If I have a product to sell to the masses, I want the group that is not expensive to convert to my product that can be my customer for years and likely their kids as well. The older people get, the more expensive it becomes to convert to my product following the many years of using my competitor.
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Do old people just not listen to the radio around here?
- Thread starter Miguelito
- Start date
Indeed. And look, as an old fart who likes to imagine they’re not really that much of an old fart, I can truthfully say I am open to switching brands on many things (some I was never willing to switch even when I wasn’t a pile of aches and pains), and embracing of new things that didn’t exist before.
None of that matters.
If the data says I’m an outlier, I’m an outlier. I am not fully representative of my demo as a whole. That doesn’t make the data wrong. It doesn’t make the media buyers at countless agencies wrong. It doesn’t make the brands wrong. It doesn’t make the media outlets who don’t much care if I show up wrong. It means I’m as much of an odd duck as I’ve always been. Just a grayer, slower, more forgetful odd duck.
None of that matters.
If the data says I’m an outlier, I’m an outlier. I am not fully representative of my demo as a whole. That doesn’t make the data wrong. It doesn’t make the media buyers at countless agencies wrong. It doesn’t make the brands wrong. It doesn’t make the media outlets who don’t much care if I show up wrong. It means I’m as much of an odd duck as I’ve always been. Just a grayer, slower, more forgetful odd duck.
That station is WRDV 89.3 licensed to Warminster, studios in downtown Hatboro and on some other low power signals in the region. it is a non commercial station with a volunteer air staff. They play big band type music all day, oldies mostly 1950’s doo-wop & early r&b weekends, and a variety on evenings. When they began this format the target audience for big band music were in their 50s-60s but now they would be 90+. That would indicate the audience must include a lot of people who were born after the big band era who came to like it from their parents or on their own. as far as I’ve heard it is not MOR or standards as most big band stations became decades ago. WIth the advent of streaming years ago I guess they have picked up big band listeners all over the country as they rely on listener donations to exist.
I was a big listener to terrestrial radio basically my whole life, I knew all the local stations and beyond, who was on them, etc. until all pre1980 music was gone as well as the personalities a few years back. Now I listen to S/xm or internet streaming stations, including oldies stations based in Philadelphia like Philly Gold Radio, Crown Sounds Radio, Sounds of Philly Radio, etc.
That is a beautiful assessment of what those of us who work in the industry call, rather coldly, "outliers".
We have always known that there is a percentage of the population, even in the target ages and other specifications we seek, that don't even approximately match the fairly narrow range of preferences of "everyone else". Because radio is "one for many" we can't step outside the range of content that 95% or so of the target audience wants, so we ignore you.
We often spot one or two outliers per 100 persons in a music test. We just erase them from the collected data.
You sum it up well by self-identifying yourself and showing that you understand why "nobody cares".
I switch brands all the time -- but only from well-known, heavily advertised name brands to store brands, or in the case of ache-and-pain stuff, generics. Goodbye Tropicana, hello Great Value. Goodbye Cheeri-O's, hello Toasted Oats. Goodbye Lipitor, hello atorvastatin. Why should I be absorbing a portion of some corporation's marketing costs every time I buy groceries? Oh, and I've been doing this since I was well within the Sacred Sales Demo.
Except those ads seem to lean more to ED, Medicare plans, ambulance chasing law firms. With the exception of the all news stations. They seem to attract more traditional advertisers.
But the news listeners are still largely over 55. And news/talk stations on AM are having their licenses turned in more frequently rather than being switched to some other format, indicating that whatever revenue those bottomfeeding commercials generate isn't enough to justify those stations' existence.
Hi all, been a while since I posted here...Ain't Nothin' But a House Party....live, local, real Oldies and Philly favorites and interviews never-before-heard from Doo Wop to Disco....https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G03GM3T9QiQ my fb fanpage has last week's highlights with Darlene Love, Martha Reeves and Billy Paul. Taught by the Geat, Holiday, Hi, Tommy, Jock-O and more, no playlist 12,000 tunes and will play most anything if it fits the feel of the Philly/Jersey DMA and not a stupid song (like no Tiny Tim - - unless it's Tiny Tim & The Hits, but yes Tim-Tam "Wait A Minute"! Call me live this Friday and shout out to the group! No playlist, all song-by-song, by feel! Breaking every rule, every radio consultant ever taught!
This is true. At a time when Classic Rock stations are dropping the word "Classic", it seems like any format playing anything older than "California Gurls" is playing with ad agency suicide.
