Making A (Position) Statement

Is your "position" in your market what you say it is?

Legendary programmer, manager and consultant Neil Gallagher told RBR a story a couple year ago about a battle in Las Vegas which answers that question:

There once was an A/C station that dominated their major market.  They had the best music images in the city. They were well known for presenting the grandest, most desirable contests and promotions with the most expensive and desirable prizes.  They had the highest rated morning show with the city’s most popular radio personalities.  They had an enormous database of at-work listeners that they worked religiously. They were the area’s dominate television and outdoor advertiser, presenting creative messages that tested extremely well in focus groups and articulated their benefits creatively and succinctly and in an extremely entertaining fashion.  They had the most aggressive street presence in the city, appearing at virtually every event in the entire region with an imposing fleet of stunning vehicles.  They owned the weather and traffic information images with their helicopters in the air, immense cellular phone reporter network and the market’s top television station’s popular, experienced and attractive weather reporter appearing frequently throughout every hour of the morning show.  They were the poster child for being a wildly successful, dominate radio station. 

They had very deep pockets allowing them to fend off any attack someone might contemplate. But they also had one very small “Achilles Heel” – a lack of strict discipline in music programming.

They were not alone in the format as there was a relatively new-to-the-format station in town that was very strategically oriented – and more disciplined. 

Both stations used extensive strategic research.  Both stations played similar “Power” and “Secondary” songs. Both played “Lunar” rotation songs for variety. It was this third category that was the narrow point of attack for their competitor.  Both stations had different philosophies on how to present Lunar songs: the dominate station would play the newer releases they thought everyone would enjoy and a wider variety of gold that received less airplay over the years while their new competitor played songs that were well established from considerable air play over the years.  Most radio station music programmers were tired of hearing these songs as they have been played to death in the minds of the music directors and they rationalized that listeners felt the same way. 

Here’s where the competitor’s focus and discipline paid off big time.  
At the dominant station, the average “like-a-lot” and “like-some” totals of the newer songs and wider selection of Lunar gold records played was 20.  This is because the newer songs hadn’t had time to establish yet and the “fresher” oldies based songs, though less tired, did not have as much passion with the audience.

On the new competitor station, the average “like-a-lot” and “like-some” totals was 40. In spite of the fact the programmers felt extreme discomfort playing those songs (feeling the songs were completely ‘burned’), they had the discipline to trust their instruments (research) and the laser-like focus to continue to attack on this narrow gap.
 
The Lunar songs were twice as popular on the competitor as on the dominant station (40 compared to 20 “like-a-lot” and “like-some” totals.)  Lunars were approximately 35% of both station’s playlists.  That meant that overall, the competitors music was 17.5% better than the dominant station's on average (50% of 35%.) 

The luxury casinos on Las Vegas Boulevard were all built on a 6% spread.  Within a few years attacking on this narrow distinction, the competitor took over the lead in the format by a margin of over 2 to 1.  In fact, the former dominant station continued to lose audience to the newcomer and left the format a year later in major defeat.

Lest you think this was some weird anomaly, consider this information that The Research Group’s leader, Bill Moyes sent out to their clients in the mid-1980s. 

The following phenomena are still true today:

1. The average listener makes their decision on whether you will be their P-1 radio station based on the first 15 to 20 minutes or so that they listen.  So every quarter hour of your programming has to be great.
2. Of all the different things that would influence a listener to become a P-1 of the station, music is the most important (in a talk based radio station, the equivalent would be the information relevancy and desirability).
3. The image “playing the best songs for your taste” correlates 3 times as much in forming P-1 status than does having a “fun morning show” or playing “lots of music”.

Remember: nothing kills great advertising like a bad product.

Both stations no doubt hammered "the best music" as their tag, yet it took listeners just one quarter hour to figure out for themselves which one was better.

This is why it's now pointless, if it ever was, to mindlessly repeat a slogan over and over.

Do You Own A "Tag" Or A "Position?"

