The Demos They Are A Changing

In the reports from the NAB show an interesting topic popped up from large agency director Sumeet Kanwar at OMD who notes that 'his media buyers spend millions with radio, but when it comes to measurement they are not getting what they need.'   Sumeet when on to elaborate that 'there is a need to develop more finite demographics, rather than expecting clients to buy a demo like Women 18-49,'

Sumeet couldn't be more correct.  For the last 35 years we have really lived mostly in one demo - 25-54 adults.  Yes, the last 15 years or so we have seen a rise in 18-49 but face it - we mostly celebrate the 25-54 numbers.  For 35 years we've had the same perspective on the audience.  When we started to build this demo it was the early 80s and the Baby Boomers (1945-65) were in the core of this demo for most of the decade.  The first Boomers turned 30 in 1975 and 20 years later in 1995 the last of the Boomers turned 30.

Now the Boomers are all over 50.  In just a few years all the Boomers will be over 55 and out of the demo completely.  This demo became THE important demographic because it was centered around the Boomers who were the largest demo group in the population and marketing to them as they built their lives and spent their dollars has no doubt built the economy we have today.   But, they have earned their highest incomes and spent at their highest levels.   It's a new reality and we've sat in one chair looking out the same window for 35 years.  Recently the 18-49 Demo has seen more 'action' in radio but even there this is a very wide group of people with very different life needs and a lot of the 18-49 demo overlaps with 25-54.

Sumeet is right - it's time for a new view.   So how should we divide up the Demographic Pie today?  

The chart shows the 2010 Census populations by 5 year spans and I outlined the Boomers, Gen X and Millennial generations as they sit for 2014, and noted the updated ages.  

For marketers right now these are 3 pretty different generations.  They are all in different stages in their lives and offer many different challenges to marketing.   The Boomers are now 55+ and in a very mature consumer state.  Gen X is in their peak earning years and also their peak spending years with family expenses mounting up.  The new Millennial Generation are nearly all out of high school on the young end and over half of them are approaching 30 years old.  

We could divide it up in many ways:

• Make it a 3 way world - 50+, 30+ and 12-30 -  You would be pretty close to lining up with the 'stages of maturity' of the whole population and also fairly close to the current Boomer/GenX/Millennial alignment.   This would be a full change - we'd really be packaging the demos not by their population but more on their age and the consumer needs surrounding that stage of their maturity.  
• Go for 2 broad groups that are tighter than what we have now and with a lot less overlap.   Here you would have 20-44 and 45-70 spread.  You are either looking at younger and older targets for your product.  
• Set up our age data breakouts with Arbitron so we have combos of 5 year spans.  You can pick 3+ combos and tailor the full presentation to the client.   Build a 25-40 demo for products that are looking for new families with young kids in them.   Build an 20-35 breakout for products aimed at younger singles or just married.  Build 50-65 group for empty nest couples.   

Sumeet is 'spot on' in pointing out the need here and this is going to take a full head on effort.  Not only do we have to figure out new ways to divide up a moving target as the demos grow and age, but we also need to completely change a lot of our culture and radio product structure.   Here's a starting list of 'things to do' to accomplish the task: 

1. Getting Arbitron to develop new breakout demos and systems in all the software, 
2. Teaching the sales teams to present a whole new package with either completely different demos or specific targets customized for the client's target - not our 25-54 break out. 
3. Programming will need to adjust it's targeting also.   What is the most valuable target to dominate?  It's a whole new question and maybe one that changes all the time.

For sure we are all going to need to be a lot more in tune with product target demographics, the generations and their characteristics within the population and be ready to overhaul our key demo rank and CPM business model.   

Perhaps the NAB should be taking the lead here and take Sumeet's observations to the planning table.  

Jimmy Kimmel Teaches Us All How To Twerk Social Media.

Jimmy Kimmel's recent exploit with the Epic Twerk Fail gives us all some great lessons in the new world of Social Media.   No doubt you saw the video all over your Facebook page, on news casts, in talk shows, or just roaming the office on someone's computer.  The 30 second video of a girl twerking and falling backwards on a table with a candle and her pants catching of fire spread like wild fire.  It's over 11 million views in just a week and then Jimmy reveals he did the video as a hoax with a stunt woman and that reveal is heading to 10 million views.  

