Hear 2.0

Radio Creates Demand

From AdWeek:

A new survey of top marketers by Forbes.com confirms that the Web has far to go to prove itself as a vehicle for brand building. 

When asked what measures they used to gauge success, just 31 percent said brand building topped the list, and 14 percent said reach. Direct marketing metrics, on the other hand, scored highly. About 82 percent of those surveyed identified conversions as the leading gauge, 55 percent said registrations and 51 percent said clicks. 

"On the Web specifically, advertising has moved into more demand fulfillment as opposed to demand creation," said Jim Spanfeller, CEO of Forbes.com. "That's not really advertising. There's nothing wrong with it. Doing search marketing and point-of purchase displays all works, but it's not advertising. It's not about creating demand and improving brand metrics."

Note the key portion of the quotation:  According to the opinions of the 119 senior marketers in the Forbes survey, the Web is great at fulfilling demand but not great at creating it.

Introducing consumers to something worth wanting is fundamentally different from giving it to them after they're already shopping for it.  While we would be foolish to imagine that the Web is incapable of this power, it's clear that this group of marketers doesn't see it there today.

So where do you turn for "demand creation"?  Where do you go to discover that new must-have?  Where do you turn to find brands worth investing in, emotionally and financially?

Sometimes - when it's done well - you turn to radio.

Can Twitter be Radio's "Killer App"?

Plenty of radio stations are plugged into Twitter - to pimp themselves.

But how many radio stations leverage Twitter to benefit their clients?

One pizza joint is discovering that Twitter can make its cash register ring.  A local business.  One that is perhaps or would otherwise be a radio client.

Interestingly they had to erect a billboard in order to get the word out on their Twitter feed.

Couldn't radio do this job, too?

In fact, couldn't radio collaborate with local businesses to make Twitter part of the sale - part of the proof that radio works?

From Ad Age:

Naked Pizza, a New Orleans healthful-pizza shop that's hoping to go national -- Mark Cuban is a backer -- has been marketing itself via the microblogging service. And recently it has started to track Twitter-spurred sales at the register. In a test run April 23, an exclusive-to-Twitter promotion brought in 15% of the day's business. "Every phone call was tracked, every order was measured by where it came from, and it told us very quickly that Twitter is useful," said Jeff Leach, the restaurant's co-founder.

Radio can learn to master the tools which can make the medium more powerful - or be replaced by them.

The first step in making radio advertising accountable

"Accountability in radio revolves around identification. If you can consistently identify a spot, the advertiser it's associated with, and centrally access other necessary information, you create an environment where accountability and transparency are core capabilities." 

So says Harold S. Geller, managing director, Ad-ID LLC. 

Here I talk to Harold about some of the challenges radio faces to achieve uniform standards of ad identification and what solutions are now available to us.

MP3 File

The "End" of the Website?

Everybody is always asking me to name an example of a radio station website done really well.

If you follow this argument from the ever-sharp mind of advertising guru Joe Jaffe then you'll understand why the answer to that question is so elusive.

Within the communications world, an interactive presence still fights a losing battle to get prime real estate on 30-second spots, radio ads and even print units. I can't tell you how many radio scripts still do not have a Web site address, but instead repeat toll-free numbers umpteen times despite the fact most of their victims are driving and unable to write down the "call me" numbers even if they wanted to. And on the rare occasion the advertiser in question does put forth a Web site address, it's done with little more than a fleeting message. 

Sure, you'll get a feeble and non-committal call-to-action from time to time, characterized by the obscene "log-on-to-our-Web-site" dare. But that's just driving traffic to a destination Web site-or as I refer to it, a dead end. 

That's not how the world works anymore. Web sites are not ends unto themselves; they are simply a means to an end. You don't want your customers to move into your stores-you want them to buy into whatever you're selling and take it with them into their own homes where they consume it, share it and tell their friends and families that they enjoyed it. So why should you expect something different from the Web? 

Today, consumers' digital homes are their Facebook profiles, their blogs, their custom-created communities. That's where they "live" in the digital world and that's where we need to hope they invite us to come and hang out from time to time, not the other way around. 

Think of a Web site like a hub. And a hub is like a train station-it can be a point of origin or a destination. Some people begin their journey there, some people end their journey there, some are just in transit, or meeting someone, or taking refuge from the storm -- you get the picture. Hubs need to be open and fluid. They need to be infused with "sociability" -- teeming with life, alive with conversation. They are decidedly non-linear and diverse by nature, and they need to be loaded with content, information and features.

