Kiss Insight

IF YOU'RE HAPPY AND YOU KNOW IT... 03 August 2011

It’s fair to say that the current Coalition government haven’t had the easiest first year or so in charge. From U Turns to foreign conflicts, dodgy media alliances to economic cuts they’ve had their fair share of trials and tribulations. One of the key things that the tabloid press, in particular, have been keen to criticise David Cameron for is his much vaunted ‘Happiness Index’. This is an on-going £2m a year survey compiled by the Office for National Statistics, the aim of which is to understand what makes us happy, how that is changing over time and how government policies are affecting it. The first wave was released last week after 8 months work, 175 public meetings, talks with more than 7,000 individuals and 34,000 survey responses.

It’s fair to say that most papers weren’t impressed, with the Daily Mail sarcastically saying, ‘Surprise surprise, ... Cameron's £2m a year 'happiness survey' discovers what we all knew: What matters to most Britons is health, family and relationships’ (check out the results here) The report highlighted a, perhaps unsurprising, ‘Happiness Top 5’ consisting of health, family and relationships, work, the environment and education. That seems like a fairly sensible top 5 that most people would agree on (and probably could have suggested themselves without the need for exhaustive questioning and stat gathering). However, although this may like seem a classic case of ‘research stating the obvious’ you can understand the common sense aims of the exercise. The happier the citizen leads to the happier the mood of the nation which leads to greater productivity and spending bringing around a greater economic benefit which leads back to happier citizens - a classic virtuous circle. So with that in mind we thought we thought we’d take a look at happiness in the world of Radio – what makes Radio listeners happy and what makes Kiss listeners, in particular, beam from ear to ear.

The Radio Advertising Bureau recently commissioned  a piece of work with research agency Sparkler to examine happiness in the media and look at the extent to which media exerts a positive influence on the way people feel. They also set out to explore how and when this happens, how it varies by medium and how it affects engagement with advertising. The study is called The Emotional Multiplier. The main part of the survey worked through a very simple, effective methodology - 1,000 respondents with smart phones were sent texted prompts at various parts of the day and week asking them how happy they felt (on a scale of -5 to +5) and how energetic they felt (on a scale of -5 to +5).  They were also asked where they were and which media they were consuming (between TV, Radio and Internet). The RAB then looked at the results comparing scores of those consuming media vs. no media.

They also looked at the number of dayparts in which each medium scored the highest for happiness and energy levels. As you can see, because of Radio’s multiple touch points and connectivity throughout the day, it has the highest influence on happiness and energy in over 70% of dayparts of the week.

The findings were widely reported across the mainstream media to general approval and recognition. These outcomes will come as no surprise to you if you work in the Radio industry (especially when you consider the industry’s record audience figures across all demographics in the last year) but it’s still great to see such authoritative and scientific validation. If you would like to read more about the study, including the RAB’s use of Neuro testing to ascertain the effect of Radio editorial on ad engagement, then please click here.

So we’ve examined the idea that Radio, as a medium, can contribute to your happiness. But what about Kiss listeners specifically, what pushes their buttons? We decided to tackle this question in three ways; looking at Touchpoints quantitative analysis, asking Kiss fans on Facebook and doing some in street vox pops outside our office on Oxford Street.One of the clever things that you can do on Touchpoints (the IPA’s multimedia, time diary database survey) is look at people’s mood by half hour daypart meaning you can isolate the part of the day where people feel happiest or feel lowest. Mood is measured on a scale of 0 (Bad) to 10 (Good). We’ve looked at Kiss listeners on an ‘average day’ Monday to Friday. (The scores relate to however those listeners feel during the day not necessarily to how they feel if they are listening to Kiss at those times.)

 In terms of bad or flat moods it appears that, looking at the people who scored their mood 0-5, the worst part of the day is that first half hour of work 9am-9.30am. 21% of Kiss listeners scored that daypart bad or flat. At the same time only 52% of Kiss listeners are saying that their mood rates a more positive score in the 7-10 range. Whilst people’s moods do appear to get better during the day there is the usual post lunch lull in mood with 17% of people feeling in a bad mood between 2.30pm -3pm. So what about when Kiss listeners feel happiest? It may be stating the obvious but there’s a steep correlation between people’s moods improving and them finishing work! People scoring their mood in the 7-10 range gets past the 70% mark from 5pm and peaks in the 7.30pm-8pm slot. By then they are probably putting their feet up, relaxing after a hard day’s work and dinner is in the oven - that is Kiss listeners’ happiest half hour with 76% of them rating their mood 7-10 out of 10. Similar to the Government’s Happiness research though this seems fairly common sense stuff that would be applicable to most people from all walks of life. We wanted to drill down further into what it actually is that makes Kiss listeners happy to see if there we could find any surprises. Does good weather make them happier than money? Do they value sleep over sex?

The first way we attempted this was via a quick question on Facebook. Charlie from the Breakfast Show posted last Wednesday morning, ‘In three words or less tell us what makes you happy?’

This is obviously far less scientific than the Government’s methodology but captured some good, front of mind, spontaneous responses. In total we got 349 comments with answers ranging from ‘My Mum’ to ‘a cheese sandwich’, with anything and everything inbetween. When we came to code up the answers we saw a lot of similarities with the Government’s findings despite some of the very random and individual answers we got. The top 5 looked like this:

1.Family 2.Friends 3.Kiss 4.My Kids 5.Partner

Whilst it’s nice to see Kiss come in at number three that’s probably to be expected considering these are Kiss listeners commenting on a Kiss status. Family and Friends being 1 and 2 (mirroring the ONS findings) reinforces the idea there are fundamental truisms when it comes to happiness across all age groups. The second tier of answers perhaps better reflects the age of the Kiss listeners with Music, Sun and Sex appearing probably higher up than they might if you spoke to an older audience:

6.Music 7.Sun 8.Money 9.Sex 10.Football 11.Sleep 12.Food 13.Chocolate

Here is a word cloud of all the responses that we got:

Overall though it seems far more about small, emotional triggers that you are in control of that drive mood as opposed to big consumer product status symbols or shifts in Government policy. We’ve done work in the past on what’s important to young people and found that things like mobile phones, computers, big holidays and clothes are hugely important to young people. But it seems that for actual happiness it’s those things that are much simpler, cheaper and closer to home that register more.

This was illustrated by the final piece of work we did on our quest to understand happiness. We sent Katrine, our work experience girl, out on the streets of Oxford Street armed only with a camera, a smile and a portable recorder to ask Kiss listeners what makes them happy. From ‘free will’ to ‘football’, ‘shoes’ to ‘eating a full English at 12pm’ we got a varied set of responses that all talked about the simple things in life that sustain us. Click on play below each picture to reveal each listener's key to happiness...

Anthony

Laura

Robin

Danielle

Robert