Here are some observations and lessons that Jimmy's prank can teach us:

Authentic Wins - You can't hype it.  Look at all the 'authentic looking' touches here.  It starts with the video itself looking as if it was shot on a phone.  Even the 'acting' here is carefully executed to make it look 'not professional.'  The room itself is set up with cheap furniture and a no frills look.   The key here is that the video looks real.

Timing It: The other key here is how Jimmy deals with the video.   He sets the trap carefully by just posting the video and then he waits till it starts to grow.  He carefully waits to show it on his show till it has already started to grow on Social Media and media programming.  How many Morning Shows posted this video on their web sites and Social Media pages?  Too many to count.  Jimmy sits and watches it grow and then he reveals the hoax and takes over the bit.  

Hitting A Hot Topic:  This bit wouldn't have grown much with out Miley's wild twerking on the MTV Awards show.  Jimmy's other key here was jumping on something that everyone was already talking about.

Let Social Media Do the Work:  If you have something that is 'hot' enough you can see the power of Social Media here.  Just remember you can't HYPE it.  Social Media will do the work IF you carefully set the stage.  

So what does Jimmy really get from this bit?  So what, he racks up 10 million views on some video.   Actually Jimmy gains a lot from this bit.  Next year we'll be watching an 'epic battle' on the nightly talk shows.  Leno exits again and now we have 2 newer players Fallon vs Kimmel.   Kimmel is on ABC and still finding an audience - this is where Nightline was just a year ago.  NBC's Tonight show has always won this slot - just ask Letterman.  Fallon is building up solid props and looks ready to hit it big on the Tonight Show.
Kimmel needs to grab the spotlight now - while he is the only 'new world' show in the time slot.

When you look at the new breed of show that Fallon and Kimmel are crafting they are clearly aiming at an audience that lives in social media and has never known a world without the web.  The Jimmies play constantly on Social Media.  They tweet all the time, play games with the audience on social media and use material that comes right from Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and if some new site develops they will pounce on it.  

Meanwhile Letterman and Leno only put their toe in the Social Media pool.

So what does this mean to your station and your personalities?   Actually a lot.  There is a lot to learn from in how Kimmel built the bit and used Social Media here.   The lessons are really pretty obvious.  Perhaps the real area we should consider here is - 'are we living in the Letterman/Leno world or the world of the Jimmy's.'  Are we diving into the audience's pool or just hanging out around it?

A Big Picture Look at Radio Brands and Facebook

Facebook will be 10 years old early next year.   It's almost hard to imagine a product marketing without the familiar blue square "F" logo and the Blue Bird in it.  Social Media has clearly become an integral part of the fabric of the world.  In the U.S. around 60% of the 130 million people living here use it (most estimates are around 180 million U.S. users now in a population of  315 million).

So how are radio brands doing in reaching and working with a media that's clearly become integral to any brand out there.   Let's take a BIG PICTURE look.  We'll use the Page Rankings from Quintly.com where you can pull out various categories of Fan Pages and see how they stack up.

If we start with the whole world and look at the stats:

Eminem with 75 million is at the top (if you take out You Tube and Facebook itself) and it goes from there to more artists like Rihanna, Michael Jackson, Lady GaGa, Justin Bieber, Katy Perry and Linkin Park are all above 55 million.  Some big brands like Coke, Red Bull and Disney are in the top 50 with more than 40 million.

There are lots of TV shows, some movies, a couple of sports stars (soccer) and some video game sites.  It's a very interesting list that's updated by the minute, you can visit it here.

Now let's take a big picture look at the Radio Station segment of all these pages:

The On-Line radio brands I Heart at 6 million and Pandora at 5.6 million. After that we have lots of radio brands from Europe and other spots in the world.   France and Italy have brands here with some pretty strong numbers given that both countries are around 60 million.

You can play with the ranks here.

You have to go all the way to #38 in the ranks to find Z100 with around a 1/4 of a million fans.  KISS in Los Angeles, BLS in NYC, WILD in SF, KISW Seattle, Movin Seattle, KUBE Seattle and WXPN Philly all manage to crack the top 120 and have 50,000 to 250,000 fans.

