Last week, my 18-year-old son brought home a tall dark green thermos from a thrift store. It looked like a thermos that might have been used by one of those workers you see in pictures that sat without a harness while constructing the Empire State Building. The name “Clarence” was etched in black Sharpie around … Continue reading The Unlikely Rebranding of Stanley
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We hear lots of memorable expressions in our client meetings. Most are axioms about how things work in radio programming. And many of them are dead wrong! “But it tests” is a perennial favorite, an argument for playing a song that is completely un-strategic because somebody put it in a music test—and just our luck, … Continue reading They Tried That, and It Won’t Work
Read Full Article »Boy oh boy, do we live in a “satisfy me now” society. If those online ad metrics don’t look good at the end of the week, pull it! If those streaming numbers don’t look good the morning after the episode, get rid of it! If the ratings don’t look good for the new format, see … Continue reading Give It Time to Grow! (A Plea for Patience When Evaluating Content)
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December means lots of things. End of the year, colder weather, the holiday season, and another edition of the “Wrapped” playlist that Spotify curates for its premium subscribers. Spotify aggregates the listening data it has on you to present your very own year-end listening recap with a delightful, animated accompaniment. In previous years, even though … Continue reading How Spotify’s “Wrapped” Spoke to Me
Read Full Article »I cried while watching football. No, it’s not because my Browns lost another late-season game. I expect that this time of year, but for some reason I still watch anyway. I cried watching Chevrolet’s 2023 holiday ad, “A Holiday To Remember.” If you are overly sentimental, I’ll summarize the commercial for you. Otherwise, please watch … Continue reading How Chevrolet Made Me Cry By Not Promoting a Sales Event
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I recently listened to an episode of Rob Lowe’s podcast, Literally! With Rob Lowe, which featured an interview with George Stephanopoulos. While the episode lasts over an hour, there is one thing Stephanopoulos mentions 17 minutes and 35 seconds in that struck me. Actually, it’s three things. First, it’s important to be aware of Stephanopoulos’s … Continue reading How Research and Strategy Beat an 89% Approval Rating
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I was surprised—and flattered!—at the amount of feedback I received to my “Stop Chasing Meters, Build A Brand” post three weeks ago. In hindsight, I guess I shouldn’t have been, but that feedback warrants additional thoughts and clarifying points. Before I get into those, I want to acknowledge and thank those readers who took the … Continue reading Stop Chasing Meters, Build A Brand – A Follow-Up
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If you live in the southeastern portion of the United States, you might be familiar with Baker Roofing, one of the nation’s largest roofing contractors. And if you are familiar with Baker Roofing, you might also be familiar with a phrase that is prominently displayed on each of their work trucks, a promise that founder … Continue reading Always Good Work
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When I programmed radio stations, I would occasionally run a “quarter-hour test” of my stations and the competition. This practice allowed me to step outside my usual listening patterns, which were highly unusual compared to that of a typical listener. The quarter-hour test was a way to force myself to create random snapshots of listening, … Continue reading The Radio Streaming Quarter-Hour Test
Read Full Article »A little more than two years ago, a music radio station with more than two decades of heritage in its format was struggling. According to the latest PPM data from Nielsen, the station failed to finish among the top ten stations in its target demographic and—as a result—advertising revenue was down precipitously. The station hired … Continue reading Stop Chasing Meters, Build a Brand
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