Source: www.insideradio.com, December 2023
More commercial-free music, more hits, more money, more fun. Does this all sound familiar? Radio stations constantly battle over what they are. Yet some very successful stations and companies have won the marketing war by telling you what they are not.
A Philadelphia CHR station recently announced a “No Taylor Swift” weekend leading up to the Philadelphia Eagles-Kansas City Chiefs football game. While that might make you scratch your head, the stunt garnered an incredible amount of attention in the market for what they were not doing. (It remains to be seen if the stunt worked.)
Saying what you don’t do, if it’s clearly true, can help differentiate you from the competition in the listener’s mind.
In the early 1990s, when a rash of New Country stations hit the airwaves, several of them made a big point of exclaiming to the audience that they wouldn’t play “tired old country,” “Top 40 country,” or “your grandparents’ music,” etc., to make a point about what they were … the New Country station.
Perhaps my favorite radio example of promoting what you are not is the legendary talk station, Townsquare Media “New Jersey 101.5” WKXW Trenton, NJ. The brilliant consultant for that station, Walter Sabo, recently shared that the slogan “Not New York, Not Philadelphia, but we’re New Jersey – New Jersey 101.5” was a hit with listeners. Finally, New Jersey had its own radio station not overshadowed by stations in New York and Philly. Listeners couldn’t get enough. (Sabo made the comments on the podcast “Talking about Radio” with John Leslie.)
Outside of radio, there are plenty of marketing examples of what products are not. Avis Rent-a-Car was proud to not be No. 1. (Its tagline? “We’re number two. We try harder.”) 7 Up was “The Uncola.”
A few caveats: These points of difference must matter to the audience while they also tag the competition with unwanted images such as “tired” and “old.”
Not long ago, I helped launch some classic-country stations that repositioned “today’s country” as too pop (“If you like Top 40 Pop Country … you’ve got the wrong radio station”) and too repetitious (“Not the same 10 songs over and over and over …”).
What else don’t you do – or what are you not? How about being the station that is not corporate (assuming you aren’t), or the one that does not participate in national contests where one barely has a chance to win. You’re not the station with national DJs heard on hundreds of radio stations. You are the local station with local winners, and the DJs live in your town. While you may think most listeners don’t care, they will if you make a point of it.
Or “We’re not going to make you rich like some false claims, but we are going to help make your life easier with a few hundred bucks.” That’s being authentic, too.
What are you not as a station that is marketable? Include those elements in your programming and marketing and you’ll gain greater differentiation and better ratings.
The AC consultant Jack Taddeo had a brilliant ad years ago in which he promoted his consultancy as being smaller and more personal compared to the larger firms. “No Ex-PD Buddies!”
Know who you are. But also, be clear about what you’re not. Make those solid contrasts and watch your ratings and revenue go up. — Joel Raab for Country Insider, joel@joelraab.com, 215-750-6868, joelraab.com
