Thursday, June 27, 2013

Mars vs Venus In Country Music Tastes

When listeners take five minutes to express their views on music hooks (thanks to RateTheMusic.com for sharing this data from last week's national test, 25-54), they're not thinking that we're going to parse every percentile, so it's smart not to read too much into one week's test scores.

However, I find it hard not to at least try to draw some possible conclusions.

  1. The biggest hits are the biggest hits regardless of gender.  The best songs win.
  2. Women like more songs and feel more strongly about the ones they do like.
  3. Men are more critical of the songs, loving fewer of them and showing lower levels of positive acceptance on the majority of the songs tested.
  4. Tempo may have a stronger impact on male positives (i.e. Zac Brown Band/Jump, Justin Moore/Point)).
  5. Ballads seemingly work better with women than for the men.  (is that why Eric Church/Jesus, Lady Antebellum/Goodbye and Brantley Gilbert/Miles appears to do better with the females, for example?  Or, is it that women understand the lyrical message better than the guys?)
  6. Six female singers make the male 55% pos+ ranker and five make the female listing, so you can't conclude that men don't like to hear women singers or that women prefer them).
  7. Sheryl Crow/Easy fails to make the top 25 with the women, but does rank better with the men.  Carrie/Again scores more with women than the males, while Gloriana/Shake seems stronger with guys.  Is it their personal image/vocal familiarity or the song driving these differences?
  8. Men don't like songs that flirt with women (Brent Eldredge)?  Yet, if that's true, why does Luke do so well?
What am I missing?  What do you see in your current music tests that's worth pondering?

Wednesday, June 26, 2013

It's Still A Man's (Country Music) World

This isn't the first time I've blogged about how much harder it is for the average new country female singer than it is for a new guy.

The stats remain unchanged again this week, with 88 people being considered for airplay (one in three is a female):

Alaina, Lauren
Aldean, Jason
Allan, Gary
Allen, Joe
Baird, Rob
Bentley, Dierks
Blackberry Smoke
Blazer, Justine
Bradley, Ry
Brice, Lee
Brooks, Kix
Bryan, Luke
Burly Clyde
Calabrese, Kayla
Chesney, Kenny
Clarkson, Kelly
Claypool, Phillip
Clyde, Burly
Crow, Sheryl
Currington, Billy
Dee, Colby
Diffie, Joe
Downday
Ducas, George
Edwards, Trae
Eldridge, Brett
Eli Young Band
Farr, Tyler
Florida Georgia Line
Frazier, Morgan
Gardner, Denae
Gibson, Andy
Gracin, Josh
Grits and Glamour (Tillis/Morgan)
Hayes, Hunter
Henningsons, The
Houser, Randy
Karl & Billy
Keith, Toby
Kershaw, Sammy
Kramer, Jana
Lady Antebellum
Lamb, Rachelle
Lambert, Miranda
Lawrence, Tracy
Lewis, Aaron
Little Big Town
Lockets, The
Love & Theft
Lynae, Rachele
Lynch, Dustin
Lynn, Sherry with Crystal Gayle
Lyons, Elizabeth
McCreery, Scotty
McGraw, Tim
Meade, Robin
Moore, Justin
Morgan, Craig
Musgraves, Kacey
Nail, David
Nichols, Joe
Outshyne
Paslay, Eric
Patin, Rick
Pickler, Kellie
Pope, Cassadee
Rhett, Thomas
Ross, Andy
Sawyer Brown
Scott, Dylan
Sebastian, Gwen
Stapleton, Chris
Sturgeon, Jason
Swift, Taylor
Taylor, Kayla
Thompson Square
Tudeen, Logan
Uncle Kracker
Underwood, Carrie
Urban, Keith
VanHoy, Christine
Watson. Aaron
Weeks, Hanna Michelle
White, Jimmy
Wilson, Gretchen
Young, Chris
Zac Brown Band 

...and yet only one of the ten best testing titles - two if you could Taylor and Tim's duet - and three  - or four if you include the duet - of the top 20 is by a woman (Rate The Music national 25-54 averages):


It's not fair, but it's a fact:  it's still much, much harder for women to score well with country radio's audience.