You shouldn't measure success or activity within these hubs using only traditional or familiar measures or metrics -- visits (unique or otherwise), clicks or time spent. Supplement these metrics with new social metrics like level of conversation, sentiment, consumer-to-consumer distribution and shareability. 

In a world of RSS feeds, embeddable HTML and links, hubs reign supreme. In a world of multiple personalities and personas, the key to digital success is not a one-size-fits-all approach-the "or" approach-but an "and" approach. The goal is to co-exist in multiple places at any given time. 

With a bit of effort, determination and luck consumers hopefully will get in on the act and take us with them to their homes, communities and meeting places. Consumers live their online lives in a distributed fashion (feel free to substitute the words "fragmented," "disjointed" or "frenetic," if you like).

More here.

Why doesn't Radio give its clients what they want?

More than just demographics, [advertisers] want to connect with their target audiences in measurable environments that can drive a consumer response; they want to be able to use the media that make the most sense for the target consumers and their brands, whether it's print, video, online, or an event.  And a media company, if it wants to compete, needs to provide all these services in addition to great content and great brands.

So says Jack Griffin, the president of Meredith Publishing Group, which boasts a huge collection of famous magazines for women and a database of 85 million customers.

What Mr. Griffin is saying, in effect, is that the successful media brands of the future will be a mix of media brand and ad agency and will not be limited to only one vertical media channel.

What he's saying is that our challenge is not to sell spots and reach.  Our challenge is to partner with our clients to drive engagement and produce measurable response, no matter what tools we use.

I keep shouting this but I don't think folks are really grasping it.  Radio per se is no more.  No longer is our problem solving limited to the rate at which we sell a bundle of airtime to reach an ocean of ears. The radio company of the future will be a cross-platform behemoth devoted completely to engaging local consumers, not "interrupting" them, and using their content and technology assets to do that.

Please let's stop the news releases regarding radio's reach.  This is so off-base it's embarrassing.

Our clients want a new radio industry, not one with "more reach than ever."

The End of Commercials?

The economics of supply and demand are inescapable. 

Historically, the demand for radio content was high.  Indeed, it remains so today.  But if we define demand as the amount of time spent with something and not simply the binary "on" or "off" of listenership, demand clearly isn't as high as it has been previously.

And that's because of the second part of the equation:  Supply.  The supply of real-time entertainment content in cars was once limited exclusively to radio.  No more.  At home, at work, and in the car, the supply of mixes of music that weren't limited to plastic discs or cassettes was likewise once the domain of radio only.  No more.

Just as video is exploding from every corner (TV's challenge) and news is popping up all over (Print's challenge), so is content that is, in many ways, a substitute for radio.

This is not news to you, of course.  But now ponder this from an economic perspective.

What happens to the value of something when the demand drops and the supply increases?

Specifically, when there are many, many more places for advertisers to spend their money (assuming for the moment that "advertising" is what they want to spend their money on), what happens to the prices that media can charge those advertisers - especially when the options are relatively undifferentiated and sold on the basis of "number of ears" only?

I submit to you that one of the great challenges of our industry that we have so far refused to discuss is not simply how we transform to a digital model, but how we monetize radio in the years to come - period.

In its early days, advertising on radio was unheard of.  Broadcasters made money by selling things other than airtime but used the airtime to help sell those things.  Radio has gotten a whole lot bigger since then, obviously.

There is no question that the "loudspeaker" of radio is a huge boon to those who own the licenses because radio listenership is, after all, universal.

The deeper question is how you make money if running mass appeal interruptive commercials is no longer the only - and maybe not even the best - way to do so?

There are lots of answers to this question.  Start answering.

More than Digital Duct Tape

From today's news:

A new study from IBM reveals that "media companies are falling behind in meeting the growing expectations of digital savvy consumers and the advertisers looking to reach them," and points to a "growing rift between advertisers and content owners, media distributors and agencies."

"To succeed—especially in the current economic environment—media companies will need to develop a new set of capabilities to support the industry's evolving demands which include micro targeting, real-time ROI measurement and cross-platform integration. Now is the time for companies to move quickly to become more effective with their assets and build for the future."

[The report] cites four key trends in the media business today: consumer adoption of new distribution formats, a shift in advertising spend, digital migration of platforms and the emergence of new capabilities due to moves by new entrants and existing players.

The study indicates that 63 percent of global CMOs expect to increase interactive/online marketing spend while 65 percent expect to decrease traditional advertising.

As I have said before, the digital elements in your portfolio are not "non-traditional revenue," they are "new traditional revenue."

