When you do a radio program it’s all about connecting to the listener. During this 45 minute session, Radioguru Palle Bo will cover a number of hands-on tips on how to make this connection.  You will learn why it’s important to be a radio personality and not “just” a disc jockey. Why you should find out who you are, and use it on air, and how you should talk to your listeners using your own voice – like a real person. Palle Bo will cover more than 30 tips on how to make a stronger connection to the listener. Tips that you can bring home and use the very next day.

How to Find, Satisfy and Increase Your Target Audience
The Brand Support Company will give an overview and show examples of the most important research tools used by programmers around the globe for audience management – such as strategic music & content studies, image & ratings trackings, music testing as well as qualitative research methods.
Christoph Poschl, Founder
Brand Support

Inside vs. Outside Thinking: A Paradigm for Radio Programming
Coleman Insights vice president Warren Kurtzman will show you how to succeed by viewing your station from “the outside,” the same perspective your listeners have.  You will learn how listeners use radio to fulfill needs, how listener choose one station over the other and what factors impact those choices.  It will also show you the traps that “inside thinkers”—those who view their stations from within the studio walls—often fall into so that you can avoid them in the future.
Warren Kurtzman, Vice President
Coleman Insights

In a bid to woo advertisers, FM stations have ensured all they can to to show clients that their advertising dollars have paid off. What are stations doing to make sure that advertisers are getting the maximum ROIs? Is a standard measurement currency the answer to increase advertisers' confidence in the medium? Which currency will be the best system that best reflects the popularity of a station or its programmes? Since the introduction of the RAM system in September 2007, many major FM players felt that they have found a more accurate measurement method, in comparison with the day-after-recall (DAR) system. Does this mean that the diary method works for the Indian market? Or would an electronics system be the best solution for the diverse market? Hear our experts as they speak about this much-debated topic in Indian radio.

The field of broadcast marketing has never been more exciting or more frightening and navigating your way through the changing technology and the changing marketplace can be a daunting task. The need to INTEGRATE, INNOVATE, AND EVOLVE is now a professional imperative, and broadcasters who want to survive must keep pace. In his 25 year career, Doug Harris has seen--and survived--dramatic changes in broadcasting and fortunately, he's taken a few notes and snapshots along the way. In his address to India Radio Forum, this award winning creative will share his secrets for keeping your edge AND your job as you train your brain for broadcasting's brave, new world.

This interactive, audience participation session will discuss the true meaning of a brand, why owning the category and branding is so imperative to your continued success, and the advantages and pitfalls to generating new streams of revenue through brand extension. The session will focus on creating true brands within the India marketplace like Pepsi, Colgate, and King Fisher.  Who has the most successful brands and why?  What goes into a brand? How do you create brand loyalty? How do you fend off a competitor who is attacking your brand?  How can you tell when you achieved branding success and when will you be ready to enhance and extend your brand.  The session will help radio stations gain trust, acceptance, and loyalty from singular brands that represent a body of music, an attitude, and personality.

More than ever programming in tough markets is a challenge: Your competitors fight for the same target groups and operate with same techniques as you do - research tools, perceptual studies and music tests. How do you stay in front of your competitors or gain ground when music no longer is the unique difference between competing stations? Why is an emotional approach so important?  How do you load up your brand with emotional content? What is the secret behind being perceived as different from the rest without scaring away large mainstream target groups? This session will give valuable programming and promotion ideas along the example of radio ffn, one of Germany´s three biggest private radio station. ffn’s Program Director Ina Tenz will focus on the importance of morning show stunts, the value of strategic on air promotion and why keeping the right balance between contests and content easily becomes the magic bullet.

Being a reasonably new industry, it was only natural that the FM fraternity has had to go through the process of gaining advertisers' confidence to woo them into investing in the business. Complaints have been heard from the FM camp of the lack of interests from the advertising community in the business. On the other hand, we have heard advertisers say that more needs to be done by the FM industry to educate them about the benefits of radio advertising. How can broadcasters highlight the relevance of the medium in a media campaign? What factors have been hindering the advertising fraternity from using the FM medium more? And more importantly, what can radio do to be a more useful and valuable medium for advertisers? Hear our panelists debate the issue in an effort to provide solutions for broadcasters to best service the advertising community.

