INK TANK

The Quest For Ubiquity

 

A few years ago, Radio Ink did a promotional campaign that said "Radio Is Everywhere™," showing radio being used at work, in the home, in the car, on portable radios, etc. In the short time since that campaign ran, the world has changed dramatically. In order for radio to be everywhere, it needs distribution on all mobile phones and must be accessible from all streaming devices.

Though there are champions in our industry who disagree with me about the importance of streaming and allowing your signal to be heard on computers and mobile devices, the statistics show that 50 percent of all streaming listening is to in-market stations. Perhaps that listening is by those who can't get your signal in their buildings or in their part of town, or perhaps it's just easier. Though the economics don't play out because of the cost of streaming and music licensing, the distribution is important just the same.

Also important is the mobile phone. Our industry has argued two sides of the coin regarding having an FM chip on the phone, with some wanting government intervention and others looking for market-driven adoption. As I've stated before, I'm in the market-driven camp. Though you should be able to listen to any radio station by streaming it over your phone, many broadcasters simply do not stream -- and the reality is that an FM chip on a phone will not only prove beneficial to a local-market listener when other services may not be available, it's clearly a benefit to radio to be there. (At the worst, it can't hurt.)
 
Back in April I asked Dick Orkin at the Famous Radio Ranch to create a spot based on the concept of "I want FM." That spot was designed to make consumers aware that phones with FM are available today. Several thousand stations have been running those ads. But, like all good campaigns, we must keep the spots fresh, so we've added two more.

If you're not running our "I Want FM" campaign, I encourage you to help drive consumer adoption by putting these spots in high rotation for at least the next three months so consumers will request FM on their phones. The more they request, the more they'll buy, the more chance we will see more companies adding FM to their phones.

My cellphone is my Swiss Army knife of gadgets. My HTC Evo has an FM chip built in, allowing me to listen to FM whenever I like. Though I'm not pushing for a government mandate, I'm hoping consumers will drive the demand to make FM ubiquitous on all phones. Frankly, if I could get AM on phones as well, I'd push for that, but the antenna requirements make that difficult, and to my knowledge there is no AM chip available.
 
You can download the spots at www.radioink.com/IWantFM.
 
Please forward this to others in this industry whom you think would like to run the "I want FM" campaign.

Arming Radio's Troops

 

Embarrassment. That was the feeling I had recently while being pitched over the phone by a radio rep who was trying to get me to spend money on his stations. I was embarrassed because this seller was grasping at straws and was not well armed with the data points he should have known. But it's not his fault.

It's been estimated that 65,000 people are on the streets selling radio in America today. At many stations there's a 30-, 60-, or 90-day "make it or break it" policy, resulting in high seller turnover. With so many sellers coming and going, and new sellers starting every month, it's nearly impossible for a manager to properly train her or his people. Too many sellers are sent out on the streets with a rate card and no real grasp of radio. They don't have a chance to succeed.

Though your goal is to sell your station first, my goal is to get you to sell radio first. Imagine how much more successful we would all be if every seller on the street was evangelizing the power of radio and bringing new radio accounts into the market every week. Instead, inexperienced sellers are sicced on clients who roll their eyes as they get yet another "Hi, I'm your new account executive" phone call or e-mail and count the number of times they've heard it before. Though I understand the need to make people produce or move them out the door quickly, I also understand the damage we do to our industry and our own brand when advertisers are seeing their 25th seller in three years.

How are you arming your salespeople? Every new seller needs to be armed with data points about radio, needs basic sales skills, and needs to understand how radio works best. Instead they are loaded up with data points about the radio station and told, "Go sell something." Meanwhile, managers and sales managers complain that there is no time to train people because they have to keep on top of ever-increasing paperwork.

We need a national depository of radio training that is available to every new radio seller, and we need to set an industry standard among all radio groups to ensure that all sellers meet some minimum requirements. Though the RAB certification programs are great, they are underutilized. Frankly, if every seller were required to become RAB-certified, it would eliminate a lot of problems. But, as one manager told me, "We don't bother to put anyone through RAB programs until we know if they're going to succeed." I was stunned -- that's like saying, "We don't teach people how to drive until after they get their license."
 
Though our competitive nature means we want to hold on to every advantage, in sales training or anything else, I think every seller hitting the streets should be required to have received an agreed-on minimum amount of training. Maybe it's as simple as having each new seller watch a few hours of DVDs, then take a test. Anything would be better than sending them out unarmed.

In talking with Bob McCurdy, President of Katz Marketing Solutions, I discovered he had a similar passion to empower salespeople. That resulted in the creation of a website where he has compiled all the relevant data points about radio to arm our radio sales troops. He took the initiative to load all his data and anything new he finds on to a site for all sellers to use, whether or not they work for Katz clients. Bravo!

