Six Digital Marketing Lessons I Learned Selling Country Music Radio

I had only been in the radio business six months when the new owners of WXTU decided to flip the format to country music. The first song they played was Waylon Jennings, “Are You Ready For The Country.”

I don’t remember much else about that day, except I knew I wasn't ready. I wanted to run out of that station on City Line Avenue in Bala Cynwyd and go hide. I couldn’t  imagine that anyone was going to listen to country music in a market like Philadelphia. The station, as far as I could see, was doomed and my new career with it. It was unfathomable to me that I would be able to sell enough commercial time to cover my minuscule weekly draw, much less pay my rent. It all looked very bleak.

I wasn’t the only person who questioned this move. The trades were full of skeptics. There was nothing cool about country music if you lived in the Northeast in 1984. That was music people listened to who drove pick up trucks and who didn’t live in big cities. 

The only person who truly believed it would be a success was the man who made the decision, the owner of the station, George Beasley.

As it turned out, George was right and everyone else was wrong. It also turned out to be one of the best things that could happen for my career. 

I got to learn more in the five years I spent there than I ever would have selling a format that was more stable and mainstream. I learned  - about radio, about advertising, about selling, about growing a business from the ground up - enough to fill a book. And here’s the real bonus that I have only understood in hindsight. I was also learning valuable lessons in digital marketing.

Yes - you read that right. There was no privatized Internet in the eighties. We were still living in an analog world complete with pay phones and assistants who took handwritten messages on paper that read “While You Were Out.” 

Yet I was learning the basic tenets of digital marketing. 

I just didn’t know it yet.  

Let me explain.

1- The Importance of a Tribe.  We didn’t call them tribes in 1984. We called them listeners. If our listeners liked what we served we had a product. And if they were passionate about that product we had a following that would translate into ratings which meant advertising dollars which resulted in a business.  

My skeptical self learned within a few months that country music radio fans are no ordinary fans. They are fiercely loyal and passionate about the music and the artists. They supported our advertisers because the advertisers supported their music. They validated our product. Which brings me to the second lesson I learned. 

2- Niche markets can create successful and viable businesses. WXTU lived on the tail of what Chris Anderson would later coin long tail marketing. Most broadcasters at that time were looking to deliver a format that appealed to the masses, one that would land them as a Top 5 station simply because very few radio media buys ever included more than five stations on it. Being at the top of the list – or the head of the tail - was the fastest way to make the most money.  What I learned from WXTU was that a strong, niche product with a loyal tribe might not make the most money - but it was clearly a viable business - especially when that tribe was engaged.

3- The Importance of an Engaged Customer. There are many in the radio business today who tout terrestrial radio as being the original “social media.” There is validity to that statement. The best on-air radio personalities have always enrolled listeners in personal conversations and promoted engagement in station contests and events. Before the Internet, the telephone and write-ins enabled that interaction.

Country music fans have always been more engaged than the average radio listener. They spent more time with the station. This was not just music they liked to listen to - this was a radio station they loved feeling connected to. 

That kind of engaged tribe is what every digital marketer seeks today.  

4- Data is nothing without the context of story.  Radio stations have always lived and died by data in the form of  ratings (in 1984 it was Arbitron - today that is owned by Nielsen Audio). Ratings are evidence of listenership and how you get to price your commercials. 

Even though WXTU presented a viable, niche format, its reach was not enough to be a top five contender - which meant ratings taken at face value would never get us on an agency buy.

So we learned to look for the story within the data – which in this case was that our listeners stayed with us for longer periods of time and thus were more actively engaged. That active engagement meant they were more likely to be listening when a commercial did air. In other words they were not tuning out - a challenge that is compounded in today’s digital environment with its deluge of choices. 

5- Be Agile. Radio stations are essentially selling air. Which means there is no shelf life for your product. If that morning drive spot is not sold today, you can’t add it on tomorrow and sell it then. So you learn to move fast and be agile. If something in the news happened that warranted a change in the playlist - just like that - within minutes - the music could change. If  someone wanted to get a commercial on that afternoon we could make it happen. Agility wasn’t an option when you’re selling a station that is not a “must” buy, it’s just a way of being.

The ability to be agile, to be able to move quickly at the same time we are thinking things through is necessary in the world of real-time marketing. I’m fortunate to have learned that long before it became trendy. 

6- Dare to be Different. The tendency of most business is to chase the trends. To look for where you can make the most money in the shortest amount of time and to choose the safest route to make that happen. George Beasley thought otherwise. He saw a hole in the market, believed he could make it work, and followed his instincts - despite the naysayers. He wasn’t afraid to fail. And as it turns out he didn’t. The station, while recently traded to CBS, is still alive and kicking in 2014. 

I learned a lot selling country music radio in the eighties  – and for the record I learned to like country music! 

How Grown-Ups Act When Negotiating

Negotiation is one of those skills it's wise to get good at. And not just if your chosen profession involves high end deal making.

We all negotiate. Every day. With someone about something. 

I negotiate with my mother trying to get her to remember to drink more water, with myself over how many times this week I want to exercise, with my friend over where we will have dinner and whether we are drinking white or red tonight. Negotiation is not limited to striking a deal over money.

I've offered negotiation tips here before. I'm not alone. If you Google Negotiation Skills there are 11,700,000 results. Negotiation Strategies - 6,070,000. Negotiation Tactics - 6,210,00. A virtual wealth of information - for free.

Not everyone takes advantage of free. Not everyone looks to improve their negotiation skills. Congress reminds us every day of that. And now we have as David Carr in The New York Times so aptly put it "the self serving war of words by 2 giants in television." That would be CBS and Time Warner Cable.