When you stand back and see the other countries and radio brands there are some interesting stories.  Hungry only has 6 million people yet the have a radio brand in the top 100.  Toronto has 3 stations in the top 120 - more than NYC?

When you stand back and look at our performance on the BIG PICTURE it's really a bit concerning.   If we took a look at the Twitter numbers the picture wouldn't even be close to the Facebook showing.  Social Media is huge interaction vehicle.  Our brands will never be strong in the digital new world we are trying to build a presence in without Social Media.   We have plenty of opportunity to grow here.

While some of the growth comes from building the message on-air to your cume a lot more of it comes from creating engaging content.  Being the 10th one to post those pics of Miley Twerking probably isn't going to spread the word.   You also have to be consistent - posting randomly when the mood hits is also a way to fall off the News Feed.

Do you have a real strategy and plan for Social Media?  We are still novices, but even in elementary school there is a plan and a strategy.   

Feast On Our Cume

For the most part when buyers look at radio they lean on the average persons and rating point numbers.  The main currency revolves around 'how many people will hear the commercial.' But, no one goes into a marketing program on radio buying just one commercial.  You wouldn't walk into a casino and take the $2,000 dollars you were going to spend and put it all on one number.

Radio has sold itself in the advertising world by often leaving our best player on the bench for the whole game.  That player is our CUME.  The total sum of the audience that listens to the station sometime over the rating period.   Back in the diary days we'd see a Cume number that was made up of an average of the audience we collected over an average week during the survey period.   Usually it was a pretty big number showing a couple of stations maybe reaching 25% of their total market population.

Of course that number came from people remembering to write down the stations they listened to and how long they listened.  Now that we have the people meter in the field we can see how wrong the 'recalled numbers' from the audience are compared to their real behavior.   It the world of Cume it looks like the diary method caught around 55-65% of the actual Cume numbers for most stations.  If you look at a market leading station like WDVE in Pittsburgh in the Diary days it was usually around 450,000 for the cume - reaching a little under 25% of the market which is just over 2 million.  In a PPM world WDVE is often 200,000 higher in the Cume numbers with over 600,000 listeners.   In fact we usually see 3-4 stations that are above 600,000 in cume in this market each of them reaching around 30-33% of the market.  If you segment the market to Women or Men or Younger and Older you can easily reach 50-60% of the market for that demo just by picking the leading station.  

When you look at all the marketing options for a product today there are really very few options where you can really 'reach the market' with a vehicle.  Yes you have TV as a big reach contender but when you have only 4-6 local channels and they compete on the same cable box with 400 other channels and a DVR the reach of the media falls back.  Radio's reach is also very consistent with over 90% of the market using the media every week for decades upon decades of data.

For years we've put Cume in the backseat.  But we still sell radio and any other media with the goal of reaching the biggest share of the market possible.  When we look at a You Tube video campaign - the first number that matters is the 'total views'.   The fact that Jeff Gordon's Pepsi Test Drive video spoof is over 38 million views is the number that really counts and the one that the Pepsi guys are toasting over.

The problem is that we've really never had a reliable Cume number to sell with.  The averages that often made up our Cume in the diary books are now proven to be way under estimating the real Cume.  And since most campaigns run more than just on 'average' week any average week cume number is also way underestimating the real cume audience that the 2-3 week campaign could have reached.  It's also like guessing how many stars in the sky tonight - it depends on how many you can see, and our vision is limited.

In marketing a product the goal is to buy a campaign to reach as much of the market and the target as possible with your resources. The more people you get your message to the more people in the store, the more product moved off the shelves, the more car shoppers in the lot, the more people sitting down to dinner, the more people clicking on the buy button and the more people following you on social media and becoming 'fans' of your brand.   To accomplish any of the goals we just listed you have to reach a big Cume with your message.  Just putting out a steady stream of messages to your 300 fans on Facebook is a not much of a marketing plan to increase your revenue.  You need to reach a much bigger number to have an impact and that's CUME.

Radio has that CUME.   Perhaps our problem is that instead of putting that CUME in the game we've left it on the bench - just pinch hitting here and there in our game.  Could it play every day?  Could it win games?  Well coach, maybe it's time to find out.  

