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The Project:
When ARN, Australasia's
largest radio company, looked to re-platform and repower their
on-line brands their requirements challenged our approach to web
design.
After a world-wide search US based Mediaspan's
broadcast media content management system (CMS) was selected to
power the websites. We won the Information Architecture and Design
job leveraging off our 8 year history successfully designing The NZ
Radio Network's (TRN) station websites.
ARN and TRN are commonly owned by a JV of Australian APN News and Media and
US based Clear Channel
Communications so to get maximum return for the investment a
single project was agreed to design and build 18 new websites
across both businesses on the common platform.
ARN brands Classic Hits, Mix, The Edge, and
Cruise
broadcast to various regions across Australia and are household
names loved by their listeners. Each website needed to leverage
their individual brand, meet the needs of their target audiences
and required the utmost flexibility to deliver rich media and
engaging content with looks that could kill.
We took a different approach to the website architecture by
adopting a component methodology rather than a template structure
giving ARN the ability to customise each page to their liking. We
did a lot of heavy thinking in the discovery phase to lay the
foundations for the component design and work out the modules that
would be used across all of the sites.
We designed a look for each brand and applied this to each of the
components such as polls, image rotators, media pods, etc. Many
components needed different sizes to expand to a 1, 2 or 3 column
base grid. All in all we had about 40 components with 80
combinations opening up the creative potential for ARN to mix and
match components to build customised pages.
The brand designs evolved from one to the next and as the basic
structure of the sites were the same, the home page designs just
came naturally. Anne Ang our obsessed #Glambert designer truly had
a blast designing with her pop icons as daily inspiration. Our goal
was to retain the brand integrity but also give each skin a fresh,
modern look on the home page - add the pizazz and all the lipstick
too!
For example hot pink sparkles on The Edge's homepage with
Beyonce and Justin Timberlake gracing background with their sex
appeal and effortless cool. Social media and blogging components
were turned on for this site to appeal its younger, tech savvy, RnB
with a twist of Pop and Dance crazed audience.
Cruise, on the other hand, has a cleaner, toned down, more
conventional look and easy functionality for its mature audience to
get directly what they want.
Jodie Koning, ARN's National Marketing Director was stoked. "The
design for the brands is right on the money. These sites are a very
positive step for our brands, presenting rich content beautifully
and pushing them ahead of their competition online. We're excited
to watch them grow even further from here!"
The component approach is a real benefit to the smaller stations
in the group as they now have high end functionality with their
limited budget by leveraging across the whole group.
Even though the sites have the same components on hand, each
website looks unique and caters to the station's target audiences
and regions.
Every project is always a rush, right? With this one we were
delivering Mediaspan developers in the US with new station and
component look and feels every couple of weeks. The ARN and TRN
digital teams configured the website pages with components and
helped with initial content loading enabling a station site to be
deployed about every two weeks.
As the sites go live, every release is a celebration and we're
wrapped to be a part of it!
Here's a list of the new ARN websites:
ClassicHits
http://www.4kq.com.au
http://www.gold1043.com.au
http://www.wsfm.com.au
Mix
http://www.mix1065.com.au
http://www.mix1023.com.au
http://www.mix1011.com.au
http://www.mix106.fm
http://www.973fm.com.au
The
Edge
http://www.961.com.au
Cruise
http://www.cruise1323.com.au