The trouble is that's the most loyal demo of terrestrial radio. People who actually needed over the air radio growing up. The Katy Perry crowd already had YouTube, MP3s, and Rdio (pre-Spotify album streaming service of which Yours Truly was a subscriber. Rdio was purchased and promptly destroyed by Cumulus.)
There are ways to advertise to 55+ beyond life insurance, dental implants and boner pills. Gen-X is already there and do you think we're going quietly into that good night? Our senior living complexes are being designed with skateboard half-pipes, tattoo parlors and well padded mosh pit areas
I'm 40, and Elvis is an immediate switch off for me. The Beatles produced an awful lot of crap in between the gems, too. This stuff is so dated.
The other week, I was on a nice sunny Saturday morning drive and some local station played Run For Your Life. ("I'd rather see you dead, little girl, than be with another man.") Lock it in the vault, never to emerge!
Considering how much 80s and 90s remains on terrestrial radio, Gen X (proud member here) music is far better represented at this point in our lives than past generations were. Is it because they really want us? Nah. The music has held up better thus far, but let’s not be delusional. 😊
That aside, no one said we’re going quietly. Some of us may be going whimpering, trying to manage our parents’ aging concerns, our own and caring about if not for the world our offspring are inheriting.
Let’s not pretend no one in the advertising ecosystem isn’t keeping an eye on it and how our wealth (or lack thereof) and spending habits vary from past generations and making adjustments if and when the data supports it. There is not some magic pot of demographic gold that those silly millennial marketers (I’m just joking about stereotypes, not actually criticizing) are refusing to consider. No one is self-sabotaging their job. If there’s a way to make good money off of us, boner pills aside, they’ll go after it.
The problem with that kind of thinking (as noted above) is that advertisers don't want older people's loyalty--they think that these people are already with them for the long haul and that that long haul is just about over. What the advertisers really want is to convert young people to their brands, ensuring that those brands (hopefully) will stick around for another 50 years.
They “think” it because data over many years has shown it. (Though of course they want the consumers’ loyalty, that isn’t the question). If and when the data changes, so too will business models. But no one is going to ignore statistically sound evidence because their friend’s cousin’s coworker’s grandma doesn’t fit the data-based modeling.
Look, I’d love to be considered as valuable and sought after as I once was. But if the data says I’m not as valuable as my kids and their cohorts, that’s just life.
I realize that I'm showing my age with this comment, but when I read that I thought 1965. But you're actually talking about 2010! My popsicle is officially melted.
Hi T.J.! I didn't realize we had such an illustrious member here among the ranks. I just wanted to pop in, and thank you for everything you've done to preserve the great music of the past. I've been a huge fan of the PBS My Music series since that very first Doo Wop 50 special.
Keep up the good work!
Random thought: run an ad on terrestrial radio and you've bought a shot in the dark. Maybe it hits something, maybe not.
Or...you can run an ad on some venue that comes back and tells you that Frank, age 38, balding, has been googling little blue pills, Crocs, dating apps and hybrid sedans...heard your ad 4 times this afternoon. And he bought your product tonight off Amazon.
Or...you can run an ad on some venue that comes back and tells you that Frank, age 38, balding, has been googling little blue pills, Crocs, dating apps and hybrid sedans...heard your ad 4 times this afternoon. And he bought your product tonight off Amazon.
Just an FYI: Nobody buys just one ad, because, as you say, it's a shot in the dark.
The way you maximize your chances of hitting the target is buy lots of ads. Each ad is cheap. At least local radio ads are cheap. If you work with an account exec, he puts together a schedule where your ad gets played maybe ten times a day, in different shows, at different points in the cluster, in order to create the most possible impressions. That ad gets heard by thousands of people and gets results.
The "rules" that consultants teach are, basically, "find out what your listeners like and what they don't like and give them what they want." Breaking that rule means "only play songs that your target listener group despises".
Everybody likes to say they break the rules, because that makes them a rebel, and listeners love rebels. You're working for them instead of the boss. The late night DJ would say, "the boss is home in bed, and we're playing whatever we want." In a way, that became the concept behind Jack, or in Philadelphia, Ben. Playing anything we feel like. But in reality they're following the format as written. Except it's a format based on variety. What I've learned is there are ways to adapt the things the consultant tells you in ways that fit what you want to do. Then you can say you're breaking the rules. It doesn't matter, as long as it's a hit.
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