Radio Zu
Mihai Morar
Founding Member & Host
Who is ZU today?
I think ZU has changed a bit, and what’s really cool is that the final result, just today after finishing the morning show, I looked at the ZU logo and it seems to fit just as well in 2024 as it did in 2008 when you designed it. Back then, we didn’t know, but this radio, TV particle attached to the stations of that time almost doesn’t matter today. Radio is no longer just an FM station, a frequency. Radio is very much on social media. It’s very much in the streets, and that’s what we wanted from day one, and we remained a radio. We put the fan in the street, so to speak. As you can see here in this presentation. And if you take out the radio and leave ZU, it speaks anywhere, and many times, for example, at our big concerts at Forza ZU, we only have the volumetric letters Z and U, and no matter how we place them, they speak for themselves. So it’s very cool that you designed this logo with the idea that radio would slowly disappear. Now, for example, we want to move, and we decided that the logo we will put up will be without radio. So practically, you did a kind of IKEA job. It’s modular; I can remove a part, like the frequency, for example, because back then, I can’t show you now, but in 2008 it was ZU, it was radio, and on one side was the frequency at 89 FM. I think we stopped using the frequency very shortly after, and slowly, slowly, we are moving away from radio while keeping radio in our DNA.
What brought success to the ZU brand?
The fact that we didn’t necessarily follow a recipe. We didn’t have time to follow a recipe because any recipe, if you open a cookbook, starts with the ingredients. We didn’t have time to go through all that. We had to start cooking and launching the radio. Very important was that we didn’t skip steps. That is, branding and marketing mattered a lot to us, and maybe less this recipe of how to make a radio, and even today we don’t make radio by a recipe, except for the musical playlist which is studied, made following market research, even weekly, apart from that, it’s free.
You became leaders in Bucharest six months after the launch….
Six months after the radio launch, at the first results where Radio ZU was measured in the studio, we were number one in Bucharest.
Why is it important to invest in branding?
Well, I think everyone knows their story. But the most important thing is that if you know your story and you’re convinced it’s the best story on the market or it’s a story that makes a difference, it doesn’t mean that the world has to be aware, open to your story, and embrace it entirely from the next day after you launched the product. If your story doesn’t resonate with the public, if it’s not bought by people, it doesn’t mean it’s the people’s fault. They are bombarded with information anyway. The offer is so large in radio and in whatever field you want, podcasts, and not just in media, that if people don’t buy your story, you need to change the way you tell your story. It means you’re not telling it right. Even if it’s the best story on the market, not everyone has to know it. It’s a lot about perception. You have to change people’s perception.
A definition of the branding process?
Well, I think that’s it. It’s more than the cover of the story; it’s the whole structure of the story. When a writer starts writing a book, the best novelists in the world already have the structure in mind. Then, of course, the story itself follows. When you have the structure, when you have the branding manual, it’s very easy to write the story afterward. And you know, many times we went back to this initial image, this visual board of the radio. And even if sometimes we strayed from it, 15 years have passed in which radio has changed, the market has changed. We have changed. When I launched Radio ZU, I wasn’t a father. My daughters were born a month after the piglet story with the fan and ZU. Now they are high school students. It’s normal to be different, and our tone of voice has changed, the voice has matured. Everything is different, but what hasn’t changed is somehow this state of freedom to make radio. Even if it’s called radio, or you listen to it on a radio device, or you listen to it on a mobile device.
What does an “untrodden path” mean for Radio ZU?
At that time, to make our way into the market, I think it was best this way. Everyone was doing radio by the book. There were many good radio people. We tried to cut this radio thing, as we cut radio from ZU and just be people, not necessarily make radio, but give a vibe to the listeners. Not necessarily to do something else, because things have been done since then and there will always be someone who will do something better, crazier, wittier than you. But to enter the market back then, we had to do things in a way that hadn’t been done by others before.
How much money does the shirt on you make?
I don’t know. Maximum 10 euros, I think. But finding it was much more costly. It seems to me that the hardest thing to find today is simple things. For example, I would create a brand called The Perfect White T-shirt. And this is the perfect white t-shirt. But until I got to a t-shirt that costs less than 10 euros, I also bought t-shirts up to 100 euros. But this is the perfect white t-shirt. And when I find it, I get 10. 10 white, 10 black at least.
Are you a proponent of the unbranding trend?
That is if you don’t look at the sneakers on my feet, which are branded with Cool and Simple, and which I received as a birthday gift, and of course, at an interview about branding, I had to wear them for the first time, after a few months.
It’s a gift that was also worked on. It’s manufactured, made by an artist. I understand that the trend is “quiet luxury,” meaning it’s somehow expensive, but not loud, something like that. I don’t know, I’m a fan of black and white. For example, in the podcast, in all the episodes, I dress, with few exceptions where I wear a white t-shirt, in all the episodes I’m in a black t-shirt.
Are you seeking minimalism?
Not necessarily, but somehow I need all this noise from my profession. I somehow need a kind of minimalism that I can’t easily find in my life. I would like it to be in the house or to come home to a minimalist place, but you can’t. With three kids of different ages with toys in the middle of the house. So somehow, when you’re in an extreme of chaos, of disorder, and a house that has life with many kids, it’s chaos in all harmony because otherwise, there’s no harmony. But you have to aim for minimalism. And then somehow I try to make a corner in the house, I try to make, I don’t know… to look for, in vacations for example, hotels that have simpler lines, colors that don’t agitate you, and so on.
What memories do you have from 15 years ago?
I don’t know when you last were in an emergency room or an ER, Emergency Reception Unit. Because from when we shook hands to make a new radio until we launched the radio, there were two months in which we had to find a team, we had to find a name, we had to find a headquarters, we had to make a radio studio, we had to knock down some walls, have a team, and do branding in all this madness. Fortunately, in all this madness of an emergency room, we somehow had a clear mind and said, “branding is very important.” And after finding the name, I think this identity was very important. Not just the visual identity of ZU, because branding is not just visual identity, especially for a radio. At a radio, it has to sound good, it has to look good too. If it can also be felt beyond audio and video.
