Marketing director of LiSTNR at Southern Cross Austereo, Brittany Banfield, says the SCA team lives and breathes their team purpose: “We Captivate Audiences.”
Winning the Marketing – Media Company category at Mediaweek‘s Next of the Best Awards, Mediaweek caught up with Banfield to discuss the award’s significance to her, common misconceptions she faces, and what the industry can expect from her and the LiSTNR marketing team next.
The awards have been judged by an all-star line-up, what does it mean to you to be recognised by this group?
Being recognised by so many of Australia’s top names in the industry, whom I truly admire, means the world to me. It really validates the team’s hard work that’s contributed to the incredible growth we’ve seen for LiSTNR in recent years. While it does say my name on the award, it’s absolutely an award for the entire team who have been instrumental in the success of LiSTNR’s establishment as the fastest growing brand in the fastest growing media category of digital audio.
In three words, how would you describe the SCA team?
The SCA marketing and comms team lives and breathes our team purpose ‘We Captivate Audiences’ (which funnily enough is three words). I think this perfectly encapsulates everything our team is about – we are a high-performing team who take creative risks, constantly seek a better way forward and push doors open to unlock new opportunities.
In a competitive radio landscape, how do you make sure that SCA stands out?
We know that new brands can grow quickly off a low base and stand out when they first hit the market, but with LiSTNR now over three years old, we recognised we needed to sustain this initial growth and continue to cut through.
While we are competing in the radio landscape with our Hit and Triple M networks, we are also competing in the fastest growing category of digital audio, so our audiences and competitive set is broad.
We start by ensuring our campaigns are meeting a consumer need, and we are providing solutions to those needs. We have resisted the urge to reinvent the wheel with every campaign, rather we are focused on driving recall and recognition through consistency. Marketers can tend to move on from campaigns more quickly than their audience needs them to, so we ensure that we are making data-informed decisions by observing what is working, what’s not and taking those learnings into the next campaign. This gives us the best chance of standing out for all our audiences whether they are listening to radio, podcasts, music or sport.
What is the most common misconception about what you do?
That our work is just about making things ‘look pretty’ – and while our team does produce world class creative, there is so much more to what we do day in day out. Behind everything we do is a plethora of data led insights, and we’ve embraced a ‘test, learn, scale’ approach, which we’ve seen drive a culture of innovation across the team. Our team has evolved into a group of data-informed, agile, and customer-centric experts who are always looking for a better way forward with our best work ahead of us.
Being Next of The Best – what can the industry expect next from you?
I’m so excited to see what, together with my wonderful team, we can achieve next. In just the last few years, LiSTNR marketing activity has grown substantially in sophistication and impact – and we’re just getting started! We’re striving to continue momentum for LiSTNR’s audience growth, with focus on finding meaningful ways to captivate audiences to deliver impactful results.
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Top Image: Brittany Banfield