Radiocentre Ireland’s latest webinar, What Success Sounds Like, showcased three very different award-winning campaigns with one thing in common: each demonstrated how smart use of audio can turn a powerful insight into creativity that delivers real results.
Featuring campaigns for Allianz, Freenow and Beamish, the webinar explored how audio can change behaviour, build emotional connections and create authentic engagement with audiences.
Allianz Seatbelters: using music to encourage safer driving
Gerry McBride, Senior Copywriter at Forsman & Bodenfors, presented Allianz Seatbelters, an innovative partnership with Spotify that turned music into a road-safety tool.
The campaign began with a fascinating insight: research suggests the tempo of the music people listen to can influence how they drive. Higher-tempo music can increase alertness, speed and more erratic driving behaviour.
Allianz and its agency saw an opportunity to reverse that effect.
Seatbelters analysed a Spotify user’s listening history and created a personalised playlist featuring music from artists and genres they already enjoyed, but with tracks optimised at 80 beats per minute or below.
Rather than asking people to stop listening to the music they loved, Seatbelters used their existing musical tastes to encourage calmer driving.
The idea was launched through Dashboard Drumming, featuring legendary Police drummer Stewart Copeland alongside science creator Big Manny, helping communicate the science behind the idea in an entertaining and accessible way.
The campaign achieved a worldwide reach of approximately 135 million, generated around 70,000 personalised playlists and delivered approximately 5.5 million minutes of safer-tempo music.
It also picked up a Silver EPICA Award before winning both the Innovation Award and Grand Prix at the Irish Audio Awards.
McBride explained that the strength of the campaign was that audio wasn't simply the media channel used to communicate the idea – audio was the idea itself. Music provided a way of reaching people with an important road-safety message without relying on a conventional safety campaign.
Freenow: giving Ireland's taxi drivers the microphone
Lauren Kavanagh, Innovation and Partnerships Director at Omnicom Media, presented Give Us a Steer, a campaign created by PHD and Onic to strengthen Freenow’s emotional connection with Irish consumers.
Freenow already enjoyed high awareness, but increasing competition in the ride-hailing market meant the brand wanted to strengthen measures including reliability, recommendation and emotional connection.
The breakthrough came from recognising that much of the human experience of Freenow comes not from the app itself, but from its drivers.
Irish taxi drivers are natural conversationalists. They know what's happening locally, have opinions on everything and often develop an instant rapport with passengers. The team recognised a natural connection between that experience and radio – another medium built around conversation, companionship and local relevance.
The campaign gave Freenow drivers a genuine voice on local radio through live segments and bespoke content across Dublin, Cork, Galway, Limerick and Waterford.
It culminated in an ambitious media first: an entire four-hour FM104 radio show broadcast live from the back of a Freenow taxi.
Presenters Graeme and Nathan travelled around Dublin picking up listeners, chatting with passengers and broadcasting the experience live as the taxi moved through the city.
The campaign reached more than 900,000 adults across the Onic network, generated 60 live on-air mentions and delivered 500,000 digital audio impressions.
More importantly, it shifted key brand measures. Reliability increased by 20 percentage points, recommendation by three points and consideration by six points, while 51% of listeners connected emotionally with the taxi drivers.
Freenow app downloads also increased by an average of 75% during the campaign period.
For Kavanagh, live radio was fundamental to the idea. Its spontaneity, unpredictability and human connection mirrored the experience of getting into a taxi and starting a conversation with a driver.
Beamish: belonging rather than interrupting
Peter Wilson, Senior Account Manager at dentsu, presented If Taps Could Talk, an audio-first campaign that took a very different approach to building a brand.
With heritage Irish stouts enjoying renewed cultural interest, Beamish wanted to strengthen its position as an authentic choice for people looking for something with genuine character and local roots.
Rather than attempting to compete by shouting louder in a category dominated by significantly bigger brands, the strategy was built around a simple idea: winning by belonging.
Beamish already belonged in Irish pubs, so the campaign didn't need to insert the brand artificially into culture. Instead, it could capture and celebrate the culture in which Beamish was already present.
Working with Onic, the team created an audio-first series recorded inside real Irish pubs, capturing genuine conversations, characters and atmosphere.
There were no recreated studio sound effects. The sounds of glasses, conversations, laughter and the natural atmosphere of pubs including The Oval in Cork and Grogan’s in Dublin became part of the storytelling.
Radio provided scale and cultural familiarity, while digital audio and podcast platforms enabled audiences to spend more time with the content. Social video extended the experience visually without changing its deliberately understated character.
The results demonstrated the level of engagement the approach generated.
Digital audio achieved a 91.8% listen-through rate, while 56% of listeners completed the full six-episode series.
The campaign generated 2.7 million broadcast audio impressions and 1.9 million digital audio impressions, including 1.4 million impressions earned through recommendations on Acast and Apple.
Most importantly, the communications activity was accompanied by strong commercial performance, with Beamish finishing 2025 up 17% year-on-year without increasing distribution.
Three campaigns, one powerful lesson
Seatbelters, Give Us a Steer and If Taps Could Talk couldn't be more different creatively, but all three started in the same place: with a clear human insight.
For Allianz, it was the relationship between music and driving behaviour. For Freenow, it was the unique connection between taxi drivers and their passengers. For Beamish, it was the role of the Irish pub as a place of conversation, community and genuine human connection.
Crucially, audio wasn't simply added to these ideas at the end as a media channel. Audio helped make the ideas possible.
From personalised music and live radio to long-form storytelling and the distinctive sounds of an Irish pub, the three campaigns demonstrated the breadth of what audio can achieve – combining creativity, intimacy, mass reach and cultural relevance with measurable business results.
You can download the presentation deck and view the webinar in full by clicking the buttons below.
