Brian and Chrissy, WGNA, Albany Be Where the Audience Is

Great brands meet their customers wherever they are.  Look around any big website.  They tend to have, front and center, stories about (and links to) stuff around the Hot Topics of the day.  Great personality shows instinctively know where the audience is emotionally and where they should be on an given day on a topic.  Which brings us to Brian and Chrissy, WGNA, Albany.  It’s their first show after their Buffalo Bills lose to the Kansas City Chiefs in what was the greatest weekend for football ever.  There’s no need to say that so much of their audience was grieving over the loss.  So, that’s where Brian and Chrissy were, too, with their content.  Some of their benchmarks remained, but the rest of the show had Bills content and tapped into where their audience was emotionally.  Here’s one break which proves that (note how they start the break with audio to hook the audience).

Regular Person Olympics

The Winter Olympics start in a few days.  Choose a few of the events and give one or two to each cast member of the show, who is tasked with trying that event.  Do audio for the show and video for social media.  And call it Regular Person Olympics.  Thanks to Kyle, Bryan, and Sarah, WRAL-FM, Raleigh for this idea.

They Came For the Money

New year, new game called They Came For the Money.  So many artists allow their songs to be used in advertising (some of them strange marriages).  Play the audio of the ad (with the product name bleeped) and the listener needs to guess the brand that the song is being used to hawk.

The Big Tigger Morning Show, V103, Atlanta with That’s That with Miss Pat

Alliteration is very powerful, especially when it comes to naming features.  Research has proven that named features are retained.  When you add alliteration, it heightens things.  The Big Tigger Morning Show, V103, Atlanta has, in its cast, a comedian very popular with the audience whose name is Miss Pat.  Wanting a daily feature to define Miss Pat and her sense of humor, they settled on That’s That with Miss Pat.  This is a great, highly memorable name for a benchmark.  In the feature, Miss Pat goes off on a topic of the day that has caught her eye.  She gets to be her big bold self and apply her sense of humor against a story or topic everyone knows about.  Here’s an example of That’s That with Miss Pat.

Spice Up Your Spouse

With Valentine’s Day not too far off, here’s a promotion you can do where you take calls from women about how lame their husband has become celebrating the holiday.  She can complain about his lack of imagination when it comes to gifts and how he treats her.  You then give him a VD makeover to improve things.  And call it Spice Up Your Spouse.

Great Shows Don’t Happen by Accident

No standout show or talent in radio got there by guessing at it.  The Ryan Seacrests and Howard Sterns of our industry ascended to iconic status (iconic:  great ratings, tons of revenue) because there was a strategic process in place to get there.

Does your show have one?  More importantly, do your talent have the three elements necessary for that strategy to work?

A new year brings me new clients.  Because what I do is a boutique service, looking to pay a higher level of attention to fewer shows, I evaluate any potential program around three key elements.  These attributes indicate if those on the show, the ones we’re pining to be Seacrests and Sterns, are a cut above the rest of the market to get there.

Those three areas are their Aptitude, Attitude, and Work Ethic.  Let me touch on each as you think about your talent, hoping they can make a difference building your brand.

Aptitude:  simply put, do the people on the show have talent and a capacity to be bold, gigantic personalities fans crave to be around each morning.  Are they fun/funny?  Do they have a natural interest in what’s going on in the world and a perspective on everything current with no fear to share it?  Can they be vulnerable with their life and honest with the audience?  Are they self-confident and curious?  Are they electric to be around?  Will they get involved locally to generate great content for on-air and social media that can be done in unique ways?

Attitude:  are they positive team builders who put all others above themselves?  Can they lead unselfishly?  Do they figure out how to get stuff done and innovate around speedbumps that appear on the road to great execution of relevant content?  Or are they the types who tell you how something can’t be done or why it won’t work?  I call these the “if only…” people.  If only I had this it would work.  Nope, we create our own path and success.  Great attitudes drive wins.

Work Ethic:  gone are the days where talent could show up, be pretty, and get great ratings.  Because of the competition for listeners’ time, we must work at this (in a word:  prep) and earn it every single break.  Identify the right content, develop a treatment of that content which makes it memorable, and hunker down to pull it off.  I can tell if a show prepped or is winging it when I listen – you can, too.  We no longer have that grace to get this done.

Every talent needs to be coached up (even Tom Brady and Aaron Rodgers are coached up).  Having great aptitude, a superior attitude, and an unparalleled work ethic are the foundational elements of personalities who are difference-makers.

We need talent to help set us apart.  Leaders help groom these attributes in personalities to get them there.

Couple that with a strategy that fits your people, and your win will never be accidental.

Work hard at it and it might even be epic.

Kyle, Bryan, and Sarah, WRAL-FM, Raleigh with Conflict Creates Entertainment

In the construction of your breaks and in the dissection of the stories you tell on the show, where’s the conflict?  Who or what helps push your story line forward and can be the center of emotional engagement that draws listeners in?  Kyle, Bryan, and Sarah, WRAL-FM, Raleigh think of this in every break they plan on the show.  Sarah was due to have a girls weekend with college friends in Key West.  Yet, one of the friends invited another gal Sarah doesn’t like, and even considers an “energy vampire” so she’s thinking of bailing from the get together because of it.  A good story to tell for character definition because it’s honest and has conflict.  The show took things one step further – after Sarah tells her story and lays out the drama for the audience to comment on, they get on the friend in question so Sarah can ask why she did that.  This is “lean in content”.  And because it had conflict throughout, it garnered an emotional reaction from the audience both on the phones and in social media to make it more memorable to keep the show top-of-mind and “can’t miss”.  In your content breaks, where’s the bold conflict you can center things around so listeners are engaged and entertained?

The Girl Scout Competition

Girl Scout cookies go on sale soon.  Great character development happens when you place show cast members in competition with one another.  Partner a girl scout up with each cast member of the show.  Give the teams one full week to sell cookies, setting up a narrative story arc listeners can follow (each day a different “content chapter” of the competition).  Whoever sells the most girl scout cookies wins.  Thanks to Zach and Brittney, B100, South Bend, IN for this idea.

Karson and Kennedy, MIX 104.1, Boston Just Play More Music

One of the reasons FOX News is so powerful is because in every segment they air, there is a villain.  Regardless of your politics, having a villain in some of the things you do will heighten a break’s stickiness.  It doesn’t always have to be negative, but opposites create meaning.  If I love The Bachelor and you hate The Bachelor, that could lead to an interesting and passionate on-air conversation that forces the audience to emotionally take a side as they identify with whichever position they hold.  Karson and Kennedy, MIX 104.1, Boston have an annual project each December where they gather toys for needy kids.  5000 Toys for Girls and Boys has been a staple of the show for years.  It took off this year when a villain appeared – an antagonist if you will – who was tired of everyone having their hand out for something.  He called the show, voiced his unhappiness, told the show to just play more music, and even insulted a cast member at one point.  What do you think happened?  The feature took off and not only beat, but exceeded its goal.  All thanks to the caller.  That the show used the bashing to further create humor made it even more memorable.

The Betty White Challenge

Betty White is going to be laid to rest this week.  She was a big animal advocate and lots of animal shelters are doing fundraisers to honor her.  Instead of asking listeners for money again, especially in a month when they’re getting their holiday credit card bills, do something bigger.  Partner with a local animal shelter and get every stray adopted.