To promote the relaunch of the Slice soda brand, a new pop-up format featuring AI generated music about the beverage has launched on 106.3 K292HC Los Angeles fed by 93.9 KLLI-HD2.
“106.3 Fizz-FM” will operate for the month of June playing music meant to sound like styles from the 1980s and 90s when Slice, then owned by PepsiCo, had its heyday. The relaunched brand, now owned by Suja Life, is now reformulated as a “healthy soda” to compete with brands such as Poppi and Olipop.
The station is branding as “Yesterday’s Pop Hits That Didn’t Exist Until Now” built around a top 40 countdown show hosted by an AI generated personality named “Bev”. AdAge reports that the station comes from agency BarkleyOKRP utilizing AI tools to produce all of the music, imaging, and Bev. The agency’s SVP/Client Experience Julie Ray Barr said, “Slice’s dip into an imaginary past is a way for the brand to burnish its old-school authenticity and plays out across the new product formulation, experiential marketing and merchandise such as trucker hats.”
The 4 watt translator covers parts of Los Angeles centered over the Koreatown and Mid-Wilshire portions of the city. It had been rebroadcasting Korean “Radio Seoul” 1650 KFOX.
INSTANT INSIGHT: It’s great to see a brand and agency use radio, even if it is for a “nostalgia play”. However, everything that was created with AI could easily have been done by actual personalities and artists for not much more in cost and time. The “DJ” has no personality or energy and sounds insincere. It would have been super-easy to cast a real personality or multiple to play the part, who also could’ve been used in other activations associated with this product. An AI personality can’t translate to the real world for events, videos, etc…
I will admit the songs are good and catchy. And perhaps worrisome anyone can use the SunoAI tool it was produced with. To an uniformed ear, you can truly believe the songs really existed. We’re not far off from a song generated using a tool like this charting and getting airplay unless the radio and record industries install safeguards to prevent it.
I would recommend anybody to spend at least a half hour listening to “Fizz-FM” to find new, creative ways to use radio as a marketing tool. But also pay attention to where the AI technology is now and emphasize human talent over it. This pop=up could’ve been great if radio people were involved in making the radio elements as opposed to just the AI.
Ed Robinson
Should have at least worked “Go For Soda” by Kim Mitchell in there as a ringer.
Since all AI of this nature inevitably boils down to theft of creative works … it just furthers the problem.
I listened to about 45 minutes worth of music. I don’t remember hearing anything that recalled any song as clearly as, say, “Blinding Lights” and Rod Stewart’s “Young Turks.” I also didn’t hear anything that I loved as a standalone song in that “Always Coca-Cola” way (especially from that awful early-’90s moment when that jingle was better than 2/3 of the songs on the radio).