Tuesday, June 25, 2013

Your Heart And Your Skin On Too Many Commercial Units

Fire up your printer.  I am about to share a study with you that you're going to want to keep in your top desk drawer.

But, first, a quick tip of the hat to two academics, Dave Allan and Rob Potter.

Back in 1997, Dr. Allan published “Comparative Effectiveness of 30- Versus 60-Second Radio Commercials on Recall and Rate,” in the Journal of Radio Studies.

Two years later Dr. Potter replicated the findings using heart response and galvanic skin testing.

For example, here's what your heart looks like on too many commercial units:


Potter notes that general managers and sales managers in the wake of Clear Channel's "less is more" initiatives which started almost a decade ago now "may be tempted to double the number of commercial units while keeping the overall duration of their advertising breaks consistent." 

This study investigates the effects of such a decision on listener perceptions of advertising clutter and engagement to persuasive messages in the commercial breaks and the results document that the number of units matters.

To put it scientifically:  "Automatic orienting brings the listeners back to the task of processing the message, and because the message is new, they spend at least a brief amount of time processing it in order to make sense of it.  Therefore, it is expected that in the early portion of a commercial break, having more, and shorter commercials will increase cognitive effort spent on the processing of the advertising break. However, it also follows that each time a listener orients to the onset of a new commercial (recognized through the presence of an entirely new announcer, perhaps new music, and new semantic content) it increases an awareness of how many sequential commercials to which they were exposed.  As awareness that the number of sequential commercials is increasing and reaching a total that is quite high, media users may become more likely to tune out. If the physical ability to tune out is not available, listeners may mentally disengage from processing the persuasive messages."

The next time your boss comes into your office asking you to add units, toss this phrase back in their face "Lang’s Limited Capacity Model of Motivated Mediated Message Processing."

And, if that doesn't drive them away, click on this pdf of Potter's 2009 research and tell them not to come back until they've studied it thoroughly.

Finally, if they still don't get the point that adding units drives listeners away, you can show them what your skin response looks like on too many irritants ... like their harmful requests to add units!

Monday, June 24, 2013

San Diego Jayebitrons Are In And AM-FM Radio Wins By Many Miles

Sometimes multiple data points all appear to converge, calling out for back-of-napkin research.  Your humble correspondent is delighted to do the math for you.

Blogger Jennifer Lane points to an "interesting new study by GroupM Next comparing broadcast and internet radio listeners. (GroupM Next is the “forward thinking, innovation unit” of GroupM, the largest conglomerate of Ad Agencies in the world. The unit studies consumer use of new platforms and provides insight to agencies on usage of such.) 
Earbuds
"The study reveals several positive facts about the Internet radio audience. The average age of an Internet radio listener is 34 years old versus the average age of a broadcast radio listener which is 47 years old. Since the average income was found to be similar in both groups, the Internet radio audience is more affluent given their substantially younger age.


"86% of Internet radio listeners listen to free services and have never paid to listen. They don’t mind ads, and don’t try to avoid them, and are twice as inclined to make a purchase after hearing an ad. In fact, 29% of Internet radio listeners have purchased something they heard advertises, versus 14% of broadcast radio listeners."


Today's Inside Radio reports on a Hivio San Diego presentation by Triton Digital chief strategy officer Patrick Reynolds who said the the entire San Diego market had Average Active Sessions of 5,126 people during the month of May.  The number was about twice that — around 9,500 — during the primetime 6am-8pm daypart.  

That is when I got the napkin out.
  • Say that in an average quarter hour in San Diego roughly 15% of all people are listening to AM-FM radio.  That would be a napkin-calculated average persons of about 354,000.
  • Assume that 90% of the total population of San Diego cumes a radio station at least once in an average week.  That would put the total cume persons using AM-FM radio in an average week at 2.1 million.
Five to ten thousand people vs 354,000, let alone 2.1 million????

