Imagine a channel available to every member of your workforce, exciting, interactive, entertaining and worthy. Imagine your working family waking up to your live breakfast show talking about the things happening in your world. Or alternatively, imagine a channel that bonds your customers with downloadable music, brand conversation, product news and rewards.

Then imagine the data, we’ve got that too.

Your culture is relevant in your world, around the clock. Turn your channel into a great share, shake hands, create fans anytime, anywhere, any place.

BMW Group UK desire to provide an industry benchmark in retail customer experience and following exceptional responses to trials held in a small number of prestigious showrooms in 2014, Immedia Group plc has been appointed as the official provider of digital music channels for BMW and Mini dealer showrooms across the UK and Ireland.

The music selection for each channel is designed to encapsulate the spirit of both the BMW and Mini brands. Immedia has developed a music strategy with heightened brand symphony, creating a closer demographic alignment between the music and their customers.

Historically, franchisees have been tasked with creating their own music playlists for showrooms, iPods, local radio stations, CDs and in some cases, no music at all. In every case providing the right audio ambience for the retail space has proven to be difficult.

Now, franchisees can order one or both of the official digital music channels relevant to each brand. Each channel is carefully mastered with hundreds of ‘brand tracks’ updated monthly.

“Music and first class sound reproduction can be a huge enhancement to the overall driving experience, and we aim to remind customers of this in the retail environment” – Immedia.

A studio in its own world, in 1999. The launch of the world’s first fully fledged radio station on the internet ‘Storm Live’ where listeners could interact with celeb presenters including model Jo Guest, pop star Kim Appleby and Joe Absolom of Eastenders. Other wacky ‘EJ’s’ with names like ‘hard driver’ filled the schedule 24 hrs a day.

Storm Live was the brain child of Bruno Brookes. He hired top producer Ric Blaxill whom revitalised Top of the Pops, created CDUK with Ant and Dec and made a TV star out of Ian Wright . There were actually 2 studios, one in Newbury and a second in New Bond Street London, where pop star guests were easier to engage. Storm Live soon white labelled its service to ‘ISP’s including Freeserve and major on line sites including The Sun (Current Bun) and Pricerunner.com.

The studios, were full of web cams which allowed users to see every move. Fans could click presenter pics and get a mention to camera!

“It was a bit like seeing the first images from a radio astronaught saying hello to you by name” said Brookes.

The station and its pop up audiovisual player soon attracted audiences from around the globe, including thousands of developers notably from Ebay and lots of search engines. The project inspired further launches of interactive services in retail including Impulse Live, specific to 4000 convenience stores across the UK, in partnership with the Sun, News of the World, Spar, Londis, Texaco and more.

The power of persuasion in the simplest way. Following empirical research during live trials, RadioVision was launched in 2005 exclusively for Lloyds Banking Group and the majority of its retail banks across the UK. RadioVision is unique, where presenters are able to trigger specific visuals or video relevant to product and services. This creates a conversational approach around the facts, as apposed to a repetitive voice track.

The channel also provides music to reflect demographic and day part, along with news, sport, weather, staff recognition and other relevant information.

GAME stores break the sound barrier for GTA V launch.

As the launch of GTA V was poised for release and become the hottest game on the planet, Immedia were planning a GTA V radio takeover across 300 stores for the UK’s leading independent games retailer GAME.

As GTA fans and novices alike entered a GAME store, they were immediately propelled into the world of Los Santos, an in-store atmosphere that was pure West Coast and uniquely Grand Theft Auto. The campaign was so successful that the schedule was extended to include weekdays to allow for staff and customers to hear the radio shows outside of the weekend timetable.

Hear ‘Game Live’ from Immedia in your GAME store.

There are millions of Apps available for download. Some have changed our world, others sit in the ether, ideas with no purpose – or have we all missed something?

If we only had the time to explore all of these gizmos available to us, maybe there is something just a bit special we could download as a ‘must have’ – something to tune our mobile experience?

We build our Apps for purpose. We have made it easier for brands and businesses to communicate with people who are important, helping to extend a ‘hard to reach’ community. With exciting, relevant content, explore your opportunity to share and enjoy entertainment, say something special and create that closer connection.

Our imagination, passion, expertise and commitment is best exampled with Topshop, probably the most successful marriage between music and fashion retail in the world.

Immedia has supplied over 15 years of expert ‘on brand’ music profiling, with over 11,000 updates delivered per year, consisting of 12,000 bespoke pre-release tracks.

Then there is 120+ successful AV installations including all flagship stores, all 100% on time.

Creating Mind Maps around ideas and concepts is no new idea, but for us it is imperative. It’s all very well being asked to come up with strategy for a successful digital communication channel, but the big question is – what are the key benefits? How can they be measured ? What’s the upside?

Every business has an audience. Do you want to improve your relationship with your audience outside of the usual comms?

Whatever we create it needs to be unique, something that stands out. Your channel will drive ‘talkability’ and ‘social amplification’. It will emotionally influence, add depth and maintain a consistent cultural connection. It will feature a plethora of ideas to drive compelling content and deliver consistent surprise and delight. It should reinforce trust and values, the business has ears as well as a voice, and delivers on a promise.

Whether you are a consumer brand with fans around the globe, or a business with a giant workforce on the move, we want to work with you to create that closer connection with the people in your world.

