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.