Brand Experience Explored

 

Articles abound in business publications today on the best ways to stay afloat during the deluge of downright dismal economic news and I want to focus on understanding the customer’s expectation of their brand experience with you, and staying true to it. 

• Who is your customer? 

I guess the answer to that depends on the corporate environment you experience today and may well change tomorrow.  A few years ago for most in radio, it was the listener as the first touch point followed by all who come in contact with our brand downstream from that point. As we began reaching margins in the sixty percent plus range, Wall Street jumped in with both feet and coincidentally fragmentation and compression factors changed the underlying economic formulae of our industry such that customer focus moved to analysts/brokers/investors/accountants and listeners were lost in the rush.  Remember the days of ratings AND revenue.

So now that the dust has settled and consolidated companies can’t meet promised numbers leading to core assets being shed to keep income propped up, will new smaller and more limber ownership return to user centric models again putting a priority on meeting the listener’s expectations or is it even worth trying? 

This week’s radio push of “well we’re trying to put a radio receiver on every device from here on out, who cares if the programming we put on all those new receivers isn’t any more compelling that what we know as radio today” simply won’t do it.  Promos for HD radio channels don’t seem to be resonating very well as televisions messages on digital set top boxes just confuse the products for all. What does the HD message hourly strive to do for your brand?  Point up the weaknesses of your present programming by pitching the strengths of your other digital programming?  Can it offer the ability to go deep on some relevant facets of what makes your sound different and compelling thereby underlining your strengths?

Let’s learn a lesson from Barack who over the last week appeared to lose sight of his core message and become much more like Hillary and the DC old school his constituency so dislikes.  We need to stay on message and not become more like our competitors thus diluting our worth to all.  Why did the listener come to us in the first place?  Legendary stations create an audio experience unlike all of the others available anywhere.  What is our perceived brand and what are we doing to deliver on that every quarter hour?  No not what corporate is trying to say to stockholders with a catchy new slogan, but our brand to our LISTENER which makes us unique and unduplicateable.  Truly successful broadcasters use a multitude of means to reach and remind listeners of that brand and to reinforce it’s unique bond with that listener. 

Now that being said, the listener is ever changing and our interaction with them in  preaching brand relevance today must always evolve and grow. As consumer’s attitudes and habits are changing forever thru our housing crisis, petroleum price run-up, and price inflation on absolute family necessities ,we need to understand what the audience has now decided are meaningless luxuries or are truly important items worthy of sacrifice in an unsure economic climate.  The real core values of many are being re-examined and family resources being reallocated to reflect these changes so the same old rules in reaching emotional and financial touch points are now different.

Expectations have changed on a fundamental level over the last several months and what have we done to understand them, much less meet them?  Before you give away another gallon of gas, let’s find out what will really win the hears and minds of the fans of your brand, and highlight their chosen solutions rather than underline the same old problems.   Your answer needs to be different from the next station up the dial or another url on your listener’s IE Favorites. If not, you are simply background noise in the digital universe.  To increase usage and grow your brand, you must first understand your brand perception today and them employ the necessary tactics to keep it’s usage relevant and fun as your audience changes.  Let’s get to work.

 

Garry Leigh

Behavioral Targeting And Radio?

This morning while reading a breakdown of research related to behavioral targeting, it again became clear that most new or emerging media mavens really have no concept of the environment of those using or consuming their service.
The trick has always been to create greater user relevance and a richer experience whatever the medium or mix of media, and we in radio have spent decades researching the “psychograph” of our audience to deliver just that.  As the ability to track an individual across the depth and breadth of their daily experience again becomes the obvious missing link in figuring the ROI on a media plan, are we delivering our internal research results to quantify our strength in reaching their target?  Our focus group, call out, auditorium testing, frequent listener group profiles, relevant website e-commerce numbers, and ratings qualitative (when all are truly and accurately measured) all add up to a fairly clear picture of our listener and their daily cross-platform exposure to a marketing message.  Most new and emerging media can only dream of such an understanding of their user base and are frantically trying to find ways to glean metrics across multiple platforms, publishers, portals, etc. while we do little to really maximize their message within our carefully constructed context (or listener environment).  We are so far ahead in this area and yet obviously are doing little to make our metrics work within the planner and buyer’s world.  Can you put your research into a format to make it simple for them to incorporate into their buying programs versus these new media siphoning off billions from ad budgets?  Google is creating vast wealth from contextual advertising, which is what successful broadcast operators have done for years.  How are we doing in stating our contextual case versus theirs?  As behavioral begins to show dramatically better ROI than contextual, and it is according to Jupiter Research, what are we doing to put our story into those terms and to have our own metrics to support it?  Or do we simply try to defend our traditional media portion of the pie and let the rest take what they will?
We have a new internet generation to sell on the merits of our product and it’s efficiencies while we have the challenge of better adapting the advertisers message to maximize impact within our context.  Are you running or working on creating different creative to match the daypart or does one size fit all?  We spend years working with our personalities on tailoring their content to the quantifiably available audience, so wouldn’t it help to do the same for every element in the hour?  If your company doesn’t own outdoor, tv, digital out of home, etc., are you doing everything possible to have current glean metrics on your audience’s consumption of their products?
We have always researched to improve ratings and thereby improve revenue.  Now we need to include research to generate metrics for millennials to make the broadcast choice an obvious one in their media makeup.
Garry Leigh