Mac Black said:
Coke is not advertising, it's identifying.
I suppose that, technically, what Coke spends billions on is brand reinforcement and recognition. But that is, quite simply, one of the many intended purposes of advertising.
Big difference. Every drink maker puts packaging on their product.
They must know something that you don't: that brand awareness is made up of things ranging from share of voice to share of market all the way to facings and footage.
What keeps them coming back for more? The taste.
Unless they have released a garlic-onion soda, all of them taste good to somebody. What brings people back is mostly perception... a decent product, good image associations, pricing, availability, peer group influence, etc.
If it were only about product quality, we would have been watching Betamax tapes for 25 years.
Advertising (tv & radio commercials, signage...but most importantly word of mouth) helped them build the brand, but taste has what has kept them on top.
There was no radio, let alone TV, when Coke started. What built the brand and, indeed, the entire soda fountain phenomenon in drug stores, was the unique blend of cocaine and cola nut flavors, giving a smooth boost that was much better than coffee...
People listen for the content, not the name.
There are many other issues involved, including the same ones about availability (signal), peer group influence, self-image enhancement, etc.
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But if you are not aware of the station (you may have heard it, but you did not listen and you did not carry away a feeling about it) you will not seek it out.
If I'm not aware of the station, that means I'm not listening to the station...so I'm not hearing all those great liners!
About half of the average station's cume comes from people listening less than an hour a week. Half of those don't know the station and don't remember they listened to it. One of the reasons to image frequently is to let people who hear a station where to come back... even if they were previously unfamiliar with the station. Another reason is that the average listening incident is around 10 minutes... so you only get two or three chances to get your own message in each time.
I know my market, my format & what my listeners want. Very rarely am I wrong.
Please post a list of your major market triumphs, then. In general, a good PD with research will beat a good PD without it. And a mediocre or new PD with research can challenge a very good PD.
"I have a golden ear" is the biggest fairy tale in radio.
Programming a station to the research just shows that u lack confidence & don't know what the people want & u will usually lose unless u just have crappy competition.
Having done both, programming with and without research, I'd much prefer to have research because I don't know what the listener consensus for every song is, and, like the rest of us humans (I'm assuming you are a Vulcan) I like having a quantifiable insight into listener taste.
P2s and P3s definitely don't want deep cuts, as they are borderline unfamiliar and definitely unappealing. And most listeners over 25, faced with an unfamiliar song, tune out.
That's your opinion & your opinion is wrong. Just bc a song didn't get beaten into the heads of listeners doesn't mean it's a bad song or listeners don't want to hear it. Alot of the times it's a breath of fresh air & I end up increasing spins. Skilled programmers know how to mix the hits with the deep cuts.
Every time I have competed with a "deep cuts" station I have won. Every time I see a deep cut on MediaMonitors, the station playing it loses.
There is considerable evidence supporting strong familiarity, and there is also the same volume of evidence showing that too many new songs, too many deep cuts, too many very secondary cuts is the kiss of death on the radio.
P1 status on mediocre stations fluctuates. Stations that are a part of the community have relationships with their listeners have loyal P1's. We all know the hits, the hits are boring, stations that only play the major hits are boring & drive listeners away.
P1 status on all stations is a cyclical thing. While each station may have a small group of diehard P1's, there are not enough of them to have the necessary share-building ability for a station to win.
There are more people who like several different stations, usually in different formats, and who give fairly equal time to all. from one period of time to another, the status of the different favorite stations changes from P1 to P2 to P3 due to a variety of factors. Ignoring the fact that P1 is not a constant state is a serious error in PPM markets. We did not know much about ongoing listener behaviour prior to PPM, as there were no panel surveys of an ongoing nature and we thought everything was about the P1.
Are u more likely to take suggestions from someone u trust or a complete stranger? No loyalty, probably won't even listen to the stop set.
The length of listening occasions does not show engagement to be a trump card in playing the ratings game. It's all about the number of occasions, not the length of listening.
