First entry in a series about building a better station brand
When talking about a marketing strategy for your radio station, the most common assumption is that we are creating an advertising campaign, billboards, tv, etc... While advertising may be the end result of, and be improved by a concise marketing plan, the two words are not synonymous.
To create a complete marketing strategy, we have to get the brand right internally before we take it external. What role does your station play in the market? What needs do your listeners (or potential listeners) have? What do you provide that makes your station a better choice than any other? I hope you've heard and considered all these questions before. But did your answer steer you beyond a music library and a slogan that defined your music library?
Building a music library is one of the easier propositions for a radio station. Decide who you want to attract, men or women, young or old, rock or pop or country partisans, etc... The "art" of the music slogan has become a comical chase of the en vogue descriptive phrase. 'Soft' gives way to 'Lite', 'Alternative' gives way to "Modern Rock' then to 'New Rock', 'variety moves aside for 'Mix' until 'Variety' is it again....
Do listeners care?
Obviously, we have to tell listeners what type of music we play right? If other products marketed themselves like radio we would be forever watching commercials for Nike "athletic shoes", VW "we make cars that drive" and Lays "potato chips in a bag". What do these brands know that radio has yet to discover? Does a literal music slogan add any value to your brand? I submit that it labels such an obvious part of your brand that it, at best, goes unnoticed and at worst is condescending.
Nike - "Just Do It" - Nike doesn't make athletic shoes, they make shoes for people who ARE athletic. More importantly, Nike makes shoes for people who want to seem athletic.
VW - "Drivers Wanted" Who doesn't make a safe car, with good gas mileage that can reach 100,000
miles? VW's campaign says our customers cars don't just get them from A to B. For VW
drivers, the cars is a fashion extension of themselves and the driving experience is
something to enjoy in luxury.
Lays - "Betcha can't eat just one" - There is no need to say we make potato chips in the slogan, but
Lays instead speaks to a brand quality, "We make potato chips that taste good".
Radio has to aspire for something more than just our traditional sloganeering. In order to be more important to our listeners than a jukebox, we need to start defining ourselves as more than just a collection of songs. In order to connect with an audience better than anyone else on the dial, we have to invest our energies in more than fighting over words than mean nothing to our listeners.
Part two: Aspirational Marketing.
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