This is especially smart and shows that Katz understands that a fully empowered industry benefits us all. You can find this resource at www.kmsradioprimer.com, and every radio seller in America should be required to visit it frequently so they can understand the basic data points about our industry and be ready to share them with clients. It's an excellent starting point. As McCurdy told me, "Every person selling radio has got to become a student of radio. They have to learn and figure out how to become marketers instead of radio sellers. I revisit these facts before I go into any client presentation to sharpen my knowledge of radio. Every radio seller should re-read these facts at least monthly, and of course we update the site with more facts at least once a month."

I agree with Bob McCurdy that all radio sellers need to sharpen their skills and refresh their radio knowledge on a daily basis. Knowing radio in and out and how to make it work is critical.

The recession virtually wiped out training in many radio companies, doing away with corporate "universities" and putting the pressure back on the local sales manager. That means training is inconsistent from station to station and group to group -- though any training is of course better than nothing. But some sales managers are not good trainers, and others simply don't have enough time to train people effectively.

Having a universal program and a commitment that no seller will hit the streets without this training would be ideal. It's something the RAB could produce and distribute to every radio station in America, whether or not they are RAB members. Perhaps that would lead to deeper training relationships with the RAB's own certification programs.

In the 1980s I had a Ken Greenwood audio program that provided the basics of radio selling. If there is something like this on the market today, I'm not aware of it. But it's badly needed. Empowered sellers reduce turnover and increase success. I hope every radio company will collaborate on a basics program and suggest that RAB produce it, with the full commitment of every group leader. Groups can then expand on the basics with their own internal programs.

If every new seller entering radio went through a consistent training program, and if every seller at every level had some form of ongoing training -- even as basic as viewing a video once a month to refresh them on the various positive aspects of radio -- our industry would be rich with additional sales, we would have much lower turnover, and we would not be putting unempowered sellers in front of our clients.

 

A Case For Relaunching HD Radio

  

How many times have we seen "NEW" on a consumer product that has been around for a while? Even a product like Tide detergent uses "NEW" on the package every time they come up with a new formula. Obviously, these marketers understand the power of the word new and take the opportunity to make an old product look fresh. Why not make radio "new"?

Though I have mixed feelings about HD Radio, I don't think the push for HD and the radio campaigns that have been run for it have gone very well. I still encounter consumers who have no clue what HD Radio is or why they would want it

Recently at the Radio Ink Tech Summit, held right before our Convergence conference in Silicon Valley, Media UK Managing Director James Cridland showed us examples of how the entire community of radio stations in Australia recently launched digital radio in that country.

James used video and photos to show how every radio station promoted digital live on the air for months to build anticipation. On the day of the great reveal, all the radio stations in every market in Australia held fairs at which they demonstrated digital radio. All the stations broadcast live from tents at the local fairs, and they all flipped the digital "switch" at the same moment, across the nation.

Australia's move to digital radio received massive coverage and publicity from newspapers and television throughout the country. It was a brilliant promotion, drove significant attention and purchases of digital units, and had every radio station sending a consistent benefit message.

Why can't we do that here?

Consumers are more aware of digital than ever before, but the "HD Radio" efforts that began years ago seem to have fallen on deaf ears. Radio needs to relaunch HD Radio as "Digital Radio" and do a giant, unified push on the air to reach consumers and advertisers. What would happen if we promoted the benefits live on every station involved, offered a unified message to get all radio talent talking about it, and hired a PR firm to push a national digital radio launch?

"It's too late," you say. "The cat is out of the bag." I don't think it is, since awareness is low, but I do agree we'll need to offer something more.

In Australia, part of the messaging was digital radio's ability to pause, record, and replay at will -- technology HD Radio could offer here. (We already have a pause feature and on-screen graphics on our Mighty Red HD Radio unit.) If we coordinated an effort that involved launching at the same time as new radio units offering pause, record, replay, and other features, we would indeed be able to call it "new," and we'd have solid reasoning for a relaunch. (By the way, Michael Robertson's DAR.fm is a wonderful record-and-playback service you can implement today on your website and mobile platform.)

HD Radio receives a lot of criticism, some of it for good reason: There has been a lot of opportunity lost, and there is a real lack of consumer interest so far. But I see that as a marketing challenge. Though there are other issues HD critics will no doubt chime in about in the comments section, radio should continue to find new ways to get HD adopted. We have invested too much to give up on it, we have loads of in-car units in the market, and it's critical we sell this product to consumers.

Maybe if we planned and orchestrated a great "Digital Radio Switch" promotion, a year or two in advance, we could really make a splash like they did in Australia. Though we blew our initial launch here by not creating enough buzz, that doesn't mean we can't do it right next time -- but we can't afford to blow it again.

I'd like to see an orchestrated effort among iBiquity, NAB, RAB, and the top groups to make the switch to digital radio a national event. Let's plan something, and work as an industry on a deeply coordinated effort. If they can do it in Australia, we can do it here.