If you think listeners hang on our every word – surprise – the reality is quite different.
Listening is a Habit
Radio listening, like many things in our lives, is on auto-pilot. When someone makes listening to your radio station part of their daily habit, you’ve struck gold.
However, two years of a global pandemic changed everyone’s routines and replaced them with new ones.
People who study people’s habits, usually say that it takes at least three weeks for a person to form a new routine and COVID forced changes on all of us that lasted for two years.
Award Winning
Go ahead and pound your chest that your radio station has won awards for its news coverage, its public service and its ability to break new hit songs, but appreciate that listeners don’t care. What is important to them is having your radio station deliver what they’re looking for, when they’re looking for it, and on the media platform they want it delivered on.
The Best Ads
It’s interesting that the ads listeners remember most are usually for products or services that have been around for decades and used the power of repetition to burn their ear worm into your brain.
Let me give you some examples of what I mean:
- I don’t want to grow up, I’m a Toys R Us kid.
- The best part of waking up, is Folgers in your cup. (Oddly, the brand actually sold the rights to this 38-year old jingle for $90,000.00.)
- Plop, plop…Fizz, fizz…Oh, what a relief it is. This Alka-Seltzer ear worm was penned in 1976 and was so popular that Sammy Davis, Jr. actually recorded a version.
- I’d like to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony, and I’d like to buy the world a Coke and keep it company, it’s the real thing.
- I actually still play on my radio show, “I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing,” a song by Hillside Singers and it still makes me crave having a Coke, even though the hit record version never mentions Coca-Cola.
I could go on, but I think you get the idea.
Your Brand Messaging
You will never be all things to all people.
If your radio station uses multiple positioning statements, I’m willing to bet that your listeners, at best, can remember only one.
Back when I started in the broadcast business, radio stations spent a lot of money promoting their air personalities; they were the draw then, and they are the draw still, maybe even more so as Fred Jacobs TechSurvey 2022 so vividly points out.
Your personalities are your brand, and unique to your radio station; coach them, grow them and promote them.
If you don’t understand the listener’s needs, from the listener’s point of view, then you’re just spinning your wheels.
Your goal is to be the radio station a listener thinks of first,
and makes a daily habit.
DickTaylorBlog 
Sad to say the management currently in charge in the industry are there to sustain the status quo. Gone are the days when radio personalities faces were promoted on bill boards and other mediums. As I commented on a previous post, the most famous radio personality in the Houston market is seeing all the investment from his network going to promoting their app not him or his show.
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-DT
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Thank you for the wise words , as I read the article I immediately realized I want the products that are repeatedly pounded in too my head but the delivery is so important. Of its delivered in a way that annoys me I will out of principle complain to who ever is in the room everytime I hear it . Such as the pharmaceutical commercials that have men looking feminine dancing around to a jingle with the name of the drug . But let it be interesting , nostalgic or funny and I will watch it or listen everytime.
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You’re not alone Rick.
Thanks for stopping by the blog and adding your perspective.
-DT
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Attention Broadcasters:
Wanna see some good branding ? Watch Football (USA). It’s not great, but you’ll notice the announcers say “Football” and not “ball”. Their logo is all over. Fox promotes a few of their personalities, unlike the other networks…and I spent some time today hearing an out of town broadcast. The announcers didn’t mention their name at all. The station snuck in some call letter mentions-just the call letters-but the average listener would have no idea what it means- or what’s on outside of the game. Branding is more important now than ever to break away from the pack. Granted, broadcasters have gotten very cheap and as Dick points out here-they’ve minimized their branding with a myriad messages. But the challengers to legacy media haven’t done a very good job of making their case either. I give credit to Syrius/XM for promoting other channels at times but the times I’ve been exposed to other services -I don’t even know what service is on unless I ask-and usually it’s “I don’t know, maybe Spotify”. Remember the days when stations started using jingles? It was another way to print the station’s brand into the listeners mind. I could go on and on- but jeez-how many times can we point out the issues that are staring media makers in the face? Thanks for all you do, Dick. You’re always a must read (and in my case a “must comment”.) Happy New Year.
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Thank You Dave.
Hope you have a Happy New Year.
-DT
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