Is there any wonder why terrestrial radio is only billing 5-7% of its total revenues from interactive?

No wonder online ad rates are so low.  No one's listening, if you believe my trusty napkin.

Hey, you "forward-thinking innovators:"  caveat emptor!
 
Triton Digital chief strategy officer Patrick Reynolds said the San Diego market had Average Active Sessions of 5,126 people during the month of May.  The number was about twice that — around 9,500 — during the primetime 6am-8pm daypart.   Two-thirds of the sessions were for Pandora, with the remaining third divvied up among all other webcasts, including FM/AM streams.  That portion of the pie is cut into extremely narrow slices — Triton says San Diego residents divided their listening up among 4,754 different stations, including many from outside the market. “They’re listening to a lot of local traditional radio stations online,” Reynolds noted, saying server log data shows stations from markets all over the country showing up.
Triton was also able to detect listening on 60 different devices, including smartphones, gaming consoles and desktop units like Sonos.  “It’s kind of complicated but you have to be in all the places that your people are if you want that audience,” Reynolds said.
He also noted that while about 80% of Pandora listening occurs on a mobile device, most radio groups pull in fewer than 50% of their users that way.  It’s why Reynolds thinks Pandora listening levels are so much higher than for everyone else.  “They’re where people are and they’re getting a big audience,” he said.
- See more at: http://www.insideradio.com/Article.asp?id=2667778&spid=32061#.UciFYYXtjJM
Triton Digital chief strategy officer Patrick Reynolds said the San Diego market had Average Active Sessions of 5,126 people during the month of May.  The number was about twice that — around 9,500 — during the primetime 6am-8pm daypart.   Two-thirds of the sessions were for Pandora, with the remaining third divvied up among all other webcasts, including FM/AM streams.  That portion of the pie is cut into extremely narrow slices — Triton says San Diego residents divided their listening up among 4,754 different stations, including many from outside the market. “They’re listening to a lot of local traditional radio stations online,” Reynolds noted, saying server log data shows stations from markets all over the country showing up.
Triton was also able to detect listening on 60 different devices, including smartphones, gaming consoles and desktop units like Sonos.  “It’s kind of complicated but you have to be in all the places that your people are if you want that audience,” Reynolds said.
He also noted that while about 80% of Pandora listening occurs on a mobile device, most radio groups pull in fewer than 50% of their users that way.  It’s why Reynolds thinks Pandora listening levels are so much higher than for everyone else.  “They’re where people are and they’re getting a big audience,” he said.
- See more at: http://www.insideradio.com/Article.asp?id=2667778&spid=32061#.UciFYYXtjJM

Saturday, June 22, 2013

Digging Deeper, Unearthing Better News

My blog last week (Country Fans & Republicans) reflecting on the headline of researcher Mark Kassof's latest national "Listener Think" study (Country Fans: Born This Way?) and the fact that after all the great new country music of the last five years the largest group of our listeners proved to be what seems like the same folks who have been listening all their lives made me feel a bit like Reince Priebus, Karl Rove, Ralph Reed, Frank Luntz and other leaders of the Grand Ole Party who are juggling expectations of a life-long-loyal core with their own hopes, attempting to grow their pie.

I took solace in the latest CMA Insider Panel research showing how active, youthful and family-oriented our users are, but also asked Mark to crunch his numbers to see what was there below the headline picked up last week by the trades. 

He was kind enough to do so:


Some observations on his data from Kassof:

    •    RAISED ON/GREW UP WITH IT is #1 with both younger and older country fans.
    •    Younger country fans are more motivated by RELATES TO ME/MY LIFE, REAL/TRUE/HONEST and SOOTHING/CALMING/RELAXING than the older group.
    •    Older country fans are more motivated by UNDERSTAND THE WORDS, LIKE THE SOUND and >THAN/DIS OTHERS (translation: like it more than or dislike other genres) than the younger group.
    •    Men are more motivated by RAISED ON/GREW UP WITH IT  (30%!) and RELATES TO ME/MY LIFE than women.
    •    RAISED ON/GREW UP WITH IT  still ties for #1 with women.  Women are more motivated by TELLS A STORY/STORIES, UNDERSTAND THE WORDS and SOOTHING/CALMING/RELAXING than men.

