by Kent Sterling
If it’s Thursday, it must be time for another Sterling Radio Tip of the Week!
I’m going against my own tease which promised what you can be sure would have been a magnificent treatise on the construction of format clocks. It will have to wait until next week because I read a piece on Huffington Post about branding. Normally, that doesn’t get me excited.
This time, the conversation is about the “Millennials” – those consumers who were born between 1980 and 1995. These people aren’t just consumers, they are advocates for brands connected via social networks with millions of other Millennials.
News/talk radio stations don’t play in that sandbox very often because those stations haven’t had success doing it. Without delving into the stupidity of that narrow-mindedness, let’s talk about sportstalk where Men 18-34 happily play (see, they can find a station on the AM dial if the content interests them!).
Here are the attributes of the Millennials, according to Ken Markman and Scott Shaw.
- They think in pictures
- They remember stories
- They embrace the real power of social media
- They use technology differently – really differently
If you use facts in your branding, stop. They don’t remember them. You need to tell a story – one story. Stop branding individual shows. Brand the station as a whole, and hire to that brand.
Here is the link to the post.
Read the post, and then because you can’t afford to hire a cognitive scientist, put every 22-28 year old who works in your building in a room, and ask how they get their news, weather, traffic, and sports. Your head will spin.
If you don’t do some work to try to figure this out, you will never reach this consumers through any means, and your station’s cume will keep aging. It’s not brain surgery, but it does require current managers to admit they don’t know everything. Not many of those out there.
Next week: Format clocks. How should they be built to both improve ratings and results for clients?
Pot it up!
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via kentsterling.com
Kent:
Thank you for your reference and overlay of sports regarding The Advent of BrandCulture.
Ken Markman
Comment by ken markman August 7, 2010 @ 3:14 pmkkm Global Brand Strategies