Kyle and Jackie O ‘go rogue’ in another Melbourne campaign
After spending an estimated $2 million launching Kyle & Jackie O into Melbourne, ARN are changing strategy. Again.
Last night, a new campaign featuring Kyle and Jackie O premiered on Melbourne television, with the tagline: ‘radio gone rogue’.
Followers of their exploits over recent times could be forgiven for thinking that particular line was actually from an ACMA report after the regulatory body’s recent findings that the show went ‘beyond the bounds of decency’.
This is the third major creative switch for the duo in Melbourne.
They launched in April 2024 with a campaign called ‘The end of boring radio’. Trouble with that particular insight is that Melbourne listeners didn’t agree. Jase & Lauren – who ARN dumped from Kiis breakfast to bring Kyle and Jackie O into Melbourne – were picked up by Nova 100 and started 2024 with 6.7% and ended on 11.5%. So, maybe ARN’s previous offering wasn’t that boring after all.
The new campaign
ARN changed tack at the start of this year with another Melbourne-only campaign (all while their Sydney ratings are trending down). This time, they tried to attract listeners who had tried the show last year and left. This creative was titled ‘Listen now, we’re behaving’. The fatal flaw in that campaign was that Kyle, in particular, wasn’t behaving.
Despite now former chief content officer Duncan Campbell telling Mumbrella under two months ago that “graphic sexual content has been removed”, Kyle was still airing sexually explicit content as recently as two weeks ago. One particularly graphic segment aired in the 6am hour included a discussion asking women how they ‘cleaned up’ their intimate areas after sex.
So, with this new campaign, perhaps ARN have decided to lean in to their lack of control of Kyle — as he is happy to keep reminding listeners — and is now admitting the show has in fact gone rogue.
At least they can be sure a creative execution featuring a focus group talking about their breakfast stars has had past success. Kiis ran an almost identical version of this campaign for Kyle & Jackie O in Sydney in 2017.
At the time, Anthony Xydis, then chief marketing officer at ARN made note of the fact that they used a “real focus group because genuine reactions from both the group and Kyle & Jackie are funnier than anything we could have scripted”.
Unfortunately this updated version appears to be highly scripted and uses actors, with Kyle and Jackie O watching the ‘focus group’ through a live feed, making comments for the two hosts to reply to. In one example Kyle tells Jackie he will “go to HR” about her and Jackie replies that Kyle “wouldn’t even know where HR is”.
For a show that prides itself on being real this is almost laughably fake. They may have gone rogue on air, but they’re sticking to the script in their marketing. The behind-the-scenes content posted on the show’s owned channels is actually far more compelling and entertaining than the polished TVC.
I guess we can give them credit for having a marketing campaign that is (finally) aligned to the product listeners hear. Why it’s taken this long and this much money is a good question for the shareholders to ask of the board.
Time will tell if it can lift their Melbourne audience share above 5.8% or we have yet another creative strategy being rolled out in the back half of the year. That is, if ARN has the money to invest in it.
Wade Kingsley is co-host of the Gamechangers: Melbourne Radio Wars podcast and a Consulting Creative Director.
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