We had a great Albion Society on Wednesday evening, with Clive Dickens and Chris Lawson of Absolute Radio.
As regular readers will know, the ‘Society is a forum where we invite entrepreneurs to talk to Albion staff, client and friends about what makes them tick.
Clive and Chris led a fascinating conversation about what motivates them, how they came to takeover Virgin Radio, and gave us some real insight into their back story and their ambitions for Absolute.
Some of the highlights were:
- Clive’s story about deciding to buy Virgin Radio when he accidentally drove past Richard Branson’s Oxfordshire home in January.
- Learning that Clive and his partners had been exploring opportunities in India, or partnerships with Indian companies, for years previously. A far cry from the oversimple ‘the Indians take over another British company’ story that the media tell.
- Chris’s background in online community marketing, whether for charities or Bauer, and the different perspective it gives him on what the Absolute brand needs to be, and how it needs to behave.
- Their simple measure of success: “If we’re still a radio brand in 12 months then we’ve failed”.
“Very energising” is the consensus from the people who were there. The Absolute story continues to build and build. we’re delighted to be part of the journey. We didn’t even mind missing the Keane gig they’d invited us to on the same night!
We’ll post some video highlights of the talk here soon.
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