Like Randy Lane (writing in Radio Ink), I was also nodding my head at Geoffrey James' Inc Magazine article, "Forget Your Tag Line. It's Obsolete:"

Jingles started in the early days of commercial radio and continued to be popular as a branding technique through first decades of commercial television.  Jingle-writing was big business; pop star Barry Manilow famously got his start as a jingle-smith.  Today, though, jingles have almost disappeared.  That's partly because broadcast ads, which used to be 60 seconds long are now much shorter (often 15 seconds or even 5 seconds long) leaving less time for a jingle. But there's another, more cogent reason for the disappearance of the jingle: they don't work any more.  At best, they sound like bad imitations of popular songs; at worst, they sound corny and retro. The same thing is happening with the corporate tag line. Such tag lines are intended to encapsulate and clarify the essence of a brand proposition as with Apple's "Think Different" or NBC's "Must See TV." The problem with tag lines, though, is that they tend to sound like generic corporate speak. For example, Sony's recently launched "Make.Believe" tag line is supposed to inspirational, but could describe any company.

If you buy that, as I do, it's hard to disagree with Lane too:

Requiring air talents to bark out tag lines every time they open their mouth is wasting precious time. Time that could be better spent delivering a hook headline to instantly engage the audience. You don’t want to waste even a nanosecond when the average attention span is down to nine seconds, according to one study.  Saying “The Best Mix of the ‘80s, ‘90s and Now” first, every talk break, will be rattled off ineffectively at best by most air personalities. Tag lines have become meaningless commercial noise to most listeners. We have moderated many focus groups and have been surprised to find that the majority of respondents could not recall a radio station slogan even though it had been pounded for years every break.

That's why when I hear a personality mechanically saying the same words with the same inflection every time they open their microphone, I first attempt to get them to vary that autopilot inflection pattern.  If they have become so habitual in their delivery, I echo Lane's advice and tell them to just stop it and brand the interesting, informative, entertaining content they prepared, since that's their most obvious definable difference as a "voice on the radio" anyway.

It you don't have lots of songs I really love which are connected by engaging things I care about to say, all the tagging won't work anyway, even if it is delivered beautifully.

Meanwhile, just because "tag" self-marketing doesn't work anymore does not mean that you can win without a believable "position" in the mind of the listener.

And, the art today is subtly imprinting your unique, unduplicated position without resorting to techniques which no longer work to positively brand, such as hard sell and irritating in-your-face repetition (which is still one of the two ways we remember things, but they may just remember how repulsive you are if you over-use it)?

Rees and Trout's four decade old rules (click the link for a refresher course) have not lost their impact when done creatively and believably.

7Up is still the uncola.  Avis may actually be #1 today, but in our minds they still "Try Harder" because they are #2.

Compared to the campaigns highlighted for their ongoing success from back when Jack and Al's book first was published 26 formats and editions ago, "Best and Most Country," "Continuous Country Favorites" and "New Country And The Legends," given the excellent vantage point of history, probably never were "positions" embraced by listeners in the first place. 

Building A New Ladder

Trout & Rees’ legendary 1993 book "The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing" has proven its worth by enumerating rules that continue to prove to be useful and true after the many years since it was written.

The book suggests that it often is better, when you find yourself on the second or third rung of a ladder and someone else is firmly perched on top of it and shows no signs of climbing down to make room for you up there, to build a new ladder.

In Los Angeles, the history of KAMP-FM (97.1) is a testimony to the thrill of victory and agony of defeat as some ladders lasted and others failed is a case study of T&R’s marketing laws.

One clue that you may be stuck on too low a rung of the ladder you’re on is when in spite of your best efforts your competitor remains a strong #1 on their ladder and due to the heritage and perceptions surrounding the station it appears that there would be no unseating them from that position.

In radio, it’s not an uncommon place for the #2 on the ladder to get stuck at roughly one-half the share of the leader for an extended period of time, showing little or no growth.

With Microsoft, Apple’s Steve Jobs has specialized in building new ladders and adriotly climbing to the top of them, as have Google and Facebook, to name just three examples in media. In hard goods, once there was just diapers, now it's disposable or cloth.

Creating a new ladder means finding a new design improvement, new target, new perceptual hill.

