From the Radio Show in Nashville

September 28, 2016

Hopefully you were fortunate enough to attend the radio industry’s 2016 gathering in Nashville last week. My sense of the mood of the attendees was that people are challenging themselves and their teams to be looking for new ways to serve our dual clients – listeners and advertisers. The future has its challenges but will be bright for those that are the best at providing workable solutions for our client’s problems.

I attended several sessions and the old saying that “the more things change the more they stay the same” certainly still applies. One session called “Selling Beyond CPP – Learn What Advertisers and Agencies Really Need from Their Media Partners” provided some interesting refreshers with new twists:

• When we work with our clients we need to focus on their needs and not just on providing them with information about our station(s). Once we understand what the client wants to achieve and what their budget is, we need to deploy all of the assets our media companies have to offer to help meet those needs. My apologies for the “duh” bullet.
• The ultimate goal needs to be to create a connection with the audience, be it with audio or digital impressions, that drives an action on the part of that audience.
• Audiences are more fragmented and therefore smaller than they used to be, so we need to come up with new ways to differentiate the value of what we are offering to the advertiser.
• The most exciting meetings revolve around integrated pitches. We need to offer differentiation that wraps the consumer in the experience. We need to come to the table with data that shows that investing in this type of integrated campaign will move the needle.
• An exciting option is a campaign that incorporates content marketing/native advertising/product placement, with the goal of allowing the advertiser to become part of the experience being offered to the audience.
• People need to be dedicated to coming up with creative promotional opportunities. In a separate session, Gordon Borrell from Borrell Associates shared data showing that the growth in spending on promotions will greatly exceed the growth in advertising dollars over the next several years. So any way that radio can tap into those promotional dollars will enhance our chances for revenue growth.
• Stop working in silos, sell integrated!
• Stop celling CPPs and sell solutions.
• Utilize the value of the relationships that radio personalities have with their audience. This is a unique selling proposition for radio.

This type of connection with advertisers will certainly provide the highest likelihood of success. The future is bright for those that crack the code that allows them to provide successful campaigns that solve our advertisers’ problems.

-Marc Greenspan, Founding Partner

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