What Will You Will Be Remembered For?

Last week, Randy Lane wrote that the key to competing against Spotify for in-car listening is personalities.

“Focus on branding your high performing morning and afternoon shows, and do so as vigorously as you do other tactics.”

In the streaming and podcast era, you cannot sustain a brand long-term promoting a music position or giveaways. Consider the ratings history of some of our heritage radio brands.

KFOG San Francisco and WMMR Philadelphia both began as rock stations in the 1960’s. One went dark while the other continues winning 50 years later.

Many factors influenced the outcomes, but perhaps none more than the long tenures of Preston and Steve in mornings and Pierre Robert in middays.

To revive an old AM brand, one could promote a text-to-win giveaway or hype commercial-free Mondays. Instead, WLS Chicago hired and promoted Mancow. The ratings went boom.

Here are tactics for solidifying your station’s reputation for killer content and memorable, entertaining personalities.

• Do an audit. Review what your station is promoting and how many times it is promoted in a 24-hour period. What percentage of that supports your most valuable programming asset?
   
• Create a personality promotion grid. Consider slotting in hourly awareness tactics for your key personality brands.
   
  • Best of promos: Short samples of the show. It is more important that they be great than to be recent.
     
  • Character clip IDs: Brand the show with the names of the individual players and a clip of what makes each unique, like this or this.
     
  • Talent-voiced station promos: Replace most of your slick voiceover with voices of your stars.
     
  • Talent-voiced teasers: Dry voice ID to run over song intros highlighting a killer moment in tomorrow’s show.
     
  • Include talent in your positioner: Sirius XM branded their station “Howard 100” for Mr. Stern. Mention your show equally with slogans like, “Today’s Best Mix,” etc.
     
  • Market faces and names like movie/music stars: When possible, use billboards, television and external media to build talent awareness. Feature them in social media until they cannot walk down the street without being recognized.
     

What do you want your brand to be remembered for? Many years from now when your station goes dark, consider what you hope people will say in its obituary. Hint: It likely will not be, “they played the most music for your workday.

Flickr.com/BillNorton