Consumers Can See You
They can see you, can’t they?
I get itchy on this subject because it reminds me of a time when a senior VP at a major corporate broadcaster called me and said, “Loyd, we’re going to put on a Christian station in XYZ major market and it’s going to be BIG!”
He was so excited about this project.
I asked, “Do you have someone on the staff that lives the lifestyle?”
He quickly said, “Lifestyle? This station will be a box. You know the deal.” Then he added, “We’ve got the music. It will be great.”
Then I said the unpopular. “You shouldn’t do this.”
He said, “What? What do you MEAN we shouldn’t do this??? We ARE doing it and it will be HUGE. It will be number one.”
“It might be,” I said sheepishly but clearly unconvincingly.
“We are the best radio company with the best resources. We know how to do this.”
“But if you don’t have someone living the lifestyle, listeners can tell,” I finally said.
They did it anyway, of course.
To me, I just described a lot to you.
Let’s clarify.
Christian station with no Christians = 0.
Community language on-air with no real involvement = 0.
I can go further.
Country station with no one living the lifestyle = 0.
The truth is there are a lot of things that are done by-the-numbers but end up a zero.
The senior VP with that big broadcast company, all those Christian songs and no one living the lifestyle on the Christian station in that major market? You guessed it. Six months later they flipped to another format.
Gone.
The new station was probably a box, too.
There’s another kind of zero that everyone in the radio business should be concerned about today.
Invisibility.
in·vis·i·bil·i·ty
inability to be seen.
“I feel like I’m wearing a cloak of invisibility.”
The state of being ignored or not taken into consideration.
In an era where disruption and consumer attention span is similar to a goldfish, local radio should be more concerned about becoming more visible. Yet you see it over and over. Entire markets where radio is invisible.
Invisible is maybe the worst kind of ZERO.
You wonder why there is a lot of evidence about the power of radio today but we hear, “No one listens to radio anymore, do they?”
It’s one of the key consequences of invisibility.
Maybe we should be fixing that.
Loyd Ford is president and chief strategic officer at Rainmaker Pathway Consulting Works (RPC). They help local radio with ratings and revenue. Reach him anytime at 864.448.4169 or Ford@RainmakerPathway.com.
