(Not So) Smart

It shouldn't take many words to make my point today.  Take a look at my inbox and ask yourself which one you'd move to spam before even reading:

I normally read all of the "SmartBrief" messages, because they often carry great content.

Not this time.  $25 isn't enough to waste even a few seconds of my time.

And, if you're the type who needs words to understand a point, read Steve Marx's latest blog post which will explain it all to you:  How to Get Your Email Opened: Subject Line Best Practices

So What Else Is New?

Radio isn't getting its fair share of marketing dollars and not only is that costing US money, but it's also making all traditional ad buys inefficient.

That's the conclusion of a ThinkVine study released this week.

Mark Battaglia, CEO of ThinkVine, said the miscalculations stem from brands relying on outdated marketing mix techniques or previous years' plans that don't take rapidly changing consumer behavior into account.  "Many marketers have started using big data to improve their campaigns, but very few are taking advantage of consumer data to optimize their marketing spend and determine the best media to reach their targeted audience."

The report says that instead of putting 19% of their budget to radio, it should be 26% for maximum impact and efficiency.

Sadly, radio receiving short shrift from media buyers is really nothing new.

Maybe some day, radio sellers will stop focusing on converting radio buys from one station to another and start looking outside traditional "radio money" for revenue.

Until we sell radio's effectiveness against other media, the trend will continue. 

We are our own worst enemy.

Radio Advertiser? Don't Waste Your Money.

Heard at The Conclave:  Tim Burt maintains that only one percent of all radio ads really work to convince and get results.

His tips to use with your clients to be certain that they get more than they expect from their investment:

1. As you refine their message ("a radio commercial is a business card, not a brochure") ask them "why shouldn't I go to your competition."
2. Challenge them to think about their spot as if they had :15-:30 seconds to talk to the crowd at the largest stadium in your town.  Would they say "open Friday night till 9 at our convenient location, stop in or call or visit our website"?
3. Have them take "the competitor script challenge."  Replace their direct competition's name in their ad and talk about whether their ad is the same as the guy across the street except for the brand name in it.  ("if you were lost in a forest, would you dress up like a tree?")

Make sure the communication contains ONE core, easily understood message, the element of surprise, an undeniable, irrefutable fact (results), exudes safety/trust and tells a story, ending with the principle of closure.

Paying Attention/Paying FOR Attention

The ad world according to Google:

Google uses the age old sales funnel of "AIDA" while taking all the credit for online processes leading to sale. 

Notice it also gives ZERO credit to any touch except online sources.

My take:  what online media misses is the "attention" part of the equation.  In traditional media we are so busy trying to be in that online space with them that we miss what we do best--generate attention for advertisers.

Occasionally, rarely even, online generates a "viral" action which brings people to the forefront without mainstream noise (see Psy, or Jena Marbles, or Ship My Pants) 

What we sell is attention. 

We are better at it than anyone. 

When you are on radio, you are on center stage.

Focusing on our strengths is a better use of our time and energy rather than trying to play a game on the other guys field.

KGHL/Billings General Manager Ray Massie spoke for me last month when he blogged: "You really don’t get anything for free–you pay for it with stress, time, opportunity, or cash."

So, radio seller:  Ask for a reasonable share of their budget.  Uncover their selling proposition.  Create a powerful message.  Run a good, consistent schedule.  Be a hero and get results.

That's worthy of your attention.

A Fifth Screen

Nielsen:  A Multi-Mix Media Approach Drives New Product Awareness

 For more detail and insight, download Nielsen’s Global New Product Report. 

However, there is one more "screen" which radio can use which makes our content much more effective than even that 40%.

It's the one in your listener's mind.

Add both emotional and visual language to everything you do on air and online to increase your impact.

Marketing Costs Money

It's amazing that throughout my five decade broadcast career radio owners - who aggressively sell the blessings of advertising to prospects every day - tend to feel that radio is exempt from this fact.

It's always been true, but it became conventional wisdom in the mid-90's when consolidation created huge station clusters with total reach as big as television.

However, cross-promotional announcements asking someone who is listening to one station to listen to another one simply doesn't build brands or turn the levers which drive loyalty and usage.  Then, with the advent of social media a decade later, that has now too-often become the no-cost panacea for brand-building. 

Radio World's Mark Lapidus calls it all "Make Believe Marketing."

Sure, do the cluster cross-promotion, word of mouth, events and as much interactive and social media as possible, of course, but don't expect the impact and timely results that traditional mass media can deliver.

Radio Ads Make Me Want To Scream

On terrific websites and in very scientific research studies our business keeps trying to convince the local appliance, stereo stores and car dealers with sound logic that their use of our medium - shouting over-the-top promises and branding half-truths and even paying our personalities talent fees to hurt their personal credibility in endorsement spots and at remote broadcasts from their retail locations to do the same thing - isn't working.

