The Newbury Building Society radio campaign delivered exceptional reach and engagement, connecting with target audiences across Berkshire, Hampshire, Oxfordshire, and Surrey through a highly targeted audio strategy. With smart speaker optimisation and precision location targeting, the campaign showcased how audio can build brand trust and drive awareness for financial products in key local markets.
About the Client
Founded in 1856, Newbury Building Society is a trusted, member-owned financial institution serving communities across southern England. Known for its customer-first approach, Newbury Building Society offers a range of savings, mortgages, and investment products, prioritising personal service and community connection over corporate scale.
About the Campaign
In partnership with Bauer Media, the Newbury Building Society radio campaign ran from 10th September to 19th October 2025, across a range of local and regional audio platforms. The focus was to increase awareness and consideration for Newbury’s savings products among an ABC1 audience aged 55+.
The campaign was strategically designed to deliver messages during optimal listening times and on devices most likely to reach the target demographic — particularly smart speakers, which accounted for the majority of delivered impressions.
About the Audio Campaign
The Audio XI platform was used to deliver a highly targeted and data-driven radio campaign. By leveraging Bauer’s audio network and programmatic delivery, the campaign reached audiences in over 90 postcode areas, including key locations such as Newbury (RG14), Reading (RG1), Oxford (OX1), and Guildford (GU1).
The ad creative was designed to be engaging, authentic, and on-brand — reflecting Newbury Building Society’s approachable tone and community-driven ethos. It positioned Newbury as a local institution that values the trust and loyalty of its members, while subtly reinforcing its expertise in savings solutions.
The Brief
Newbury Building Society approached Bauer Media with a clear objective:
- Increase awareness of its savings products among a key regional demographic.
- Drive consideration for Newbury as a local, trusted financial partner.
- Leverage digital audio to ensure maximum precision and measurable impact.
The Message
At the heart of the Newbury Building Society radio campaign was a simple but powerful message:
“Trust a local building society that’s been helping people save and invest for generations.”
The ad celebrated Newbury’s community roots, credibility, and personal approach, using warm, reassuring voiceovers and relatable scenarios to build emotional resonance with listeners.
Music In
MVO:
Think all savings providers are the same?
Think again.
At Newbury Building Society we offer a range of accounts and award-winning service, online and in branches near you.
No bots. Not call centre runarounds.
Just open doors and real people, ready to help you save.
Want more from your savings?
Visit your local branch or newbury.co.uk.
Newbury Building Society: proud winners of Britain’s Best Building Society Savings Provider 2025
The Solution
Bauer Media’s creative and strategic teams collaborated closely with Newbury to:
- Develop a compelling concept aligned with the brand’s tone and goals.
- Script, produce, and deliver an engaging audio spot optimised for radio and smart speakers.
- Deploy through Audio XI, Bauer’s intelligent audio platform, ensuring:
- Geographically targeted delivery across high-affinity postcodes.
- Real-time optimisation to maintain high listen-through rates.
- Balanced frequency to maximise recall without listener fatigue.
The smart speaker-first strategy proved particularly effective, aligning with audience listening habits and home-based media consumption patterns.
Success Measures
The Newbury Building Society radio campaign achieved outstanding performance metrics:
- Delivered Impressions: 321,449 (exceeding the booked 321,429)
- Listen Through Rate (LTR): 99.59% — indicating almost every listener heard the ad in full.
- Unique Users (Reach): 29,595 listeners across the target postcodes.
- Top Device: Smart Speakers — demonstrating effective adaptation to modern listening behaviour.
These results highlight the efficiency and precision of digital audio advertising when executed with strong creative and data-led targeting.
Summary
The Newbury Building Society radio campaign exemplified the power of localised audio advertising. Through precise targeting, authentic messaging, and seamless collaboration, Newbury achieved exceptional engagement and brand uplift in key markets.
As the client put it:
“Working with Harry, Emily, Amanda, and the rest of the team at Bauer has been brilliant from start to finish. They came up with the goods – starting with an excellent pitch that showed great understanding of our brand and what we were trying to get across to the audience. They followed this up with engaging, on-brand creative which we all loved. Throughout the campaign they were responsive, helpful, and approachable. We look forward to working with them again in the future and would wholeheartedly recommend the team to others.”
This partnership demonstrates how creativity, collaboration, and technology can deliver measurable results — and how the Newbury Building Society radio campaign made a sound investment in connecting with local audiences.