1 – Pro-active and Re-active campaigns. Its a fantastic way to cut through the background sweat and noise that increasingly clutters the marketplace.
2 – Consistent and continual content. It means that your brand not only stands out but it also creates your brand image in the viewers/readers minds more quickly.
A full insight into the science behind story branding will be coming to a presentation near you very soon. I am looking forward to working with Ian Mckendrick ( www.ianmckendrick.com ) on these projects, we are very near to the launch of www.markandian.com too.
In the year 2000 the Eagle Radio station launched in Cambridge. Broadcasting on 107.9 it was the previous incarnation of my Radio station Star Radio. The first song that was played on that day was Stephen Gately and New Beginning which was his brand new single. An interview was done by one of our sister stations with Stephen and the audio you can hear here was of course never broadcast as it was the chat leading up to us using his song to launch the station.
Ben Stiller has just discovered Twitter and has been trying to convince American Idol host Ryan Seacrest to give him a few mentions to boost his followers! managed to get a clip of them talking about it for you.
The thing is that we all like to have the odd Twitter here and there, some take it to extremes and some use it as a marketing tool. I never thought that using twitter would have me branded as a sad case ….
Just finished an interview with leading social media psychologist Dr Aric Sigman. He believes that social media especially internet sites like FaceBook and Twitter are actually damaging society, especially the younger generation. I thought it was an interesting point to be made especially when he reveals how much time people spend on these sites, he thinks that parents should have reater influence on how their kids use them, how do you think he reacted when I asked him to be my friend on facebook?! listen to find out!
This is heavily compressed but the high quality version of this looks really nice. When I made this I was asked by the client to cut out some of the more Arty shots that included the product in the shadow of a napoleon statue, I think I got a bit carried away lol!!
Long story but I was in London with video camera and got chucked out of a taxi after running into the G20 protestors, Decided to run the camera in the hope I might get something exciting. This was the result.
Was hired to produce a dynamic X-Factor style intro video to be played on big screens before the start of a Britney Spears tribute show. I love making stuff like this and it doesnt cost as much as you might think, I believe there is a real market for this type of product to give boring websites a fresh kick for visitors, I would love the challenge of trying to make bog-standard web sites stand out with creative video content.
Q103 was my first station, I worked there for several years and spent nearly 3 years as the producer and stunt man for the Terry James breakfast show. I had a brilliant time there and learnt my trade really under the guidance of Terry, Craig Morris and Craig Boddy. Best memories from Q103 include a police caution after Terry made me park the black thunder up on the side of the road on the cloverleaf junction of the A14/M11 junction at Girton, that day we caused 9 miles of tailbacks, I was dressed as the grim reaper holding an 8ft sign that read “the end the world is nigh” I cant even remember why we were doing it.
I was also the first commercial radio presenter in the world to go through an automatic carwash….. without a car. Health and safety would never allow it these days so thanks for putting my life in jeopardy Terry!
A lot has changed since my time at Q103 including several imaging and logo re-brands and then in 2009 a complete re-brand to Heart. Such a shame to see all of the Q103 heritage thrown away to make way for more networked programming from London and plenty of bland non local or relevant content. It will end up stinging the bottoms of the Ivory tower controllers that pull the strings of the locally based puppets very soon, its all about the money and that means there are plenty of redundancies still to come.
Formerly Hereward Fm
Next was Hereward fm, now Heart 102.7. Again a great experience working alongside people such as Kev Lawrenceand Sue Carter who is now also an award winning programmer. Best memories from the Peterborough experience were hosting a charity ball in which Geoff Capes had me in a headlock after calling his canaries “budgies”, or did I call his budgies “canaries” I cant remember, that night Barry Fry was kidnapped by fake special forces, his ransom was the money that the station could raise to release him on the night for a local childrens charity, I remember it being at least 10k which was a great result. The night finished with me playing piano for one of the actors from The Bill (Inspector Meadows) and the girls from Sweet Female Attitude (they were half famous at the time lol). I got poached from the drivetime show on Hereward fm to go to Beacon Fm in the West Midlands.
Moved to stunning Shropshire and lived on the outskirts of Shrewsbury, another 3 great years this time as a breakfast anchor, Chris Pegg gave me the break and im glad he did! best memory was being fired from Beacon for airing public opinion, it was an interesting time which turned out to be a bizarre moment of good fortune as I was offered the role of marketing manager for a football club for a year long contract. One thing I do miss is living in Shropshire, beautiful part of the country.
Whilst at Beacon I was involved in the national digital Rock station, Planet Rock. I presented the drivetime show on the station for just over a year when it launched. Planet Rock is now based in London but at this time it was quite literally one computer portal inside a stinky dark haunted unused studio at Beacon in Wolverhampton, after each day’s breakfast show prep I would make my way up the old staircase to the top floor and record my show in the studio of doom, Brilliant music, shame I only ever heard the outro’s and intro’s whilst recording my links lol!.
During my year out of radio as a football club marketing manager I was approached by Craig boddy and offered the opportunity to join the breakfast show at Leicester sound working with a husband and wife team Rae and Kev. I can quite honestly say this was the most enjoyable gig so far, we pulled off so many ridiculous stunts, wind ups and brilliant promotions I could never list them all, so below is a short clip as an example, this was recorded at the midnight Showing of the Star Wars Phantom Menace premiere in Leicester.
And so to the present day and my broadcasting home for the last 4 years. Star Radio was a great opportunity for me to finally take control of the programming of a radio station and the freedom that I was granted has resulted in what I think is a pretty sexy array of awards and achievements over the last few yars including several National Radio awards, one European Radio Award and my finest moment so far, winning the 2009/10 Commercial Station of the Year Award for star radio. This is the most sought after commercial station award in the country and warrants me showing you a picture of the little beauty!
If you have ever watched UK TV then you will have heard the voiceover guy Peter Dixon . He is a legend! He has appeared on shows such as The X Factor, Ant and Dec’s Saturday night takeaway and is the voiceover guy for the tv channel E4 too. I had the opportunity to interview him on the Star Breakfast show on Star Radio and we had a right laugh with him. Click on the link below to hear a clip of me trying to impress him with my impression of Paul Mckenna and Peter himself, he took it really well, gave me some tips on how to sound even more like him and even rated me 9 out of 10!
So, if you want the best voice in the business to voice something for you but cant afford the man himself then give me a call lol!