As strong as country radio's ratings are, it still has more room to grow by leveraging the music's relatability and power to keep building appeal among men and younger listeners.

Thursday, June 20, 2013

Unpleasant Truths + Solid Advice From A Friend Of Radio

Yesterday in San Diego Mark Ramsey and a diverse group of new media experts presented eight hours of advice for radio, starting with this stat:  the majority of radio listeners asked to "agree" or "disagree" with the statement "Radio brands create unique and compelling content" disagreed.

After shaking his audience up with data showing a long decline in radio's total average quarter audience which has been trending down since a peak in 1983. the researcher delivered a passionate prescription for what radio needs to do to defend against emerging new music choices.

Take a few hours to watch the entire day's Google+ Meet Up session.  It will be time well-spent.  But, at the very least start watching the You Tube morning session at 16:00 (the first 15:00 is video of people arriving).  I predict that you will not be bored.


See comments from the crown in attendance at https://twitter.com/hivioSD.

Tuesday, June 18, 2013

Country Fans & Republicans

  • “I’ve been a Republican all my life." - Phyllis Schlafly
  • "Raised on it/Grew up with it." - one of five of the 121 who named country as their preference of 805 18-64′s nationwide on WHY IS COUNTRY YOUR FAVORITE KIND OF MUSIC TO LISTEN TO ON RADIO? when questioned by Researcher Mark Kasoff
This poll came out yesterday just as news of the Faith and Freedom Coalition's "Road to the Majority Conference" chairman Ralph Reed calling on Republicans to learn how not "to preach to the choir," but rather make the message spread also hit my browser.

We've been hearing these comments on both our music and many of our core listeners' vaues for 30 years.

Maybe it's because 18-64 is too wide a swath to accurately reflect what Roadmap 2013 and rating trends across North American are documenting, but as Mike O'Malley said after seeing Kasoff's report "nothing about exciting new acts, nothing about how the format has evolved, nothing about the powerful younger demo growth?"

Fortunately, another new research study on country music partisans also just came out yesterday from the CMA:

The latest member-only research tracking the country music "Insider's Panel" by the Country Music Associations research department shows a young, active, well-educated group of country fans lead active, busy, youthful family oriented lives.

Top single-day family activities include going to the movies, attending a concert or music festival, and visiting family entertainment centers. 

To grow a country brand:  don't be like Republicans.

Be like Disneyland.

Monday, June 17, 2013

The Ribbon On Top? Or, The Contents?

The history of call signs for radio around the world is, to say the very least, fascinating.

Until just a few years ago, in Canada, a commercial broadcaster was not even required to say the legal calls, perhaps because the privately owned commercial broadcast stations use primarily CF and CH through CK. 

So, you don't see anywhere near as many radio stations using just their four letters in their branding.

In the USA, Arbitron's diary asks first for call letters and only after that for dial setting and, third, "station name."  So, as long as diaries are the rating measurement tool, it pays to ingrain your listeners to write that down to be sure you don't lose any listening credit.

With PPM measurement, they don't even need to know your brand name.  They just have to actually use you.

It's axiomatic that every product needs a unique "position" that clearly exists in the mind of the consumer and they also must have an identity to link it with so they can remember where it's located and tell their friends about it.

There was a time when every new country station wanted to be Frogs.  Then, came Cats.  Now, the current flavor of the month appears to be "Bull."

Just how important is it to have "the proper, freshest, brand" (whatever that is) and "the correct position statement for today" (many stations change theirs annually, which leaves listeners confused and often remembering only the original one even from very long ago)?

I learned some lessons about this from three places where I worked.

In the 1970's I was OM of Buck Owens' KUZZ/Bakersfield. which listeners often called "cuz" no matter how much we only used the letters K-U-Z-Z on air.