Maybe what we really need is a better understanding of the Cume number and a better measurement of it in EVERY market.  If the buyers of media really understood Cume and if the clients we sell to really understood how to use the Cume to build their brands, ring their cash registers, build their fan base and learn to use radio to take full advantage of our huge Cume audience we would be seeing our revenue shares making some meaningful gains.

Your Community

Nearly every conversation on terrestrial radio's assets lists being 'local' at, or near, the top.  Great stations are the ones that DO embrace their community and most station teams work very hard to stage events, raise funds, as well as helping organizations and individuals.

It's an unprofitable investment when you look at it on a spread sheet at budget time.   All the man hours spent setting up events, attending meeting after meeting on the Blues Festival in the park, and bringing in extra people as we broadcast from the local fair for the weekend.  While many staffers 'donate' their time and work extra just to help you still need people and people cost money to have around.  You can see some stations are fading away in interacting with the community.   They have paired down their staffs with air talent on multiple stations, fewer bodies in the building to do all the work it takes to get into all the events and community needs.

You can also visualize the minute by minute Media Monitors PPM rating graphs sinking as you spend another break helping the local hospital raise funds for a children's wing.  We've all done huge festivals and participated in events with great local media coverage and opened up the rating book to see 'nothing' in return.  Sometimes we seem to do it mostly for 'logo exposure.'   Get the banners up, park the van and set up the tent - we're there.  Other times we just hope to get a mention on the local TV news - only to be known as 'a local radio station.'

Community IS very important and when you see how stations jump in and really make community events shine that is when you get real value.  This is when you build images that really stand out with the audience and make lasting impressions that may not translate into instant ratings or revenue, but they build a long term bond with the audience.   We can all think of great local events that became legendary because a radio station united the community around them.  We also know that you can't just do one fireworks show or one concert fest a year and expect the audience to be convinced that you are a great neighbor.  It would be like just running two great commercials and expecting to fill your store as a client.   You need to keep the effort and focus on being involved every month in your community in a visible way.

A couple of tips:

• Use your Air Time Wisely - How many times do we approach an event by just cranking out a liner and telling the air staff to 'yak it up.'  The liner is a laundry list of thank you and sponsor plugs and a rambling jock, trying to make this break turn into something.   How about setting up a quick theme and building a system of sponsor mentions that doesn't let this turn into a rambling exercise.  Also don't put all the promotion eggs in the liner/air staff basket.  

• Integrate it - Cover it in the news.  Even if you only do a few casts in Mornings cover the event on a regular basis.  This IS something going on in the community and part of the news in your community - why not cover it and get that extra mention in Mornings?   Also look at covering it in the weather - ahead on the Big Fest Weekend - partly cloudy and in the low 80s - just a slight chance of a shower.
   
• Set up the Imaging to help:  A quick statement at the end of the 'music sweepers' to quickly mention a big event helps, so do doing some advance work when you have artists on the phone, hanging backstage or doing an interview - have them plug the bigger events.  With a few minutes with the editor you can tweak the imaging and get those extra mentions in the hour without stretching out the breaks.

• Involve sales - How about a package where you get to be a community sponsor for an event.  What the client gets is a tag on the end of their commercial this month for the event.  Maybe a bonus or maybe a way to tag on a few extra dollars for the association.    

• Use Social Media:  Tons of opportunities here to build up the event, spread the word and keep it active without taking up tons of air time.   The key is building a social media campaign.  You can't just keep running the same 'hey come out and be there' posts 3 times a day.   Get creative with pics, video, and build up the special angles available.   

• Need volunteers to help: Invite the audience.  I bet you'd be surprised at the response as you tapped into the girls basketball team or just brought in some 'volunteers' to be 'roadies for a day'.   Don't have a jock to hang out at an event - have a budding audience star jump in.  With a little creativity and some coordination you can find ways to stay involved. 

As we all take a day for the 4th and many of you head out to host fireworks displays, hang at the state fair, or host that music event in the community stand back and consider the opportunity this event might bring or how you could enhance it.   Also take a look at all the events you do in the community.  Which ones have potential and which ones are just taking up space.  You have to balance quantity and quality to be effective here.   