“Music is a moral law. It gives soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and charm and gaiety to life and to everything” – Plato

The following audio was taken from a BBC TV ‘Tomorrow’s World’ programme in 1973.

UBN broadcasts were from the United Biscuits factory in Osterley to United Biscuits factories in London, Manchester and Glasgow 24 hours a day. It was the training ground for many of the UK’s best known radio presenters including Dale Winton.

Following the implementation of their own radio station annual staff turnover reduced from 80% to 28%. The channel created content as a result of research on the workforce. Other than music, presenters created commercials to influence workers behaviour, with topics around hygiene, safety, social.

The channel helped to establish ‘one community’ across factories across the UK. Hear the story, including staff feedback.

REGISTER for SALON SOUND

Salons that are serious about ultimate customer service subscribe to the cool couture music channel ‘Salon Sound’. The mismanagement of music in a hair salon is one of the biggest issues in the business.

The cool couture music channel (Salon Sound) was created in collaboration with one of the industry’s leading global product manufacturers. This enabled Immedia to work with in-depth consumer insights, often used when creating new product innovations. Music is critical to the high end salon business, not unlike the fashion business. Glamour is ‘multi sensory’ and the right music at the right time is imperative.

Salon Sound delivers a highly specific music library compiled by experts, a combination of luxury sounds and expensive production, cool and appropriate and sometimes fun. Effectively, we have created an ever increasing library of  ‘sound images oozing in style’, whatever the trend, from celebrated artists across a range of music genres.

A trip to the salon for a woman has to be an inspirational and invigorating experience. A couple of enjoyable hours in a fantastic hair and beauty salon can build new confidence and enhanced style.

For the last 15 years, we have worked closely with retail to connect and entertain its shoppers and workforce with relevant music, information, real time interaction and colleague recognition. Last year alone, we delivered over 10 million hours of streamed content to thousands of retail stores. Now, it’s all got a bit more exciting. Your music and entertainment channels are not just in-store, but out of store, direct to mobile and any device connected to the web.

Expand your reach, promote your culture, share the vibes, start the conversation.

Shake hands, create fans, anytime, anywhere, any place.

So what about the next 10 years?

As modern technologies connect billions of humans at the speed of a meteorite, the window to the world has revealed the absolute realities of the planet in which we live, for the good and bad.

Almost every piece of the internet’s content sits in your pocket, useful if you need to know something. But is the stark commercialism of this technological phenomenon abusing its power over people, we wonder how long this “push and pull” relationship will last.

Strong indications of future trends suggests that the world is turning faster than we thought. People will prioritise core values around their family as the generations merge with the elderly feeling younger, fitter and healthier. There will be new communities for the elderly and the new beauty is to share and care for those less fortunate, give up on the greed, eat fresh, protest against waste and support the working class hero.

We will seek self sufficiency and an inner calm, with mobility we will work no more than 15 hrs a week in an office. There will be a new movement of urban nomads.         We will want to feel safe and rely on new technology to make trusted decisions, morph traditional with technologies, only responding to relevant and personalised marketing. We will become advocates and have the power to turn off blatant ad bombs.

Thousands of new age communities will evolve wholly dependent on core values, modern culture and varied interests. Digital media’s will be specifically controlled by those communities.

From the tiniest communities to brand giants, people will be looking for that ‘emotional and honest connection’, interacting with completely relevant information, at the right time, in any place, and powered by one simple force – the voice.

Bruno Brookes

Tom gained his Masters Degree in Mathematics from the University of Bristol focussing on statistical modelling and probability theory. This analytical and creative thinker combines his broad interests in music with the arts and sciences. Tom returned from Germany in 2014 where he was a studio manager at a radio station in Berlin and went onto become a writer for Crack Magazine.net amongst others. Tom is also trained as a ‘silver service waiter’ – So we get iced coffee’s now Tom has arrived!

We all know that IKEA stores are vast in size with an average of 28,000 square metres of retail space. There are on average 500 co-workers in each IKEA store with a big job to do across the 24 hrs of the day. Outside of normal retail hours, much is done through the night to restock the stores.

IKEA Live is a channel featuring specific marketing content tailored to customers during the day with other communications relevant to the workforce through the night. Co-workers can interact with a live presenter, choose songs with ‘shout outs’ to all stores across UK and Ireland. On average the night time shows would generate 600 requests a week from 17 locations.

Superdrug Live has been a fantastic success!

The channel is delivered live into the heart of over 800 Superdrug store across the UK. The content is designed to get to the core of Superdrug’s younger customers, talk on fashion and make up, music, trends and Dare Magazine.

The channel promotes relevant product offers (at a local level) and provides tons of news around everything and anything beauty! Up to 16,000 colleagues (the family) have taken ownership and able to interact with the presenter via phone, email and social media, requesting special songs and specific airtime for colleagues and customers.

There are live links with head office and broadcasts form the Pink Bus on tour. The flexibility of the channel is immense. To celebrate Superdrug’s 50th Birthday, the entire output was changed to reflect the special day which included a new music library from the 60’s and 70’s.

“Immedia have a been an invaluable in updating our instore audio proposition.  Their product is quite frankly excellent. The live radio format has step changed our instore experience for both customers and colleagues a like. The day to day working relationship has gone from strength to strength since an impressive roll out schedule with many key stakeholders across our business using the live radio to voice important updates to the entire business in one go. Immedia come highly recommended” – Matt Walburn, Marketing Director, Superdrug.