So what happens when companies become too big to remember how to negotiate ?  

They forget to act like grown-ups.

1- Grown-ups don't go stomping their feet, slamming the door in your face and then refuse to sit at the same table and work things out.
2- Grown-ups don't try to enlist other people to come to their rescue by running accusatory ads about each other and begging customers to make phone calls on their behalf. 
3- Grown-ups don't underestimate the intelligence of the public. They know no one is going to feel more sorry for the company who reported $476 million in second quarter earnings than the one who reported $481 million.
4- Grown-ups know no matter how popular a show is, it no longer constitutes the leverage it used to. Nor ever will again. Those days are long behind us. They wouldn't run ridiculous ads implying our lives might end if we have to do without.  (So I missed Ray Donovan last night. I'll marathon watch when these two settle their school yard fight.)
5- Grown-ups don't pretend to be doing something for the greater good of the consumer and then go so low as to detect my ISP connection and block me so I can't watch on my iPad either. 
6-Grown-ups know the world is in disruption. They work on improving and building today's already fickle customer relationships. They don't consciously and deliberately add more smear to the ones already tarnished. They know there are other options - other shows to watch on other networks and other providers to get their connections through. And there is more on the way.
7- Grown-ups know everyone is on to the high drama. We've seen this act before. Eventually they will come to some sort of resolution. They need each other as much as they need the customer.
8-Grown-ups know when they are acting like a bunch of children.  And they get over it - fast - no matter how big their paycheck is or how much power they think they wield. 



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Planning In An Agile World

I've always been a planner. At times to the point of obsession. But the older I get, the less crazy I make myself about it. I know that no matter how hard you try you cannot and will not control everything. Things will happen that no one expected.  And they often get in the way of the original blueprint. The key is to be flexible when it does and be open to the idea that the change might be even better than what you had planned for.

Don't get me wrong. If you want to create something you need to be clear on what it is and you need to figure out what it will take to manifest it. A plan must be in place whether we're talking life or business.

The really smart and the really successful know better than to hold on  too tightly to the plan as written. They reassess along the way and are flexible enough to improvise when needed, looking at the twists in the road as opportunity instead of disaster.

Take Sunday night during the Superbowl. No one planned a power outage in the Superdome that would delay play for thirty-four minutes. There was a championship to decide and commercials to air. Yes, those :30 and :60 spots reputed to be sold in the vicinity of $40 million. A huge money maker for CBS and a huge expenditure of an advertising budget for even the deepest of pockets.

Witness the smart thinking and agility of Oreo and 360i. Oreo had bought a commercial in the game that had already aired. According to Buzzfeed,  the agency and the brand had set up a "mission control" in advance,  basically meaning the agency and the decision makers for Oreo were in the same room when the lights went dim. Within minutes the team had turned around the situation, effectively "newsjacking" it. They created and tweeted this new ad, capitalizing on the moment. 

Not only did this generate an extraordinary amount of Tweets and Facebook likes, people like me are continuing to write about it, generating even more conversation about their brand than they could have planned for.

Newsjacking is a relatively new concept coined by  David Meerman Scott , what he calls "the process by which you inject your ideas or angles into breaking news, in real time, in order to generate media coverage for yourself or your business." 

There were other brands who were also acting with agility including Tide and Calvin Klein, more evidence that this is becoming the way of the world in which we live, whether we are speaking to advertising campaigns or our lives. 

Things are changing, faster than ever before. Five year plans can become five minute plans at the touch of a button. Which means we either need to respond more quickly and be more agile or we will be left in a cloud of dust...or in this case cookie crumbs.

The Way

When I first started working at CBS in the late eighties I was introduced to The Way.  The Way referred to how we did business. Adapting to the way and understanding the way was in direction proportion to the way you fared in the company.

I welcomed the way.  The company I worked at previously was at the time a fledgling broadcaster. There was no way there. You made up the way as you went along.

The idea of a having a distinct set of rules and parameters seemed refreshing to me. I didn't question the way, at least not immediately. After all CBS had a history of success. Whatever the way was it must be the right way. Sounds rather naive now, doesn't it?

When we 'merged' with Westinghouse in the early nineties I saw for the first time what happens when two different ways join. It didn't take long before it was clear that the Westinghouse way was the new direction. There was nothing particularly new or innovative about their way. It was just a different way. Some things would prove beneficial  and others, like the brief period they decided to list the new company as Westinghouse, only to discover it did not help the stock price because people thought of Westinghouse as light bulb manufacturers and not broadcasters, would prove short lived.

But it was also the first time I started to hear the choruses of but that is not the way we do things and but we've always done it like this among my colleagues, myself included.  Change was coming and it didn't feel as exciting and wonderful as it was being spun.

I thought about that time today when I was reading about  Lewis D'Vorkin's new editorial model for the Forbes website in Advertising Age.  I'm still not clear on how innovative it actually is. From my advertising and writing background it seems to be putting the television concept of paid advertorials on line in the form of advertiser provided blogs. The controversial part, as it always has been in television, is how to make clear the distinction between what is unbiased news and what is advertising.

In any case I can hear the internal chorus of that is not they way things are done here all the way uptown. Change is uncomfortable. Change is questioned. Change is resisted.  Change is scary.

And we never really know for sure as change is occurring that it is the right way to go. Sometimes we fall flat on our faces. But shaking up the way things have been done is a necessary part of our culture at this moment in time. So we try.

What I learned from those naive CBS days is that sometimes having a way is good and sometimes being able to make it up as you go is even better. But doing something just because that is the way we've always done it is never good. And in today's ever changing world serves no one, least of all ourselves.


What are you doing today just because it's "the way" you always have?
What one thing can you try that will be different?