Wednesday, August 12, 2009

SFM to turn Red FM on 14 August

SFM has formally announced the rebranding of its 38 FM stations, 23 stations of South Asia FM Ltd (SAFL), 14 stations of Kal Radio Ltd and one station of Udaya FM Pvt Limited as Red FM. With Red's three existing stations in Mumbai, Delhi and Kolkata, Red FM is now the second largest FM network in India.

SFM would be unveiling its new brand name on 14 August in the north, east and west regions and on the 17th in the south. The station would be broadcast as Red FM with the tagline 'Bajate raho' from Friday. Radioandmusic.com was the first one to mention about the rebranding on 21st July.

Red FM COO Abraham Thomas states, "Red FM has stood out with its strong listener connect and contemporary entertainment style which is symbolised by Superhit music, movie, cricket and popular RJ's making it the most popular FM brand in Mumbai. We are happy to extend the already successful Red FM format of brand, content and programming across the country. Red FM will be able to replicate its unique flavour across the country which will help us win more listeners and advertisers in the coming days".

The rebranding exercise will be comprehensive and incorporate the Red FM DNA into all the other stations in programming style, content, format and presentation and entails complete re-training of the staff including the RJ's, Station heads, sales and marketing teams. The company has planned a series of multi-media advertising campaign across all the cities to take the new Red FM engagement format to the listeners as well as to the advertisers. The campaign will be on-air, on-ground and through out-door mediums as well as in trade publications.

Commenting on the occasion CEO of the unified brand Red FM K Shanmugam, says, "Consolidating our radio FM business under the successful Red FM brand was a very strategic move by us to offer pan India audience under a single strong brand representation. This will help us unify our programming across key cities and help garner a larger share of ears. Advertisers can now reach out to a wider listener base and can capitalize from the unique Red FM program format."

Planning to unveil the brand change this week, the station started pitching with on-air and OOH campaigns about a week ago. All the stations have been playing back to back music since 7th August with no RJ presence. During the breaks, it introduced the brand change by adding that something new is coming on the frequency. Apart from that the station has put up 'ab sabki bajegi' in huge numbers hoardings across the city.

With its footprint across 16 different States covering the top 10 markets in the country the network reaches to over 20 million radio audience

States Cities under Red FM brand:

Maharashtra: Pune, Nashik, Aurangabad and Nagpur (in addition to Mumbai)

Karnataka: Bangalore, Mysore, Mangalore, Gulbargha

Kerala: Kochi, Trivandrum, Trissur, Kannur, Kozhikode Andhra Pradesh: Hyderabad, Vijayawada, Vizag, Warangal, Rajmundry, TirupathiGujarat: Ahmedabad, Rajkot, VadodaraUttar Pradesh: Lucknow, Kanpur, Allahabad, Varanasi Madhya Pradesh: Bhopal, Indore, Jabalpur

Rajasthan: Jaipur

Orissa: Bhuvaneshwar

West Bengal: Assansol, Siliguri (in addition to Kolkata)

Sikkim: Gangtok

Assam: GuwahatiJharkhand: Jamshedpur

Meghalaya: Shillong

Mizoram: Aizwal

New Delhi: New Delhi

Source: http://www.radioandmusic.com


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