RADIO GURU TO ADDRESS PADC BREAKFAST

The national series of radio creative workshops run by international creative expert and creator of the award-winning radio brand campaign, Ralph van Dijk of Eardrum Australia, goes to Perth next week.

Van Dijk will be the featured guest speaker at a breakfast seminar for advertising agencies, to be held in conjunction with the Perth Advertising and Design Club (PADC), as well as holding a seminar for in-house radio copywriters.

The breakfast seminar and workshop are part of an ongoing national strategy by Commercial Radio Australia to provide support for creatives who are writing radio ads with the overall aim of ensuring consistently high quality radio ads throughout Australia.

Chief executive officer, Commercial Radio Australia, Joan Warner said better radio ads would help attract more advertising dollars and the radio industry must be proactive to providing support and opportunities for targeted professional development for the talented writers working on radio creative.

“We want Australian radio ads to consistently be amongst the best in the world – and while many agencies are doing excellent work it is up to the industry to work more closely with agencies to help foster talent, ideas and world class standards,” Ms Warner said.

The latest figures compiled by PricewaterhouseCoopers for the five major capital city markets show the Perth radio advertising market is buoyant with growth of about five per cent for the eight months to the end of February, compared to the same timeframe last year, with total ad revenue of $41.4 million for this period.

Ms Warner said Commercial Radio Australia had contracted Mr van Dijk, who moved to Australia from the UK earlier this year, as consultant Creative Director with a general brief to promote radio as an advertising medium.

“Mr van Dijk is more then qualified to talk about world standards in radio advertising given his specialist agency, Eardrum, has won many international awards and, earlier this week, won five awards at the UK 2006 Aerial Awards for radio advertising including the Gold, Silver and Bronze in the Best Directing category.”

The breakfast seminar, to be held on Wednesday, 29 March at the University Club of Western Australia, will look at international trends, case studies and the power of radio.

A further workshop for radio station creatives, to be held later that day, will combine a combination of theory and hands-on studio work and seek to inspire and challenge the traditional way of approaching a radio brief.

“I have been running these workshops for the UK and Europe’s leading agencies and they never fail to inspire a greater level of enthusiasm for the medium. Effective radio requires good creative and good radio creative requires more care and attention than it currently gets. The workshop will open your eyes (and ears) to the potential of radio, and challenging the conventional ways of writing, casting and directing a radio ad,” said Mr van Dijk.