Q102 drivetime anchor pulls women listeners in their droves

MEDIA & MARKETING:Female attraction is where it's at these days for popular radio and classy, high-end cars

DRIVETIME IS one of the two most important times of the day for radio stations, both in terms of audience size and in creating an identity for the station. And Dublin’s drivetime market has a surprise new frontrunner in the form of Scott Williams on Q102.

Though Matt Cooper on Today FM and George Hook on Newstalk have much higher public profiles, Williams is beating both of them in the Dublin ratings. In the latest JNLR radio ratings, covering the period July 2009 to June 2010, Williams’s show was ranked number two of the 11 stations monitored in the survey, based on average quarter hour (AQH) data.

Year on year, Williams has grown his AQH audience by 70 per cent to 22,000. This compares with 18,000 for George Hook, whose audience has tumbled by 30 per cent and 15,000 for Cooper. The drivetime market leader in the capital is RTÉ’s Mary Wilson, whose AQH audience has risen by 11 per cent to 39,000.

Williams was one of the founding shareholders of Lite FM and he shared in the €16 million spoils when Lite was sold to UTV plc in 2002. He stayed on and the station was subsequently rebranded to Q102. Williams says the ratings success being enjoyed by Q102 is the culmination of a five-year strategy.

“Lite didn’t connect with women and when we rebranded to Q102, our aim was to target women listeners. We always try to provide a consumer focus to the big stories of the day. The second hour of the show is ordinary Dubs debating the story of the day.

“Our typical listener now could be best described as a 37-year-old woman who may or may not have children, though we do better with mothers.”

On Friday evenings, Williams has a slot he describes as relationship radio. While Cooper and Hook are looking forward to the weekend’s sporting fixtures, Williams’s show is giving advice to a woman whose husband has left her for another man.

Although Q102’s catchline is “more music less talk”, Williams has cut back on the amount of music he plays on his show in the last six months based on the research feedback.

David Hayes of advertising agency Mediaedge:CIA says: “I think Scott Williams has found a gap in the market for an audience that is poorly serviced at drivetime. He has really got into the psyche of this audience and has developed a rapport with them, a bit like the late Gerry Ryan. The consumer show he does with Dermott Jewell on Mondays gives a platform for Dublin housewives to air their consumer grievances and it makes for great radio.”

Q102’s turnover fell by 16 per cent last year to €3.6 million but Williams, who is also the station’s managing director, reduced operating costs by 19 per cent and delivered an operating profit of €216,000.

JNLR data is published four times a year on a rolling basis and new figures will be published today for the period October 2009 to September 2010.

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IT’S A Friday afternoon and more than 100 glamorous ladies who lunch are sipping white wine in the ornate surroundings of No 6 Kildare Street in Dublin. They haven’t gathered for the usual charity event. Instead their host is Mercedes Benz sales manager Ciarán Allen, who has laid on a gourmet repast and a Louise Kennedy fashion show for some of the marque’s best customers.

In the nine months to September, Mercedes sold 2,015 new cars. That’s a lot better than the 1,280 Mercs shifted in the same period last year but a long way off the bonanza of 2007, when Ireland’s richest snapped up over 5,200 new Mercedes models.

So Allen is trying novel sales initiatives. Earlier this year he signed up Kennedy as the Mercedes “style envoy” in Ireland and, at the lunch, the designer provided Mercedes’s favoured customers with a preview of her autumn/winter collection. Kennedy also answered questions posed by her namesake, RTÉ’s Mary Kennedy, after which Allen got to make his pitch about the wonderful new Mercedes models coming to Ireland in 2011.

Allen says: “You have to be creative if you want to sell cars. Our objective in linking up with Louise Kennedy is to develop the unique female customer base that Mercedes has in Ireland.”