Radio City celebrates a better Delhi ahead of Commonwealth Games 2010

Radio City 91.1 FM has announced major programming changes, based around pulsating music, for Delhiites. The radio station’s new imagery has been branded as 'City Ban Gaya Behtar'. Taking forward this idea of betterment, Radio City has rolled out a 360 degree campaign called Celebrating Changing Delhi. The campaign will celebrate all the good things that the city is experiencing as it prepares to host the Commonwealth Games in 2010.

Speaking to afaqs!, Apurva Purohit, chief executive officer, Radio City, says, "As a radio station, we have done much to ensure we play good music and to have an interesting lineup of RJs. To take things further and establish a better connect with our listeners, in addition to various ongoing on-air initiatives, we thought of this."

For the FM station, Celebrating Changing Delhi is not a campaign; rather, it is an initiative to highlight all the developmental work happening in the city, as part of the preparation for the Commonwealth Games 2010, the underlying theory being that a better city deserves a ‘behtar’, or better, radio station.

Beginning today (August 18), the month long celebration drive will highlight the changing face of Delhi in four key areas – infrastructure, entertainment, youth and lifestyle. Each week, the radio station will focus on one of these themes, representative of the changing face of Delhi. This will be done by getting the town to talk about exciting stories through jock talk, on-air contests and on-ground activities, supported by ambient media.

In addition to the support from the government, the FM station has partnered with Telemission Media Pvt. Ltd (TMPL), an integrated media and communication company, to unleash its 360 degree, high voltage campaign in the city.

Manoj Rastogi, one of the promoters of the company, says, "As an organisation, we are constantly in touch with socially inclined corporates. So, we grabbed the opportunity of supporting Radio City’s campaign around the transformation of Delhi into a world class global city. It is a good exercise, given the fact that the planned, deeply sensitised activities are going to address community related issues. And thanks to the station's direct listener connect, the message will be delivered to the TG (target group)."

As a partner, TMPL has jointly developed the campaign, helping the station in getting various government organisations on board for the project. Together, both have roped in various important stakeholders, such as the Delhi Government, Delhi Transport Corp., Archaeological Survey of India, Bus Rapid Transport, and New Delhi Municipal Corp., mandated to improve the infrastructure and lifestyle of the city.

The campaign for promoting the initiative has used extensively infrastructure elements in the form of flyovers, cabs, underpasses, malls, amusement parks, BRT corridors and shopping districts for branding. A band of Radio City jockeys will be seen interacting with crowds at all possible spots, including metro stations, the city’s newly launched green and red, low floor buses, colleges, BPO offices and residential societies.

Purohit explains the strategy behind unleashing a short duration campaign in support of the initiative: "It is a high intensity campaign, providing us maximum visibility. We have concentrated more on the effectiveness and visibility of the communication, rather than on the duration of the initiative. In fact, the idea is to use all the possible touchpoints and advertising space shared by the Delhi government with us to communicate with citizens, striking a chord with them and urging them to do their bit in supporting their government and Radio City because both are striving for improvement."

Purohit dismisses any feeling of negativity in the minds of the listeners on account of the association with the city government. Currently, the government is drawing a lot of flak on account of the BRT corridor project going bust. She draws attention to an established fact that if one goes by psychology theories, radio is identified as a stress buster and mood enhancer, when compared to other platforms such as television. Given this fact, there is no fear of any negativity creeping in on account of the association, she says.

Celebrating Changing Delhi is being backed by a new programming lineup and strategic change in music, reveals Rana Barua, national head, programming and marketing, Radio City. "Listeners in Delhi will be entertained with refurbished ‘zabardast’ music, ‘dhamakedar’ shows, Bollywood ‘gupshup’ and ‘masaledaar’ contests, packaged with ‘shandaar’ prizes. Delhi craves for upbeat, thumping, non-stop music, so we are focusing on new time bands such as 11am to 5pm, calling it classical retro and offering listeners back-to-back Bollywood content shows. We wish to cultivate loyal followers by targeting SEC AB, 12 + listeners."

The creatives for the campaign have been done by Radio City's incumbent agency, Bates 141. The logo for the campaign shows an image of the Delhi Metro, symbolic of the changing face of the much loved capital of India.