Any broadcaster - and there are many out there (although not likely to be reading this) - who thinks our solution is to return "to the basics" and stick our communal heads deep into the sand is a fool.

Every broadcaster should be restructuring from the ground up around digital opportunities, not simply tacking on digital strategies like so many strips of duct tape.

This is a time of amazing opportunity if you have the vision and the will to have at it.

Bob Garfield's "Chaos Scenario" - and answers for Radio

I almost hesitate referencing this new piece from Ad Age's Bob Garfield, because for anyone toiling away in the belly of the media beast day after day, the tone (not to mention the title) is downright apocalyptic.

Garfield, who has a forthcoming book that will point the way to answers to what he calls the "chaos scenario" presents in gory detail the tribulations of media conglomerates, including radio.

If you don't come away from this piece feeling a tad suicidal, then you will likely arrive at a few inescapable conclusions for radio in particular:

1.  If the supply of advertising avails online is infinite but the supply of advertising is not, then the only way to avoid having the cost of that advertising driven to zero is to create an environment that attracts advertisers because of its uniqueness.  Unique brands, unique advertising concepts.  The era of successful me-too brands and "this space available" advertising is over.

2.  Radio can move a lot of people to wherever they want to go.  We will need to monetize their destinations, whether or not they are "our station's website."

3.  You need to be out of the "radio station" business and into the "local media company" business.  Now is a time to recognize the roots of value for your company and to leverage that value.

4.  We will need to recognize what makes our audience unique - one listener from the other - not simply what makes them alike.  In the future, what makes each listener different is key to her value to advertisers and to your media company.  How much each listener lets you know about them is critical to your ability to connect those listeners to marketers that interest them, and vice versa.

5.  You need to embrace all manner of social media as an adjunct to the one thing no social media tool has in your absence:  A loudspeaker with hundreds of thousands of willing consumers on the other end.

6.  Our obsession with ratings and ratings methodologies is entirely misplaced, thus the importance of ratings per se will invariably decline.  When I have lots of ways to reach thousands in my target audience - and most of those ways have precise metrics, not "ratings estimates" - then the number of ears you attract is less important than what you can do with them when you attract them.

We are at a turning point in our industry and the need is clear for us to remake what we do from the ground up.  We cannot "shrink" to success, only to obscurity.

The challenge may be clearer and more obvious than the answers, but accept that challenge you must.

Radio: We Create Demand

Another week, another announcement of the record number of ears reached by radio.

To advertisers, this sounds like old news.  The shiny baubles generally include ".com" in the name, regardless of how universal radio listenership might be.

It makes me wonder why we, as an industry, focus so relentlessly on how many folks we reach instead of why it matters that we reach them.

Contrast what radio does with what Google ads do, for example.

Google places those ads in oder to give people looking for something specific that specific something they seek.  They are, in other words, in the business of satisfying existing demand.

Radio, by contrast, runs ads to people who are not necessarily looking for something specific about specific things they may be interested in, even if they're not already.  Radio is, in other words, in the business of creating demand.

Any advertiser worth their salt wants to do both satisfy demand that exists and "fill the funnel" by creating new demand among new consumers.

Shouldn't the radio industry be pitching our effectiveness not by boasting about our universality but by illustrating the unique benefit that radio can provide?

We create demand.

What "Accountability" is....

From Radio & Records:

The "Radio Accountability Initiative" introduced Wednesday (March 18) in Orlando at the RAB's annual conference, will help ensure that an advertiser's commercials get on the right radio outlets at the right time.

Call me crazy, but that's not what most marketers and advertisers mean when they refer to "accountability."

RAB's definition of accountability is really a measure of "truth in advertising."  Yes, we ran your spots when, where, and how you asked us to.

When a marketer talks about "accountability" in the age of Google, they mean metrics on the effectiveness of the spend, not on its honesty.

I think it does our industry a disservice to suggest to advertisers that we don't know what they mean by "accountability" or to suggest that we mean something completely different.

Ad-ID's Harold Geller missed this point when he said "Accountability in radio revolves around identification."  

It had better not, Mr. Geller.

Now you can argue that we need to be sure of what's running in order to determine whether it "works" or not.  Fair enough.  But this isn't the kind of "accountability" advertisers will be buying when they talk about "accountability."

RAB's Jeff Haley touched on the truth when he said:

As radio aims to grow its share of ad dollars, proof of performance, improved commercial workflow and consumer interactivity are increasingly important at the station level. It is beneficial to make radio commercials as interactive as the purchase-enabled songs to which they are attached.

Now let's hope that actions follow those words.