It's getting harder to get appointments with key decision makers. When and if you finally do get an appointment you'd better have a brilliant sales presentation.  In this session Paul Weyland shows managers and sellers how to break through the "human spam" of other media salespeople and close long-term contracts with key local direct decision makers. When your prospective client realises that your plan for his success is far better than his, he'll be much more likely to buy your station long-term and with less rate resistance. You'll close more long-term local business regardless of format and ratings.

Radio markets are like busy car lots. With so much choice and clutter, listeners need to know instinctively where you’re parked and what kind of ride to expect. But when everyone’s trying to cram into the same parking space, sometimes it’s smarter to fill the empty space next door. This session is all about position.  What is your position on the dial? What is your position in the rankings? What is your position musically? Is you position deliberate or accidental? What position do you occupy in the listeners’ mind? In a market that is growing so rapidly, your brand values may determine your position in more ways than one. This is a session for general managers, marketers and programmers – as we examine ways to influence, manipulate and exploit brand position. Because your position is critical.

In this session we will showcase real life examples of how to create a winning strategy. Hear the inside scoop on what made the top players succeed in their busy markets.

• Identify the best format opportunity when launching a new station in a competitive market
• Defend a market leader to stay on top while under attack
• Manage a cluster of several stations, optimizing the combined market share
  

After the session you will walk away with ideas on how to create a winning strategy for your radio station.

With the rise of the digital era, many stations have experienced firsthand the power the internet to reach the masses. Websites and podcasts have provided stations with a different avenue to reach the audience beyond the national level. What integration opportunities arise in this multiple platform era? How can radio stations successfully converge and exploit these different technologies? BBC World Service's Alexi Paspalas will provide answers to these questions and explore the various possibilities that will help radio stations adapt to the digital convergence era.

Since the India Radio Forum last year, many more FM stations have blossomed around the country. New issues have surfaced and new concerns debated in the public arena. Radio stations in small towns are also garnering the attention of advertisers and listeners alike. What topics have lingered in the minds of station’s head honchos this past year? How can the radio situation be improve in the coming years and what are their expectations for 2010? Hear their thoughts as they speak out, debate and explore some of these hot topics:

• Is the growth of the radio industry in line with broadcasters’ expectations one year ago?
• Have radio stations increase their originality quotient? With the restrictions placed on the FM business, is there room for creativity to flourish?
• How is the I&B’s broadcasting policy hindering the FM industry from realising its fullest potential?
• Too many cooks spoil the broth - are there too many different opinions on the different issues of measurement/FM policy, etc? How can industry players come to a consensus on the issues that matter?
• What have been some of the pertinent issues relating to how the FM industry can increase its share in the advertising pie?
• Brand value is deemed to be important to create brand stickiness and ultimately, brand popularity. What issues need to be addressed in a discussion on brand value?
• Is the manpower crunch an issue in today's radio climate? What can stations do to encourage talent and nurture them to be radio professionals?
• Are radio stations harnessing the digital technology? What more can be done to converge the different technological platforms (mobile phones, websites, podcasts) to enhance its audience's listening experience?
• Radio as a medium to push for social change - how can the medium be used effectively to convey social messages, and act as a catalyst for change?

Which direction do you foresee the industry heading towards in the next five years? Will you see radio move from a mere entertainment medium to an "edutainment" one?

Now that stations have gotten their licenses and have built up enough hype for their stations, it's time to generate income to sustain the stations and improve the industry's infrastructure. What source of revenue has been considered the most profitable by FM stations? Are they targeting the right advertisers and doing enough to convince clients of radio's effectiveness as an advertising platform?  Are advertisers coming back to the medium? How can radio sales people increase their sales figures? Are the any other untapped potential sources for revenue generation? These are some of the questions which will be posed to our panel of sales experts.

This is a hands-on crash course for the busy sales department on how to improve the quality of the radio commercials.  Radioguru Palle Bo will give you a concentrated shot of inspiration and a reminder about what radio does best, and learn why letting the advertiser just brag about themselves is a truly horrific idea. You will also be given a wide range of practical tools, which will help  the advertiser develop better and more efficient spots. In short you will learn how to produce radio commercials that sell and do not drive listeners away from the radio station.