There are two kinds of warfare (if you don't count guerrilla, which is normally not a viable long-term marketing strategy in the face of solidly branded competition): offensive attack or flanking.

Have you been unable to throw your competition off the ladder? Perhaps a flanking maneuver is in order.

As a flanker, by definition, you are not in competition with anyone. Your objective is to advance NOT on the competition BUT on an open position. In the perfect flanking maneuver, the competition is no one!

However, radio’s mixed success with Bob’s, Jack’s, Hank’s, Hal’s, Rob’s, Joe’s, etc over the last decade show that just because a new ladder works in one situation does not guarantee instant ascent to the top everywhere.

The criteria for evaluating a possible new format ladder's position:

1. How big is the target audience for your new idea?

2. What is the interest overall in the format and position among target listeners?

3. Is the local market’s history of format changes encouraging? Or, does it show that there’s no heritage for what you want to do?

4. Do you fully understand what target listeners are being served with now? Should it be very album-oriented and unfamiliar or all hit? What era is the sweet spot? Are personalities needed or not? Should jocks be laid back and ultra hip, very risque and edgy, upbeat? Do you need an expensive morning show? Is there sufficient room between the market leaders on these various existing ladders for a middle ground attitude and music mix?

5. What is the music taste pattern and music preference of the market? Which approach is closer to the particular taste of your market? What has the exposure of the music been in the past two decades in the market? (going back much farther than that, with rare exceptions, will attract only an upper-demo audience) If you decide to go back farther than that, can you sell that audience you’ll draw to advertisers?

6. Is the “hole” already covered in the minds of the target audience by an existing station? This one can fool you. The key is attitude, music focus and overall positioning and these ingredients are so important to the target that getting them wrong at the inception can be disastrous. You only get a chance to be new one time. And, once you have sullied your name with the target group, it is much tougher to rejuvenate the image than it is to get it right from day one.

7. How will the competition react? Stations which resist over-reacting and adjusting once “a new format ladder” comes on have basically good news in store. This new station is going to attack empty territory. Everyone should give up only a little and no one loses a lot. The only exception: when a station deconstructs itself in the face of the new perceived "attack" and "defends" against it by, for example, shifting a successful classic hits or spectrum AC station from a 60’s-70's base to covering the 80’s, 90’s and now, they have basically changed format and disenfranchised their core audience. Then, it becomes a dog fight, requiring lots of marketing to re-educate the entire target audience to the completely-changed programming matrix.

Some advice in the face of any flanking attack if you happen to be atop a highly-saleable ladder: stay COOL.

React only when/if your numbers drop. Find out why you are no longer satisfying your target as successfully as you once did and correct that. Focus on attacking yourself, not the new competition.

Be clear on what's driving usage of your ladder as well as the new one.

Similarities/Differences

Can both be a clear position?/Not the same sound or attitude
Both are era/genre focused/Different style, marketing strategy
Both target the same ages/Narrow targets are very different

One might only be targeting an age group who grew up in a specific decade, while another is a state of mind, a psychographic, an attitude a style of presentation and draws from a wider potential library for its music base, which enables it to avoid the potholes that any ten year period of music history contains.

The perceptual criteria listed above still apply.

Another question to ask yourself as you contemplate creating a new ladder: will it be possible to evolve over time and stay focused on a narrow age target OR grow old with its current target, depending on what the local competitive situation dictates? Or, must it, by definition, remain fixed in time so that it's target audience will grow older and older?

Can you service mark the name of your new creation? Or, does someone else also have a claim to first use of it? Can you be equally-successful with a different name or not?

The great format niches for the next decade, due to the emergence of the huge “Gen Y” age group in both 18-49 and ultimately 25-54 too are going to resonate with very different value sets than even the same formats have in the past.

So, as new “CHR” stations like KAMP-FM or country-formatted Wolves in many markets have done (and also failed to do!), it’s possible to play many of the same songs as someone atop one ladder and yet still be perceived as being on a new, better one (or NOT!), as a fresh and attractive group of listeners find themselves growing into the target.