Then, I went to "Radio KEEN" in San Jose where again I wanted to avoid what seems like a dated 50's word and so we never said "keen," and always used the four letters.  The vast majority of listeners never parroted our letters back to us, preferring to call the station "Radio KEEN," which drove me nuts.  

Finally, in the early 1980's I found myself at what listeners termed "Compass," in spite of the fact that the station had only used K-M-P-S for many years before my arrival as PD.  I'd bet that the current team at the station still hear that dated brand from the folks using it now.

What I learned:

Your brand and position are not words that you can "educate" listeners to adopt.  Those things are just the ribbon on top of the package and yet if you happen to be marketing or creating a product that a already possesses a positive name and message, deeply ingrained, don't fight them.  Creating a powerful identity takes a long time and can be extremely expensive.  Undoing an existing strong one can be next to impossible.
  • There is a reason that the word "content" lives inside the word "contents."
  • What listeners love that you do is your brand.  How and when they use you is your position, not a lovely logo typeface or costumed mascot.
Market those things.

Saturday, June 15, 2013

They Always Say They Want Less Repetition

During the CRS 2013 session "PPM: 5 Strategies for Recall Markets" (an idea and data-packed session well worth buying the CD for if you missed it) both Jeff Garrison and Scott Huskey agreed it's almost impossible to overplay the biggest hits.

This isn't the first time I've written about this, but it's worth revisiting since "too much repetition" remains a consistent complaint from country radio listeners.

Using Pinnacle Media's "Online Tracker" here's how a typical station's ultra core heavy users responded this week as they were asked after hearing a song hook whether they wanted to hear every current the station was playing "more" or "less," when ranked by the highest "play less" scores in the test:


If you hear "too much repetition" from the folks who listen to your station an hour a day or more, I think that what they are really saying is that the don't like some of the songs you play.

High passion + low dislike = songs they want to hear more!

Thursday, June 13, 2013

Passions, Positives, Or?

Billboard and Bullseye Callout perform a valuable service each week for the many radio stations with no access to any other means of getting listener feedback on music.

One of the first things I check out each week is the national callout data:


And, later in the week, it's an email-driven survey to radio station database members:


It would be wonderful if every radio station could do this themselves each week and A&O&B clients know that we do a lot to try to help make that happen for them, knowing that fewer and fewer stations are given budgets for it which is why the national ones are so helpful as a way to compare spin ranks to audience popularity, essential to know before maintaining local music categories.

A little trick on myself which I like to play once I have the latest stats in hand is to cover up the titles and artist names and evaluate each song just using the numbers.

In this example, ranked by positive, the strength of #2 is understated looking only at that one number.  After all 16% more people LOVE it with roughly equal "it's OK" percentages and total negatives of 9.6% vs 5.6% when compared to the high-ranked tune when you fail to consider all of the cross tabs.  For A&O&B, passion is a more important data point than merely positives.  Strong dislike and negative burn ("I'd change stations if it came on the radio") are also very powerful deciders.  If you don't have access to a "a favorite, I'd turn on the radio if it came on" number, I'd want to rank, at the very least, on net positives so as to look at polarity in one number.

Even more crucial and not available in these national averages is targeting information for your station. 
  • What is your narrow demo?  
  • What is your primary and secondary age target? 
  • What percentage of men and women in each one?  
Those are the most important things to know of them all.

Just because something is beloved by record buyers or music down loaders, doesn't mean that your precise target listeners feel the same way about it.

There's only one way to be certain:  ask them. 

Then, "slice, dice and crunch" away, until you do know for sure.

Wednesday, June 12, 2013

How Much Is Too Much?

My picture appeared in my high school yearbook over the caption, "I wonder if he thinks...as much as he talks..." (another in a continuing series of Jay Trachman treasures)

I never bought that yearbook, but today, decades later, I know they were onto something...

I listen to an aircheck and I know instantly that h/she talks too much.

