When Commercial Radio & Audio (CRA) wanted to push its The Power of Audio brand campaign beyond traditional formats, it turned to Original Audio.
The agency was tasked with showing, not telling, what makes digital audio such a powerful tool for advertisers.
The result was almost 500 different ad variants, each personalised to a listener’s circumstances in real time.
Building personalisation into every ad
For Aaron Matthews, co-founder and creative director at Original Audio, the brief was about proving what audio can do when technology and creativity work in tandem.
He says the idea from CRA and its creative partners set the stage, but it was the execution in dynamic audio that unlocked its potential.
“When the CRA team brought us across The Power of Audio creative idea, we knew that extending it into dynamic audio would give the campaign a whole new dimension,” Matthews explains.
“Four live data signals in every ad and almost 500 potential creative variants may sound like overkill, but it was important for us to maximise the personalisation of the creative and therefore the impact.”
The team built ads that tapped into four live signals – device, location, time of day and weather – so that every listener heard something that felt tailored to their context.
Matthews describes the approach as proof in practice: “Showing is always better than telling and it’s been a joy to be able to use the medium as the message.”
The role of Original Audio
Although CRA developed the overarching The Power of Audio campaign with Thinkerbell, Glue Society and Massive Music, it was Original Audio that translated the creative into dynamic executions.
That meant creating a scalable framework where each ad could change on the fly, reflecting back to listeners the environment they were in.
By weaving data into the storytelling itself, the ads didn’t just claim that audio can be targeted—they demonstrated it in the moment.
That, Matthews says, was the key: using the format to advocate for itself.
A track record in dynamic campaigns
This project is not an outlier for Original Audio. The agency has been carving out a niche in dynamic creative, working on campaigns for Transport for NSW, McDonald’s, Banana Boat and Binge.
Each of these required balancing creative craft with the technical know-how to integrate live data feeds.
The CRA campaign, though, offered something different: a chance to use dynamic creative not for a single brand, but to showcase the potential of the medium itself.
In that sense, it functioned as both an industry demonstration and a client campaign rolled into one.
Positioning for the industry
The Power of Audio sits within CRA’s broader positioning, Where Brands Are Heard, which aims to encourage greater advertiser investment in commercial radio and digital audio.
For Matthews and the Original Audio team, the project underscores how far the medium has come in convincing marketers of its targeting power.
The dynamic executions ran across CRA member networks including LiSTNR (SCA), iHeart (ARN), NOVA Entertainment, Nine Radio and Ace Radio, giving the agency’s work wide exposure across the industry.
By embedding data directly into the creative, Original Audio helped CRA show advertisers what digital audio can deliver – not in a case study after the fact, but in the act of listening itself.