Lastly, thank you local radio for putting in such a big effort for our communities.  You've all given up precious days off, time with your families, and put in lots of effort to your communities.  Sometimes broadcasters may not get as much credit as you, and the station, deserve.   

HAVE A GREAT 4TH WEEKEND.   

Stop Your Busy Day and Look Behind the Monitor

Stop your busy day as a Brand Manager, PD, Ops Manager (or whatever title you've taken on) and take a long look at what you do.   Do you really have a clear view of the brand, the audience, the clients who advertise on it, and the real view from the studio of the team that really creates it?   Yes you have data flowing into the computer from everywhere.  The Web metrics, ratings data with all kinds of special breakouts, and in the PPM world it's pouring out of the monitor like Niagara Falls.

I bet if you take a look you'll find that most of the day is spent behind the CRT display, pecking away on the keyboard and zipping the mouse around.  It's a sea of logs to edit, data to review, emails to answer, audio files to review, imaging files to edit or evaluate in a wave editor, and maybe a web meeting here and there.  There is new software to master, new distribution platforms to keep up with, the web site to keep updated, the studio software complexities/screw ups to master, the social media world to advance the brand's engagement with the audience, the latest trends within the audience, today's gossip, the music in your format, and then there are the management of the whole team that will likely make or break the brand.

In today's world you also may be doing all of this with 2 or 3 stations in the cluster so you can see how easy it's become to enclose ourselves in a computer cocoon.  Our POV has changed from listening to our brands, actually watching/listening to the audience, and interacting with clients marketing themselves with our brands.  Instead we see it mostly from a 22" LED monitor filled with data graphs, wave forms, emails and logs.

As you head into the Spring and Summer maybe it's time to set a few new priorities for your role and your POV.    Here are some suggestions:

• Hit the Sales Road - What do the local clients think about your brand and using radio to market their brands?  Have they noticed the engagement you have with your audience in social media?  The power the on-air personalities have to market their products with their audience?  The impact you make in the community with the promotions and events you stage and work with?  Have you showcased the creative power of your brands and radio to them or have we just let the on-line world take that stage?   Or do they really see us as yesterday's media that doesn't work as well as some of the on-line experiments they engage in.  Do they really have a vision of your audience anymore?  Or has it also been lost is a sea of CPM breakouts? 
• Get away and Really Listen - We used to get a hotel room and write down the whole day.  With BDS and Mediabase we can see the music anytime, but what about the imaging, the personality breaks, the phones, and the music flow on your brands.   How does it stack up minute by minute with the competition.  How does it stand out even in a world where there are so many music options? 
• Listen On Line Also - How does your stream sound?  From the VOP of those of us who listen to a lot of streams in our daily routine you hear a lot that are pretty disturbing.  Dead air, music cut off, commercials chopped up, instrumental music that's just weird, endless boring PSAs and all kinds of streaming events that are unfortunate at best.  Maybe a few years ago not many people tuned in on their computers - we all know that's not the case today.   Have you just let the steam dry up??
• Social Media and the Web - Stand back and take a LONG HARD look at the website, Facebook, and Twitter.  Are we falling behind and looking at a website that is just dated and not maintained.  Do we still have the same jock blog entry from last summer?  Are the news feeds on our Rock station all about Justin Bieber?  Do we have a cume of 120,000 but only 4,000 facebook fans and the posts are just coming from a few personalities with no strategic or tactical purpose?  
• Hang with the Audience - We used to do listener advisory boards and there were also lots of events, remotes, and moments when most PDs had time to get a good look and listen to the audience.  Not only did we see the number breakouts and graphs on their listening, we actually listened to them.  Maybe it's time to start again?   
• Hang with the Personalities and Programming Team - Yes everyone's busy, but you need to keep the creative juices flowing and the teamwork ticking.  Just having staff meetings, procedure memos, email notices, and show meetings that are mostly mechanical it's time to brainstorm, create, have some fun, play a few jokes on each other, and get pumped up to entertain the audience.   Most of this doesn't come pouring out of a monitor and keyboard.   

