Chugging a Bud and Seizing the Moment
You probably saw the video of the guy at game 6 of the 2019 World Series carrying two beers to his seats in the outfield when a home run hit him in the chest. (If not, you can see it here.)
He never went to put the beers down (probably because they cost $14 each). Almost immediately the short video was everywhere on the internet. The guy was awarded with a ball, and Budweiser came through with a ton of beer.
Budweiser seized the moment and made a 15-second ad of it that appeared in game 7 of the World Series the very next night. It’s quite powerful to be in the moment and seize opportunities when they appear.
Think about it. Doing all of this required someone at Budweiser seeing it happen, acting on the opportunity to tap into it (pun intended) that night, and mobilizing forces almost immediately to change lots of people’s schedules to create an ad that ran only once or twice. That’s impact. (Oreo did something similar during the blackout at the Super Bowl a couple years ago.)
One of radio’s great strengths is how nimble we can be. Something happens in the news or pop culture cycle, and we can immediately insert ourselves into it to get attention.
So, ask yourself: how much content on your morning show is truly of-the-moment? Also, how fast acting are your people to create something from those moments that makes the content big (bigger) and distinctly theirs to create talk? (Need some of-the-moment content? Check out my Weekly Hot List.)
The very best morning shows are perishable. In other words, if you played what they did in a certain hour today in two weeks, it’d feel stale and old. That’s being super topical, and that’s good. Think about how much different this ad feels in game 7 (the very next night after it happened) than it would in a week or two. That’s what every show should sound like.
Seizing the moment sometimes requires money. Oftentimes it requires innovation. And all the time it requires initiative. How much time do your personalities spend on seeing and seizing these moments so that fans have a fear (and expectation) of “missing out” if they don’t tune into your show for your funny and entertaining take?
Need help getting your morning show to seize the moment? Let’s chat!
It’s National Steve Reynolds Day (And Other Things You Don’t Care About)
Be honest, where is your enthusiasm and interest level on a scale of 1-10 knowing that it’s National Steve Reynolds Day?
If you said it was resting comfortably at a zero, I’d get it. I’m Steve Reynolds and even I don’t care. And yet I listen to some personalities who think telling me that this is National Pest Control Week or today is National Doughnut Day is morning show content. It isn’t content, because it’s irrelevant to listeners’ lives. A close friend calls it “empty calories with no strategic purpose in a break.” I call it chatter that doesn’t matter.
Great content is about the moment. Whatever is going on now—now in pop culture, or locally, or in the life of the talent—is what your audience craves and connects with. Look at Kimmel, Ellen, Corden, and Fallon. Their shows are highly relevant because they focus on what’s happening right now, and they share it from their unique perspective (with a whole lot fun).
We need to stop telling the audience things like it’s National Hot Dog Day or that Betsy Ross sewed the flag on this date in 1783. I actually heard a show (not one I coach!) tell me it was National Chicken Day and then they proceeded to play the sound effect of a clucking chicken over everything they did for the next half hour.
All of this is irrelevant and lazy as content, to be perfectly honest. We need to be better than that given all the entertainment choices for listeners. I still hear some shows read a laundry list of birthdays to the audience. Remember the only person who cares that little Ally Simpson is six today is Ally Simpson. And maybe her parents. Any efforts to endear yourself to them come at the significant sacrifice of everyone else, who shrug their shoulders hearing this and mentally zone out. Ditto the fact that Mel Gibson turns 67 today. No one cares.
Reading listeners’ birthdays isn’t being local, either. Local is about what’s going on in your market and you doing something unique with it to say “I love living here and am connected to what’s going on in my town.” Offering up a list of birthdays of people who may or may not be listening is about as local as giving me the temperature in a local town when reading the weather (it isn’t) or reading a listener text and attributing it to a local area code (“someone in the 415 says…”).
That’s LAZY!
Listen to your talent and challenge them to be strategic with their content: pop culture/whatever is in the news churn (the topic must fit your brand image), knowing what’s up in your market and tapping into that, and real time stories of experiences your talent have that position them as just like the audience. That’s great, strategic content for any audience.
Each break on your show should be treated like it’s beachfront property. Erect on it only the very best buildings (in other words, content done well), and its value (your ratings) will go up.
Need a talent coach who’ll help your morning team think strategically? Let’s chat.
Building Loyalty in a Disloyal World
This quote from a New York Times article captured me:
“In an accelerated culture, our loyalties toward just about everything — laundry detergents, celebrities, even churches and spouses — transfer more readily than our grandparents could have imagined. Now we dispose of phone carriers and cash-back credit cards from one month to the next, forever in search of some better deal. Forget the staying power of an institution like Johnny Carson; when Jay Leno starts to feels a little stale, he is shifted to prime time, then shifted back to late night.”
My take: We, as consumers, are less and less loyal to brands that don’t deliver a positive experience each and every moment. That includes morning radio, which is why we impress on shows how imperative it is to re-design their program to better play to an audience that’d rather text and tweet to communicate than do anything long-form (aka “a conversation”).
Remember, evolution serves those best able to adapt.
Need help getting your morning talent to evolve—for the better? Let’s chat.
Convincing Talent to Change: The Old Inside/Outside Game
Trying to get a morning talent to change their show so it wins in PPM can be one of the hardest things. Giving up control is tough, which is why I use lots of analogies to pull them outside of radio to make my points. If delivered well, they’re tough points to refute and put you in the best possible position to get the morning talent to make strategic changes so ratings go up.
I talk with shows all the time about how, instead of being on the receiving end of PPM ratings in radio, we’ve been on the giving end of it in TV: each night as we sit on the sofa with the remote control, each one of us cruises up and down the channel guide in search of a show that captivates and entertains—one that makes us laugh or engages us. We make that decision in micro-seconds before pushing the button again.
Same with the internet. Say a friend sends you a You Tube link saying it’s the funniest thing they’ve ever seen. We click on the link, immediately look at the clip length, and if it isn’t “the funniest thing we’ve ever seen,” we click away.
I proffer to shows that if we treat TV and the internet that way, why should we believe listeners would treat us any differently?
Point made.
Need help getting your morning talent to change—for the better? Let’s chat.
Ten Second to Live
With seemingly everyone sick with the flu, here’s a fun game to play with listeners called “Ten Seconds to Live”. Put together a short list of diseases no one gets any longer that may be fatal or that people rarely get. Then, cruise WebMD for its symptoms. Give the listener the symptoms and then give them ten seconds to name the disease for a prize.
Gene & Julie, Mornings, KVIL, Dallas
“We wanted to drop you a note to let you know how much we love working with you. Your involvememt with the show has taken the program to levels we couldn’t have imagined. The in-depth conversations about our show, audience and role at the radio station always motivates and inspires us. And the questions you pose always push us to be better… not just as a show, but also as people. We are also amazed at the high level of service you provide as our morning show coach. Having a weekly conference call with anyone to talk about the show is unheard of in these times. The fact that you are always available to talk in the evenings and on the weekends has been invaluable. Thank you for helping make our show what it is today… and mostly, thank you for helping make our show what it will be tomorrow.”