10. 07. 2012
INTRODUCTION – JULY
At the end of June I was in Sarajevo – RAB Serbia visiting Radio Stari Grad. Our hosts were Adnan Osmanagic, owner and director of Radio Stari Grad and Adis Kadric, executive director of the radio.
Radio Stari Grad is leading radio station in Sarajevo and Bosnia and Herzegovina. They have great radio hosts and domestic pop music and they have found the way to the listeners. This radio has different programs for Bosnia and Herzegovina and for Sarajevo. It is located in a building specially built for the radio with many studios and office spaces dominated by huge photos of their radio stars.
While talking with Adnan and Adis I have realized that problems in radio business are very similar everywhere and that it is very important to exchange experiences and to find the right solutions. The biggest concern for radio stations in Bosnia and Herzegovina, same as here, is how to get the biggest possible share in the overall budget for advertising.
Same as in Serbia, radio is very much loved and listened in Bosnia and Herzegovina, but it is still necessary to emphasize the importance of radio and radio advertising to clients and marketing agencies.
I have talked with Adnan and Adis about the big promotion of radio and joint lectures “Why radio” for the end of September.
We have planned the same kind of promotion during our visit to Zagreb, so the end of September will be marked by this action in Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Macedonia. I left Sarajevo full of optimism with new ideas for regional cooperation.
From today you can look at the Database of radio stations in Serbia on RAB Serbia web site. This is the unique database in our country and we are very proud that we have managed to create it. All marketing agencies, clients and radio stations will be able to find the radio stations they need in it.
I have to admit that it was very hard to get the information from all radio stations, so the database will be updated regularly. Unfortunately, even after numerous mails and phone calls, some radio stations did not send us the information, although they understand the advantages this database will provide.
In a couple of days we will publish results of research about radio listening in Serbia for the whole Serbia and Belgrade, done by Ninamedia. The complete database will be published soon.
Research, as well as the Database of radio stations in Serbia, was funded by RAB Serbia, IREX and USAid. We sincerely hope that there will be other researches after this initial one. We will ask all radio stations and marketing agencies if they want to take part in financing this research in the future, and this first one is RAB Serbia’s gift to all users – radio stations and marketing agencies.
On Friday, July 6th we have organized a traditional summer meeting with marketing agencies. This time our guest lecturer was Dusan Masic, from BBC London. He had an excellent lecture with the topic “Why radio”.
After the lecture we had a lunch during which we have talked about the ways of creating the best possible radio ads and the ways to include radio in the media mix. Following the conclusion from the research Dusan Masic shared with us, that the effect of the average TV campaign is the same as the one of the good radio campaign, but that radio campaign is seven times cheaper compared to TV, we have ended our meeting with the marketing agencies and made plans to continue with this kind of meetings in all the big cities in the region at the end of September.