Gee we didn't even hit a full 7 steps here.  If we just took 1 day and spent it on each area here in 6 weeks your brand could be a lot more in touch with sales team, the air personalities and the audience.  Plus we all know it would clearly sound better on the air and on-line.   The biggest step here isn't 200 sit ups a day - most of it is just pushing away this keyboard I'm typing on and the monitor you're reading this on.   BYE.   

Exploring Your Local Market Dialect

Traveling from Radio market to Radio market in the U.S. and Canada one of the traits that is always fascinating is the local dialects.  It's the one big key to sounding local and a part of the community for any talent in any market and it's also often very important to the whole staging of a station/brand.

Where did these traits come from?  Why do we have so many different accents, phrases and styles of speech?  I ran into an overwhelming exploration of the various Dialects in North America in a recent link from a Facebook pal.   This is an amazing map and site, complete with You Tube links to illustrate various Dialects, as well as detailed histories on the evolution of the Dialects.

You can take in the whole site here.

The author is Rich Aschmann who is a Christian Minister who does this more or less as a hobby.  As he notes 'some people collect stamps - I collect Dialects.'  It's an amazing site that has way more information than most of us will every use to pick up the Dialect in Minnesota or around Pittsburgh but if you want to really dig in and know your market this is a valuable resource - if you can understand and grasp it all.

Even though we all speak English there is clearly a regional and local influence across both the U.S. and Canada.  It's more than just 'soda' or 'pop.'

TSL Part 8 - Some Conclusions and Summary

TSL started out as a math formula to illustrate the relationship between the Cume audience and the Average Quarter Hour numbers.   We started with AQH times the number of quarter hours in the daypart (504 for the total week) then dividing by the Cume.   When we started, getting 30-40 quarter hours a week was a strong performance.  Over the years we've seen this number shrink.  Some of it comes from changing to PPM data measurement in the top 50 markets.  The reality of the meter vs. the old diary recall data has changed the trending here so measuring long term trends in the audience have become a mute point.   But, we can clearly see that TSL is getting weaker for the transmitter radio world even if the 'rules of the game' have evolved.

If you look back at the series here we've sampled a lot of tactics and strategies to try and improve TSL.   The list here is still evolving.   I just got a note from Jon Miller at Arbitron about new TSL analysis of PPM data that is looking at the number of days audience groups tune into a specific station.  Obviously if you can go from 3 to 4 days of tune in from the sample your TSL will improve.

Sean Ross (now with Billboard) recently brought up some interesting points on TSL.   His points seem to highlight that while we spend all our time building occasions and making appointments and focusing less on keeping people listening right now we may be hurting TSL.   You can read Sean's excellent piece on TSL - HERE 

Setting up our clocks to follow listening patterns has helped TSL.   No doubt that building towards events with billboards and teases has held some ears listening longer.   Pushing for more tuning occasions has also shown to be a clear way to gain some more TSL.  As we comb through more and more data on PPM we will no doubt see even more ways to tweak our programming systems to gain that 'extra yard' or 'run per game' by tweaking the game plan.

No doubt there are answers to keeping TSL strong in all the number crunching, but we also have to look beyond the numbers.  Going back to our 'Money Ball' analogy here we've all seen players on the field who clearly win games, fill the stands, and manage to do it even if the competition focus' their resources just on beating them.   How do you think Derek Jeeter fairs in pure Money Ball world?  Probably not nearly as good as he performs as a great baseball player with a bat or glove in his hand.

While the numbers do offer some effective tactics great TSL comes from keeping the audience engaged.  Being a unique/special brand that builds a bond with listeners and keeps them entertained, informed and musically intrigued.   Rarely is there just ONE answer or tactic to success.  It always takes a balanced combination of tactics and strategies.  To win make sure you have a full and balanced approach.

We have tons of experience in building TSL, lots of data to look at and learn from, and a long history with the audience that gives us all the advantages to preserve TSL even as more and more media options present themselves every day.  In may ways 'we are the pros in this world'  the new comers really don't have much to show with the key elements of entertaining and engaging radio.  They rarely have personality, information, a local community presence, imaging/branding and when it comes to promotion radio's abilities still very strong.   The tactics are important but so is the product.  

Thanks for your TSL here and of course you thoughts and input are always welcome.