Archive for category: Planet Reynolds

Some stations launch new shows and get themselves into trouble from Day One.

The show or management believe the show needs to start with a big giveaway and trumpets blowing announcing that a new show is in town, and they immediately set themselves up to fail.

You start a new show like it’s a new restaurant in town – soft launches with no attention allow everyone to get comfortable, develop chemistry, and not highlight there’s a change.  Listeners don’t like change – that disruption in their expectations and routine should be done with lots of handholding to help listeners through the newness.  A managed opening strategy and patience work in your favor short- and long-term to hold on to the audience.

My phone tends to ring in only two scenarios:  there’s a new show about to launch and it must be started strategically.  Or the show is in the latter stages of its life cycle, and it needs to be re-invigorated.  Let’s talk in this Planet Reynolds how to do the former.

Your primary goal upon launch is to endear yourself to the cume already there.  Losing them is expensive to get back.  Here are nine guidelines as part of a strategic plan I share with new teams just starting on the station:

1. Topics (and music) should be familiar because the talent isn’t. Nothing unfamiliar for content. Topics come from:  local (if you are a live and local show), pop (popular) culture, stories from your life that prove you’re just like them, and music/artist-based content.  We all wake up and want to be around what we know.  Because you aren’t familiar, drive that through your topics. If not, the audience will have to put in effort and that rarely works out.
2. Affirm and earn images that you’re fun, genuine, friendly, and authentic in every break. They know if you’re faking it.
3. Character development is very important. Here’s where all your connection points are.  Introduce yourself by being honest and sharing the parts of your life that help you connect.  Letting them get to know you helps form that connection which leads to becoming familiar.  Can the audience relate to the story you’re telling because they’ve had a similar experience?  We like to be around people just like us.  Feed that desire.
4. Be interested in them so they’re interested in you. Lots of phones, lots of storytelling. But land on putting the focus on the audience.  You will never lose being more interested in their story than you hoping they’ll be interested in yours.
5. Avoid the point-of-fatigue that happens in breaks by under-staying the welcome. Shorter breaks lead them to wanting more. Longer breaks test the patience of those there, heightening the chance they’ll bail.  This is worse with breaks that are just chatter and have no destination or payoff.
6. Music is your friend right now. Lots of music holds their hand through the transition. It also folds you into the brand of the radio station.
7. Be careful how you do your strategic content, so listeners don’t think, “They’re trying too hard to impress me.” Ever see someone at a party trying to prove how funny or interesting they are?  Don’t be that guy.
8. Respect the past. What expectations did listeners have of the previous show and what fits given that? Meet those in every break.
9. No promotion of the show just yet (on or off the air) because promoting something heightens expectations by users. This is a soft, quiet launch. Elevate expectations by telling listeners how great/funny you are, and the audience will say, “Not as good as they tell me they are.”  Lower expectations and there’s a much better chance they’ll warm up to you faster.

We often want to call attention to change.  But when we add in the hype machine in a world where consumers are skeptical of all that, we set ourselves at a deficit.

While there are exceptions to the above, the game plan for me on stuff like this is to start quietly so we tee the show up for longer term image building and success.

Early one morning last week, a radio friend texted that he’d just boarded a United flight in Traverse City, MI headed to New York through Chicago.  He boasted that the flight would not be delayed because he was sitting in seat 27C and the Secretary of Transportation, Pete Buttigieg, was in seat 27E.  I congratulated him on his good fortune.

A half hour later I got another text.  The flight was delayed.  An hour after that, another text that the plane was pushing back.  My friend told me he’d make his connection.  But not so good for Mayor Pete.  He’d miss his flight and needed to find a seat on the next plane to DC.

What does this have to do with radio?  It’s the lesson learned.  How could the Transportation Secretary ever move to fix our air travel issues if he doesn’t live it like we do?  I applaud Buttigieg because he had our experience:  a window seat in coach, a delayed flight, a missed connection, and he was on United Airlines (something everyone should get combat pay for).

If you’re a talent, when was the last time you had the user experience?  When did you last review a break or two of your show to hear what the audience hears?  It would be easy to forget a show after it’s over, but regular reviews (putting ourselves in coach on a delayed flight) we can most easily learn how to be better, so we stay relevant for our fans.

To brand managers – I know you’re incredibly busy, but when was the last time you reviewed audio with your talent, so they grow?  And what exactly are you listening for?

Did we affirm our show’s plot?  Did we reinforce an image of relevancy, humor, or authenticity?  Did we accrue an image that would help us build our brand?  How did we do connecting with the audience?

Athletes do it.  Actors do it.  Those who give speeches do it.  Folks who do Ted Talks do it.

If we don’t do this, we stand a greater chance listeners will choose one of their other dozens of choices if we’re off strategy.  With one push of a button, they have another radio station, they can scroll social media, consume music elsewhere without interruption, listen to a podcast, etc.  So, let’s get better by having their experience and elevating our game.

I know it’s scary and most talent tend to hate it for what it brings up.  I did when I was on-the-air.  But there’s no better way to improve the experience than honing our art by listening to what we offer up as entertainment.

If you’re a talent and your manager is too busy to do this, I will if I’m not competing against you in the market (be in touch here).  We must help each other compete more effectively against all the other choices listeners have.

Our future relevancy is heightened by doing what Mayor Pete did by flying like we regular folks, so he experiences air travel like us.  If he feels our pain, he can fix our pain.

