Radio Ink Magazine December 12, 2022

George Bernard Shaw supposedly once said, “Youth is wasted on the young.” The circumstances of that quote remain unclear, but it may well have been spoken out of frustration over seeing unspent opportunities at any stage in life, especially early in the journey. Shaw said something else, however, that could have been aimed at those in whose hands rest the keys to decisionmaking. “We don’t stop playing because we grow old. We grow old because we stop playing.” He could have just as easily been addressing a table of “seasoned” radio pros, sitting around, as many are wont to do, reminiscing about the good old days and taking bets on what will be the final nail in radio’s coffin. Hindsight is often a wonderful thing. And ignorance can be a blessing. While wisdom…

Ten different factors will determine how quickly your ads pay off. 1. Do your ads capture attention, or are they easy to ignore? 2. Do your ads speak to a felt need, or are you answering a question no one was asking? 3. Are you a known, trusted, and respected seller? 4. Is the brand you sell known, trusted, and respected? 5. What percentage of the public will ever - in their lifetime - purchase a product or service in your category? 6. How often does the average person need to buy what you sell? 7. Does your ad make the customer feel any urgency due to low price or limited availability? 8. What percentage of the public knows your name and what you sell? 9. In your category, what name will customers typically think of first and feel…

“The illiterate of the 21st century are not those who cannot read and write but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.” -Alvin Toffler As I started page one of Powershift by Alvin Toffler, the cabin lights were the only illumination. Returning home from an NAB convention, the late-night flight was quiet and perfect for switching mental gears. Twenty-five years ago, the Internet was a burgeoning force in daily business use and threaded through my conversations on the convention floor. As leading consultants for yield management in broadcast, our cuttingedge company pushed the comfort zones of many radio client sales departments. Reading Powershift excited me, especially the thought-provoking views on information taking over as currency and shifting the levers of power. Once the content was produced, the end of production and the…

When I started in radio, my station of focus was Country. As a newbie, back in 1993, I naively thought the key advertiser targets would mostly be Western wear stores, feed and tackle, farming equipment, etc. Of course, I quickly learned the Country audience was more aligned to A25-54/W25-54, families with kids and homes, and way more than “cowboys.” Fast-forward almost 30 years, and a recent format flip to Rhythmic CHR, and I can’t help but notice stereotyping cropping up again. This time it’s not on my end, but on that of some advertisers. I’ll use this format as an example to detail the significance of this mistake and the missed opportunity. I’m sure we still come across clients or prospects who may dismiss a station because it’s not their personal format…

Business owners make two common, critical mistakes with ad media. And you can benefit by guiding them away from those errors. First, these business owners create disconnected silos of activity. Advertising, marketing, selling - customer acquisition, customer retention, customer development - all unintegrated. Also, online versus offline media - unintegrated, or very poorly integrated. Individual media, like radio, TV, Every Door Direct Mail (from USPS), solo direct mail, retail signage, landing pages, websites, multimedia and multimedia followup sequences, and each one poorly integrated with the others. The leverage to be had is in integrating all these silos and all this media in two ways: as seamless processes, and as crosschannel reinforcement. CROSS-CHANNEL REINFORCEMENT Let’s say you have a client, an orthodontist with a multi-office practice, advertising on radio. The video that autoplays on his…