Tuesday, December 20, 2011

Applying Political Strategies to Radio

Members in The U.S. House Of Representatives just sent a message to all of us this morning, in case anybody forgot that 2012 is an election year.

Which reminded me of a presentation Edison Research's Larry Rosin did for A&O clients at our Pre-CRS seminar in 1996. Back then, Larry was just starting to do research in the political realm and he shared this advice based on what he was learning:
"Meet regularly to discuss strategies and tactics; politicians meet every morning. Think of yourself as a campaign manager; there are two battlefields: your station vs. other stations and your station vs. listeners’ votes. Be good at being both an attacker and an incumbent. Radio is usually better at attacking. We wait too long to respond to attacks by clinging to a “we’ll wait till we see what the book says” attitude."

Today, Edison conducts exit polling for all the major networks and Larry appears on media often, acknowledged as an expert on opinion research which drives election result.

My notes from his client presentation 15 years ago, like that quote above, hold up very well with time and I'll share highlights of them over the next few days.

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