A simple, but epic decision so we can make things better for those who choose us.

Café Luna is a lovely Italian restaurant at the corner of Blount and Hargett Streets in downtown Raleigh, where I live.  I went there so much I was a P1.  Until that day I realized I hadn’t been in years.  Let me explain why and what that means to you.

When it opened, it was one of the few eateries in downtown Raleigh as they worked on growing that area of town.  Its food was terrific.  Parker, the host, always found you a table if you were a walk-in, and the basket of bread was to die for.  Until…

I haven’t been to Café Luna in years because they got repositioned.  A Laotian restaurant opened over here.  An upscale Mexican restaurant over there.  Just down the street there’s a place that majored in tapas.  All that delicious choice made me stray.  My A.D.D. and desire to be hip and cool made me sample other restaurants and, years later, I haven’t been back to Café Luna.  When I head downtown, I always look at the menu in their window.  It hasn’t changed in years.  That was the problem.  Over time, Luna’s dependability and predictable menu was leveraged against it by new competition.  Maybe they thought that their experience didn’t need to evolve because they were so popular.

Now let’s talk about your menu.

There have been times over the years where I have been asked to help launch a show against an entrenched brand.  Reis and Trout’s 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing says that a product’s greatest strength becomes its greatest weakness.  To start, I study the established show and try to flip all their strengths on them.  If they have been around forever, I try to turn that into them being predictable and boring.  If they are nothing more than mostly chatter or keep doing the same things over and over again, our strategy is to do different things with relevant content that positions us as fresh.  If they haven’t had any talent changes in years, I make them sound old.  You get the deal.

I hear too many shows that want to get on and do not much more than talk.  We must be strategic in choosing our content but focus more on the treatment of that content to create an experience for fans that will make them want to come back again.  That takes prep and work.  Had Luna only changed its menu to offer new things that fit, right?

So many shows are fearful of change.  They think they can’t (or shouldn’t) innovate.  Which is dead wrong.  If you’re a tenured show, the audience will trust you and be less inclined to bail if something doesn’t work.

Remember, what got you here, won’t necessarily get you there.

The great Joni Mitchell once told Rolling Stone magazine: “You have two options.  You can stay the same and protect the formula that gave you your initial success.  If you do, they’re going to crucify you for staying the same.  If you change, they’re going to crucify you for changing.  But staying the same is boring.  And change is interesting.  So, of the two options, I’d rather be crucified for changing.”

Leaders make art and artists lead.

I’m not suggesting you overhaul your show if you’ve been around a while.  I am suggesting that you don’t operate in a vacuum.  If you keep doing the same old stuff, some show will come in and reposition you like Café Luna and, in the face of competition, listeners will spend less time with you.  If you’re still hanging your hat on old ideas like Two Lies and a Truth and Try It Tuesday, you face potential boredom from your fans and a vulnerability that a smarter, more innovative show up or down the dial or somewhere online could take advantage of.

Life is change.  Growth is optional.  If you rest, you rust.

Everything truly evolves.  Staying still isn’t an option.  For any of us.

I recently decided to buy a new pair of glasses, so I did what most do.  I went to my local mall to visit LensCrafters.  I’m not particularly loyal to LensCrafters.  I just happen to like their frame selection and the manager there always makes me laugh (hi Avril!).

Something occurred to me when I did that a few months ago.  I did what I always do when at the mall.  I went to the Apple store.  I didn’t need any Apple products.  I just like to play with everything.  And I wanted to hold their new Vision Pros.  As I left, it dawned on me that every time I go to the mall, I always go to the Apple store.  Always.  Even if I don’t want to buy a product.

The Apple store at the local mall is a destination store.  Where the men’s clothing store on one side and shoe store on the other side barely register a customer, the Apple store is always packed.

Which made me think: is your show a “destination program”?  In the myriad of choices for morning entertainment and connection, what does your show do that separates it from all the others?  What do you do that compels people to tune in each day given their endless options?

Have you recently done an inventory of things you do?  Do you have a lot of different reasons listeners might actively choose you and turn you on because of them?  That might be a great exercise to do this week.  What are your significant points-of-differentiation from all the other choices that would compel your fans to use you again or seek you out?  On the dial, how are you like the Apple store at my local mall, compelling me to go regardless of the original reason I went to the mall?  What new ideas have you developed to keep things fresh for your fans?  Because you must keep churning out new products like Apple (i.e. Vision Pros) to keep fans from straying elsewhere.

The other thing that rings true is why I go to the Apple store.  It’s because of how it makes me feel.  Those of you who’ve met or know me are well aware of something that rings quite true: I am not the coolest person around.  I’m awkward and uncomfortable and have a self-image of insecurity, wondering how I fit in (that’s lasted since I was a kid).  But not when I am in the Apple store.  When I am there, I feel like one of the cool kids.  And even though that evaporates once I leave, for a brief time, I feel like I fit into the cool kid’s club.

Which leads to my last question I’ll ponder you can tackle with the strategists on your team: how do you make listeners feel when they take delivery of your content?  Be honest here.  Because we associate with brands not primarily for the products they offer, but for how they make us feel.

What is the goal for the content you choose and how you do it?  For those I get the honor to work with, we know the show plot, how we’re different, and how we want people to feel when they depart us for the next thing in their life that day.

That might be an epic conversation that brings clarity to how you fit in, as listeners choose who they’ll spend their time with each morning.