The Infinite Dial

Kudos to Chrysalis for finally taking this step and launching a major cross-promotion campaign for London news station LBC using the massive reach of their sister station Heart 106.2. Last year I spoke at the Radio Academy’s marketing and promotions conference, and got a chance to hear a whole bunch of hypothetical campaigns during a session on maximizing cross-promotion opportunities. Some of these were great, some whimsical--and at least one, clearly prophetic.

So now Heart 106.2 will be actively driving news-seekers to LBC in some very clever ways, and I urge cluster managers here in this country to grab some airchecks and do a little ‘free-thinking.’ While the stations in a typical cluster here are a bit closer together than they are in the UK, that doesn’t mean there aren’t loads of creative ways to promote each other and find new meanings for “synergy” besides reducing head counts. Television (notably ABC/ESPN and NBC/CNBC/MSNBC) has done a good job with this over the years, and I think there are loads of opportunities to do the same in radio.