For several years, Dr. David Eagleman has been writing wonderfully well-documentated books, publishing great research studies, magazine articles all in support of the idea that the brain's primary work is done at a subconscious level.

This is the guy who convinced his ethical review board that it was OK to drop his research subjects off of a tower in order to see if time really does slow down in frightening situations. (it didn't, though it seemed to during the fall to the subjects)

Read Eagleman.  Spend time with WriteToEngage.com and RadioAdLab.org.  The facts are clear:  logic isn't as effective in influence as is emotion.

Radio's pal Dan O'Day has been devoting his life to this crusade for many years, as this video from 1999 demonstrates. (we're often as guilty as our advertisers are)

Jeffrey Hedquist and the Radio Mercury Awards are just two of numerous others who have been fighting the good fight.
  
Meanwhile, people give us money every day to play ads which only irritate and insult listener intelligence in spite of all the very rational arguments our business has been making.

Is it time to try a different approach?

Let's equip every radio salesperson with a ball-peen hammer in their brief case.  The moment the client pulls out a CD with their new commercial which sounds a lot like their old commercial, have the seller brandish the hammer over the ad and yell "don't make me use this!!"

It can't work any worse than our current approach does, can it?

At least the buyer will feel something when your rep leaves her office.

If You Don't Understand This, You're Not A Media Buyer Or Planner

"Media is the New Creative", targeting media buyers and planners in English Canada is phase two of the ongoing national multiplatform trade advertising campaign from Canada's Astral Media (click here to watch them all).

The campaign is entirely web based and consists of three videos and one "making of" that all playfully highlight some of the stereotypes of our industry; the messages recognize media planners as the creatives they truly are, but not always recognized for.

Derev Antikacioglu, Director of Branding and Corporate Marketing: "This aims at raising the awareness of media buyers and planners of the near unlimited creative possibilities that Astral offers to reach targeted consumer groups multiple times a day."

Watch 'em and ultimately, I'm betting that like me you need to go back and reread the press release to fully understand what the campaign was trying to communicate ("...that the rapid evolution of today's media landscape is transforming the media planner's role. Media planning and buying has attained creativity in its own right. Being at the table at the onset of the ideation stage, media's involvement in the ideation process is becoming increasingly intimate.")

Here's hoping these creative types don't decide to produce a series designed to "playfully spotlight" the contributions of programming consultants to the biz.

I might have to join that media rep at that bar, just contemplating the possibility.

The mind reels...

Questionable Advice

1. In the March 26th issue of Radio Ink magazine, the Director of Media and Digital Marketing for La Quinta Inn, Amy Bartle tells radio that our stopsets are too long.

We train our sellers to really understand the buyers' business needs before pitching our wares, but it always seems that media buyers are at the ready to tell us how to run our businesses.

They are only one set of our customers and if their suggestions to stop promoting long sets of content listeners love were taken, we'd deliver fewer sets of ears to hear their ads.

Suggestion: if you want to be the only commercial in a cluster, pay a higher rate and if you pay enough we'd be happy to make your spot the only one we play. But, of course, that would be wasteful, given radio's efficiency and research-proven ability to hold listeners through stopsets.

Focus on creating more engaging commercials and they'll be up to 40% more effective for the same money, no matter where they run.

You want to see clutter? Read your newspaper or watch TV.

Your spot on radio is at center stage when it's on and, unlike TV, most listeners don't skip it.

2. In comments filed with the FCC for its media ownership proceeding, NAB says the current caps, tiered by market size, as well as the AM/FM subcaps that limit how many stations of one service a group can own in a market can no longer be justified and no longer serve the agency’s diversity policy goals.

Small broadcasters have no representation in Washington other than the NAB and perhaps their state broadcasting association, whereas Clear Channel reportedly spends $700,000 annually on their four lobbying firms.

Did the NAB really need to provide stats from Clear Channel as part of their filing?

Certainly, the big guys exert powerful influence on NAB, but hopefully the thousands of small business local owners across America the organization also speaks for got a chance to share their views on further consolidation as well.

I am not necessarily against revisiting the ownership caps, especially when it comes to newspaper crossownership - since many local newspapers have been great stewards of their radio licenses over the entire history of our medium, often providing better local news and public affairs than anyone else in town - but I do wish the NAB's filing had included supportive comments from many of them, instead of CBS and Clear Channel.

"Reinvent" This!

It wouldn't be a radio business convention or meeting if someone didn't call once again for reinvention of one aspect of what we do or another.

There's nothing wrong with rethinking, of course, but Arbitron's Ron Rodrigues (Marketing Manager for the Programming Services Team) has a better idea in my view:

The next time your sales staff is driving you crazy with value-added, got-to-have-this-or-the-client-will-cancel demands, educate them even further about the power of radio.