He goes from one thought to another, with a few diversions along the way, like a map-less tourist in the general area of what she's trying to say.   I have to play the tape twice before I can figure out his point. By then, I can hear her PD saying, "Just shut up and play the music already!"

I hired a new secretary and she talked too much. She babbled happily on and on and at first I thought it was entertaining. Then I realized her chatter masked a serious problem: she didn't listen. It reminded me of the old joke about how, for a teenager, the opposite of talking isn't listening, it's waiting to talk.

I have a relative who talks too much.

"How are you?" is an invitation to tell you, in the greatest detail, about everything she's done or thought for the past few days, without regard to whether or not you're interested. If you try and divert the conversation, she'll listen politely until you come to the end of a thought (or stop for a breath) and then pick up with, "But anyway..." As though your comments were an interruption. She knows they call her "motor-mouth." She doesn't let on if she minds; she even jokes about it.

And then does it again.

I talk too much. I'm the typical "Ask me what time it is; I'll tell you how to build a watch"... I enjoy talking; I delight in conveying my knowledge and opinions to anyone who seems interested...

Unfortunately, sometimes they aren't nearly as interested as I think they are...

Why do some of us "talk too much"? Is there a common thread running through us? How much talk is "too much," and how can you tell when you get there?

I suspect there's a defensiveness that runs through us talkers; it's as though, while we're talking, we're controlling the situation. If we stop, others may take over. It was clearest to me with the new secretary I had to let go after a week on the job. Ask her a question, she'd reply obliquely, as if she only talked on her own agenda. Bring her back to the question, and she'd take you away from it again until you practically had to grab her by the collar -- verbally -- and say, "Here is the question. Now answer it, for God's sake!"

My relative is that way, to a lesser extent. When she's talking, the room is in her thrall. She is controlling. She relinquishes control grudgingly, and only for as long as necessary. Her performing is a means of dominating. She is - in some strange sense - attempting to entertain...

What these observations in myself and others implies is that we tend to talk, not for the benefit of Sharing with others, but to control. To control ourselves, the people around us, our universe. When we're talking, we feel secure.

So what's wrong with that? What's the common mistake all of us talkers make?

I'll tell you: we forget about the needs, wishes and interests of the ones we're talking to.

Other people become mere dots in a carefully crafted constellation; foils, objects, targets of what we must do to maintain our security. Well, if your foil is the family member who would sooner die than allow you to think he's rejecting you, you're more or less safe. If the object is your boss and he's already tried to warn you that you're talking yourself out of a job, then maybe you've been doing this so long that you've forgotten how to stop. And if it's your listener you're babbling at - guess what? He or she has buttons on the radio!

The moral of this little insight? That talking -- for all people, but especially for we who do it for a living -- must always be measured against whom the talking is for and how they are likely respond to it.

How much talking is too much?

One word more than you are certain your listener will be interested in hearing.

Tuesday, June 11, 2013

Hey, I Have An Idea: Let's All Run Nashville-Based Morning Shows!

... And, Blair makes five: (click to hear Radio Ink's interview with Garner)

Premiere and Cumulus are awaiting your call.  They each have two of them.

Before you pick up the phone, a bit of history, thanks to the lengthy career of the amazing Gerry House who was syndicated by Premiere in 1993.

The show initially attracted an impressive list of large markets, but lasted in syndication for less than a year.

Two theories, since the show was, as usual for The House Foundation, filled with budding stars and Gerry's amazing creativity and humor:
  1. A February Nashville ice storm paralyzed the city and there were limited opportunities to talk about it as much as the local, live competition did in real time.  That Winter book was down for WSIX after a very long reign at the top of the rankers for House.  After refocusing on the local community only, Gerry House and his team were back at #1 the next book.
  2. Affiliate station ratings were also disappointing, and many stations that cleared it (I happened to work with Denver's at the time) reported that their listeners didn't understand the Music City-centric content, choosing instead to listen to the local, live country station which had more to do with their values and info needs.
Maybe things are different now?  What do you think?

