:52]. It all started when we realised
that a lot of us at the station were obsessed with the film and we knew
that Anchorman had a cult following amongst students. We have always
covered SU Elections in a slightly tongue-in cheek way, because for the vast
majority of students they make very little difference to their
everyday lives, but provide a honeypot of gossip and exam
procrastination material. The 70s newsroom theme fitted this
angle perfectly.
We raided the student theatre for some vintage suits and
dresses and organised a photo-shoot with presenters from
our key SU Elections programmes. We then created a mass of
marketing materials that were used across campus and online,
the pinnacle of which was a five-metre banner that was hung
in the heart of the main Students Union building.
The point of the campaign was to capture the attention of students, using
humour and an instantly recognisable style. We had to give them a reason to
switch off their marketing blinkers and stop to look at our branding. It got
students talking purely because it was a cool thing on campus, and we soon
saw our images spreading across Facebook as people shared them with their
friends.
Top right: Advertising on plasma screens in all halls of residence and across
campus. Middle right: Our banner opposite the SU reception. Middle left: The
SU Elections mini-site. Lower right: A3 SU Elections poster.

Best Marketing & Station Sound 2011/12

Hallward Fever
With no lectures to go to for weeks on end, students inevitably spend their
university revision periods chained to their laptops in the infamous Hallward
Library a building known for its faulty air conditioning, lack of space to work
and a higher than average procrastination toll. With their laptops already open
and headphones plugged in, we wanted to target these students and get them
listening to URN.
We created a fictional disease called Hallward Fever and marketed URN as the
only known cure. We created posters that were spread across the entire campus
and concentrated in areas where we knew students would be revising. We
created Hallward Emergency Survival Kits using printed carrier bags and filled
them with revision essentials: Red Bull (five hundred cans of which we secured
for free by involving Red Bull in the promotion), pens (which were given to us
through a collaboration with the Universitys student-run counselling service),
Haribo sweets and a leaflet promoting URNs ability to tackle revision-related
woes. We handed five hundred of these survival kits out at the entrance of the
Hallward Library during the exam period.
Crucially, none of the printed or online material that we designed was based
around URNs regular brand image. We avoided using our logo and instead
developed a separate theme for the campaign to lure students into thinking
this was something new, something they hadnt interacted with before.
Central to the campaign was our online Hallward Fever Diagnosis Tool at
hallwardfever.com. This spoof website asked students to select their symptoms
and then informed them of the severity of their condition before prescribing a
healthy dose of URN (every time!). We integrated the tool with a Facebook app,
allowing students to share their diagnosis with friends. This was incredibly
successful, and our initial coordinated launch soon became a viral,
self-sustaining campaign throughout the May exam period.

Bottom left to top right: Our online diagnosis tool at hallwardfever.com. We give out Hallward Survival Kits at the library. The A6 flyer that
was included in the bags. A diagnosis shared by a student using our Facebook app. Support from the University on Twitter. A3 Poster.

Using online content to drive listeners to our programmes

More than ever before, students are tuning in having first watched or listened to another piece of content that weve
made available online. This type of supplementary content had been limited up until this year, and so we worked on two
online-only tactics to drive more listeners to our regular programmes: on-demand audio clips, and videos.

Best Marketing & Station Sound 2011/12

The Audio Stream

A big new addition to our main event mini-sites (Week
One, Students Union Elections, Elections Night Live and
Summer Party) was a new way to access on-demand audio
clips that weve called the Audio Stream. We dont currently
have the rights, or the budget to create an entire listen
back service. However, we do know that students dont
have the time to listen back to entire programmes and
hunt down the most relevant bits. They want bite-sized
chunks of accessible audio that they can listen to and
share with their friends. The Audio Stream does exactly
that.

on campus 1350am

Left: The Week One

Audio Stream.
Right: The SU
Elections Audio
Stream. urn1350.net
online
Below: The Summer
Party Audio Stream.

The design and format of the Audio Stream has evolved

throughout the year and has been adapted to suit each
specific event. In our initial experiment with it in Week
One, it was simply a list of audio clips. But for the Summer
Party festival at the end of the year, we built an interactive
map of geo-tagged audio clips from the site, which enables
listeners to explore our content in the context in which it
was recorded. Clicking on the backstage area, for example,
gives you access to all of our artist interviews.

Videos
Students spend a lot of time on YouTube, and we have really taken advantage of this by creating a series of
supplementary videos that drive listeners back to our website. During the Students Union Elections period, we created
spoof campaign videos for two of our presenters, which were watched by over 3,500 people. Our Science Show also
created regular Student Science videos throughout the year looking at wacky experiments and real science being carried
out at the University. One of their videos, The Vortex Cannon, went viral over the course of a few weeks and achieved
over 825,000 views. This drove a huge amount of traffic to our website and showcased our programmes on a global scale.

Radioplayer
At the start of the year we created our very own Radioplayer console, becoming part of
the nationwide network of stations using the same web player on their sites. This wasnt
just a huge technical achievement, but crucially made our station and our programmes
searchable as part of the Radioplayer database, which is accessible from every other
Radioplayer console on the web. This has increased the chances that new listeners will
discover URN, either by searching, or by switching directly from another stations player.

This year our marketing and station sound has built on the best of our previous efforts
and has evolved based on our ever-growing understanding of our audience students
at the University of Nottingham.

On-air we have combining student-focused content with polished production to

create a genuine sound that is bursting with energy.

We have forced ourselves to take an unassuming stance with marketing that

goes back to basics, promoting URNs core values.

We have taken our programmes and our brand image out of the studios and
into key locations on campus with more outside broadcasts than ever before.

We have have experimented with bold new creative campaigns that grab the
attention of students and stand out from the crowd.