A radical brand that refuses to budge

By IRENE CHAPPLE

As mainstream radio laps up a big leap in adspend, student stations remain defiantly immune to temptations of commercialism.

The stance gains applause from a loyal audience, but only conditional acceptance from advertising agencies and corporate clients.

Last year, New Zealand's advertising spend bucked depressed international trends to report a 3 per cent increase.

Expenditure was up around $1.6 billion at ratecard cost, but the star success story was radio advertising. A breakdown is not yet available, but the Advertising Standards Authority's figures for 2000 show an increase of around seven per cent on the previous year, to $190 million.

Last year's figures are expected to be even rosier, with early figures from AC Nielsen showing a 17 per cent increase.

But despite the apparent confetti of cash, the seven student radio stations under the b network alliance - including Auckland's 95bFM - remain faithful to a creative policy that does not always gel with big corporate spenders.

Advertisers will find their ads and jingles subject to a strict vetting process - less than 5 per cent of agency created ads will be aired unchanged. For the rest, the network creates or reworks the ads to enforce its own style - a stand that can put noses out of joint and lose revenue.

But, they say, being part of the b net gives the strength of branding power that includes a wider focus than just the bottom line.

All receive NZ on Air funding - $450,000 last financial year.

It is shared through a base grant of $40,000 for each station, then a divvy-up based on audience share.

For 95bFM that equalled $128,230 on an Auckland audience share of around 8 per cent.

For smaller stations, such as New Plymouth's the Most, it drops to around $44,080.

As a cash grant, it requires stations to promote New Zealand music through initiatives presented to NZ on Air.

The stations also run under Radiocommunications Act seventh schedule licences, which restrict advertising to six minutes an hour - well beneath the commercial music station average of about nine minutes, TVNZ's 12 minute maximum, and TV3's 14 minute peak.

Within these limits, the b net. stations are run as businesses, and an insistence on in-house advertising can cut into commercial objectives.

Wellington's Active and Waikato's the Generator are the only purely private sector operations. 95bFM is 100 per cent owned by charitable society the Auckland University Students Association, which expects it to turn a profit. Revenue beyond NZ on Air's contribution is from advertising, sponsorship and, to a smaller extent, events.

Station manager Aaron Carson won't talk other revenue figures, but says a profit was returned to AUSA last year, and it was up on the year before.

AUSA administrative vice-president Paul Schischka says it was a "good year for bFM. It is definitely on an upswing".

But, he cautions, the AUSA expects only a modest surplus.

The association also caters to social obligations such as the student services it funds.

95bFM's creative policy is described as part of the station's overall sound which, says the station's rhetoric, caters for an audience that "is cynical and media savvy ... with a healthy disrespect for establishment, intolerance of commercialism, tongue in cheek commentary and a certain amount of arrogance ... "

Advertisers are warned: "95bFM retains full control over all areas of our advertising".

The actual policy appears hard to pin down.

Says Mr Carson: "We understand our audience very intimately. If you work here and listen you'd understand what fits and what doesn't. There is a depth to the listeners, a depth of quality, and they trust us."

Former creative director Bob Kerrigan, who was at 95bFM for six years until his move to agency Whybin TBWA in 1999, simply calls it a "no-crap" policy.

Creative partner Scott Kelly, also now with Whybin, says: "It's an inherent thing, you know what's right. It's not that we're so great." Despite that, within five years the pair won 12 of the Orca awards for radio creativity, including the annual Grand Orca, each.

Criteria for entry into the Orcas, run by the Radio Bureau, has since been changed and is now open only to advertising agencies.

95bFM board chairman Russell Brown says the audience is a mix of young hopefuls and liberal sophisticates, loyal to the brand. "It could be so easily wrecked, but these people get it, and are aware of keeping that culture. The average bFM listener may be 18 to 35, but it doesn't really drop off until you get to about 60," he says. "But we're not doing a Hauraki or Pacific and growing old with our audience, because that would be death."

The ads and promos, says Mr Brown, are a treasured part of the sound, and integral to the brand.

When an advertisement doesn't fit the mould the phones run hot with complaints, Mr Carson says.

So, despite less than five per cent of agency created ads getting to air - leading to tense meetings between agencies, clients and 95bFM representatives - the policy will benefit the clients, he says.

The Generator director Joe Dennehy estimates the b net. stations gather only a quarter of possible revenue, based on adspend and market share, and eyebrows have been raised at past commercial decisions. When a national Red Bull adspend was rejected because it didn't fit the policy, "I thought that was crazy," he says. "The values [of the policy] were vigorously debated."

But, he says, that's the b net. policy, and "we've all signed up to it. If we didn't like it we'd leave. Because it's not just about making the money, if it was we would be a country rock station".

Mr Carson says the Red Bull situation was clear. There was an international brand directive which 95bFM wouldn't accept; Red Bull wouldn't accept outside creative.

The policy cost $20,000 in revenue, and Red Bull's association with 95bFM has since come through alternatives such as sponsorship, at about half the adspend.

Red Bull brand manager Gavin Pook says the company would still want to advertise with the station.

But the 'Red Bull gives you Wings' campaign, created by GeneratorBates, was too strong a branding tool to dilute, he says.

"The bFM policy was a problem. We have our own creative for our own reasons, and it just doesn't fit to put in different creative. The message would not be the same."

Other corporate associations such as Vodafone's sponsorship of the b-card have been more successful. Sponsorship and media manager Nikki Grafton agrees the creative policy is strict, but says Vodafone has not been damaged through loss of creative control.

"It's enabled us to relax a little. We can do things we wouldn't do on mainstream media."

Vodafone is nearing the end of its one-year sponsorship contract, and say it will be renewed for another.

Saatchi & Saatchi creative director Andrew Tinning says he would question the policy if it started eating into a client brand.

"It's our job to protect the brand, and that's what we have to do. If it's a one-off script for a particular event we're not going to get precious, but we put in a lot of research and hard work, and we don't just do it for the sake of it. They don't have a secret formula we don't know about."

He respects the b net. stance, "but I would like to think they have a healthy respect for us as well."

The station's attitude is captured in a SurfDiveandSki script from 2000. The ad is for a sale, and parodies the standard format. Its title is "When Clients write Ads," and the voiceover drops several octaves as it mimics the title of reality television show When Good Pets go Bad.