Monday, June 10, 2013

Audiences Up, Revenues Down

A reoccurring theme that's been happening as I visit radio stations:  someone brings up morale and cites the fact that their company mandated across the board staff pay cuts after the financial collapse of 2007-2008, complaining that those reductions have still not been restored.

As a partner in a small business that has grown in that difficult environment, I always try to explain the economy and help them understand what a huge toll the downturn continues to take on everyone except the very highest earners.

The more specific and detailed I get, I see eyes glaze over.  I suppose that's why Thomas Carlyle called economics the dismal science.

For that reason, I want to congratulate Country Aircheck in their annual June print edition for again tabbing country format ratings and revenues for three pages of charts/trends for the last decade from BIA/Kelsey (click for an invitation to their latest webinar on the subject) even down to specific dollar and audience share data on 274 country radio stations and 17 group owners.

I worry that those pages, which explain it all in undeniable numbers, will be the least read section of the always-fascinating publication.

If you care about your career future and the state of American business, start with this chart but really spend some time with the numbers of stations you know a lot about.

We are not out of the woods yet and if you think it's only your radio station that is affected in this way, make a visit to your local Chamber Of Commerce, a trusted realtor or hometown bank manager.

Saturday, June 08, 2013

You Already Have A Smartphone App. It's Free. It's Twitter.

Of course, if your station is fortunate enough to have your own smart phone app, that's terrific, but really the only important function your own app has (hopefully) is an alarm which awakes your listener first thing in the morning to your stream.

And, of course, they have to download and install it.

For the majority of your audience who don't know what podcasts are and will never download a radio station app...


Thanks, Holland Cooke, for sharing so many actionable ideas in your Talkers 2013 presentation last week (click to watch it).

And, yes, I am going to Tweet this post.

Thursday, June 06, 2013

2013 Radio Mercury Award Winners

114 radio spots and campaigns made it to the finals of the 2013 Radio Mercury Awards, which honors outstanding radio created by advertising agencies, production companies, radio stations and students.

Entries were judged on their creativity, originality and effective communication of a brand’s message.

Click to listen to many of the winners and finalists
Target was named the marketer of the year by the Radio Mercury judges.  “We’ve been focused on the use of audio as a channel and how that can build up storytelling from our video components and our other experiential marketing and think about how that can extend a broader story and at the same time we’re very successful at using it to drive big traffic moments and high-frequency celebrations like Black Friday.”   - Target/Haworth Marketing + Media Director of Media Strategy Melissa Schoenke

Target spent $18.6 million on national radio in 2012 according to Kantar Media, and that figure is likely to grow in 2013 according to today's Inside Radio.

Barton F. Graf 9000 created the ad for Ragu pasta sauce which won the $50,000 grand prize.

Bill Cimino, chief creative officer, Y&R Midwest was chief judge for this year’s Radio Mercury Award and is a three-time winner himself for his work on the highly-decorated “Real Men of Genius” campaign for Bud Light on radio:  “There’s no other medium that if you have a bad idea that it is illuminated so fast.  You can’t hide behind pretty pictures and production values.  It’s theater of the mind and you know rather quickly if you have something special."

Wednesday, June 05, 2013

Recency and Satisfaction

Edison Research's Tom Webster:
Among Country format P1s who shopped in the previous 24 hours, 61 percent reported listening to AM/FM radio just prior to arriving at the store; this is higher than average compared to 49 percent of Americans age 12+. 

Here's the chart from his presentation that turned my frown upside down, though:


To learn more, Arbitron clients can download the full Country format P1s presentation free of charge from Arbitron at my.arbitron.com.

Previous studies, including the full Infinite Dial 2013 study, may be downloaded free of charge from Edison Research here and also via the Arbitron website at www.arbitron.com.

Tuesday, June 04, 2013

Defining Today's Success, From Salt Lake City

KSL PD Kevin LaRue's want ad in today's Inside Radio has some great advice for all of us:

  •  Produce at a blistering pace
  •  Crackle with excitement
  •  Perform in a creative, upbeat contemporary style
  •  Execute precisely during high-pressure