Go to the next sales meeting and give them the five-question pop quiz below. Bring a pair of concert tickets or a $5 gift card for the person who scores the best. Be sure to count how many times you hear “Hmm—didn’t know that.”

Before you walk back to your office feeling like the smartest person in the building, remind the sales team that all of this information can be found in Arbitron’s “Radio Today by the Numbers.” This tool will arm them with the information they need to show clients how well radio works for advertisers.

Radio Listenership Quiz

Q1: What percentage of Americans aged six and up does radio reach on a weekly basis?

1. 73%
2. 83%
3. 93%
4. 103%
5. Are you counting all eight days of the week?

Q2: How many hours a month do consumers spend listening to the radio?

1. 14.5 million
2. 1.45 billion
3. 14.5 billion
4. A gazillion

Q3: If there are 10 people in a room, how many are likely to have listened to the radio in the past day?

1. 5
2. 6
3. 7
4. 8
5. It depends on the room.

Q4: What percentage of consumers does radio reach during prime time (6AM–7PM) each day?

1. 60%
2. 70%
3. 80%
4. 90%
5. More than newspaper

Q5: Rank these devices from highest to lowest by the percentage of radio listeners who own one:

1. Digital Camera
2. Computer
3. HDTV
4. Cell Phone
5. Predator Drone

Answer Key:

Q1: C—Radio reaches 93% of all Americans on a weekly basis.

Q2: C—Consumers listen to 14.5 billion hours of radio each month.

Q3: C—Slightly more than 7 out of 10 consumers listen to radio each day.

Q4: D—90% of consumers tune in between 6AM and 7PM.

Q5: From highest percentage of ownership to lowest—Cell Phone (90%), Computer (84%), HDTV (69%), Digital Camera (67%), Predator Drone (unknown %).

I'd suggest that our agency friends who seem to be hooked on nothing but the age-old negotiating ploy called "cost per point" that actually drives the percentage they make on radio buys down, since an agency commission on a small number is less than buying radio intelligently, using qualitative, all our multimedia platforms and involving us in your creative design, testing and execution.

They might increase the rate the agency pays a bit, but wouldn't that increase the dollars buyers make from radio and also act as an incentive for the radio side of the bargain to maximize results, not just lower our prices?

Make radio a full partner in working for the client instead of just a low cost vendor you can beat up in long-used ways.

Let's talk together about reinventing THAT.

High Tech Firms Use Radio Advertising

"Radio is a congenial home for many advertisers in the hardware business, whether the hardware is lawn mowers or e-mail archivers. All that remains to be added are regular holiday sales for the I.T. products. Maybe the Labor Day weekend will bring a Sale-A-Bration — for load balancers."

- Randall Stross, Silicon Valley-based author and professor of business at San Jose State University in the New York Times

Thanks to Randall Bloomquist for reinforcing the key reasons why:

Affordability – “’We discovered radio was unnaturally inexpensive,’ says Michael Perone, Barracuda’s executive vice president and chief marketing officer.

Targeting – Radio is an efficient way to reach the handful of decision-makers and “influencers” who are responsible for buying IT gear for their organizations.

“[Barracuda] also sells to medium-sized businesses, defined as those with 300 to 2,000 employees. It can be too expensive to send sales representatives to make the multiple visits necessary to close a relatively modest sale to these customers. But it turns out that radio offers an economical alternative way of reaching the three or four people who might work in the I.T. department of a 300-employee company.”

Endorsements – Citrix has found that endorsement spots provide effective “third-party validation” and “can create a brief sense of personal connection with each listener, in a way newer media can’t really match.”

Another Win For Radio: The Science Of Ad Placement

Radio-Info's Daniel Anstandig reports today that a new study by Casale Media, a digital display ad network, affirms that “reach and frequency” works online the same way it does in radio or TV.
They recently analyzed a random sample of two billion ad impressions from Q1 2011 across their display ad network and found that online ads are most effective when they are placed in the top of the page and first in order.

.. which reminded me of a BBM/Canada presentation earlier this year by Alex Petrilli from TiVO who gave some results from their StopWatch research which measures second by second viewing of the US PVR audience.

This has shown the importance of the 1^st in pod position in terms of retaining the audience during a commercial "break."

Other strategies have proved successful in preventing the audience from hitting the fast forward button, particularly “promercials” such as the recent campaign from American Express using the cast from Glee.
This brought to mind the PPM research using actual usage data (What Happens When the Spots Come On) from Arbitron, interpreted by Coleman:

The fact that radio's cume is always going up throughout the listening day as PPM proves, means that no matter when your commercial runs on the radio, it's on center stage.