I'm going to write down the name of eight bands/artists here:
Pink
Gwen Stefani
Plain White Ts
Snow Patrol
Jack Johnson
Silverchair
Evermore
Missy Higgins
And now I'm going to write down the name of 4 Brisbane radio stations
Nova 106.9
B105
Triple M
97.3
Can anyone guess the connection?
Irrespective of whether you live in Brisbane, Australia, or another city somewhere around the world, the link that all the bands feature on rotation at all of the stations will be a familiar story.
All of the stations claim to position themselves for a different market and a different demographic, but the stark reality is that within core listening times, they are all clones of each other.
Sure, the music offerings aren't exactly the same - Triple M concentrate on delivering more of a 'rock' angle (although they did play Fat Boy Slim the other day), Nova offer a more 'youth' direction (which means house, R&B and hip-hop) and 97.3 flog the 80s to death too (which is something Triple M also make a play with), but the problem is, there are a number of artists on rotation on all stations.
Take for example the Plain White T's and their song 'Hey Delilah'. As an acoustic ballad the song fits into any demographic and any station. Put it in the middle of a song by Pink and say, Silverchair, at 11am, have a random announcer doing competition phone ins for free tickets to see the local sports team and you could be listening to any station in Brisbane...or any station in the world.
So, what's the problem? If listeners are still tuning in, where's the issue?
The issue is a similar problem that the recording industry faced back in the late 1990s. Technology and listening patterns were starting to change, and they weren't preparing for those changes. And by the time everyone realised what had happened, iTunes had swallowed up massive market share, effectively controlling the market to such an extent that the record companies couldn't afford NOT to be iTunes, leaving Apple to dictate the pricing, distribution and promotion of a song.
The internet has an estimated 100,000 audio streams. Brisbane has half a dozen major radio stations. What happens when the average car driver suddenly gets access to those 100,000 audio streams? Sure, people driving cars will still want news, traffic reports and so on. But imagine one of those audio streams JUST delivering traffic reports for your city?
Here's the scenario:
You get into your car at 7am. As you're pulling out of the driveway, you have the audio stream for traffic reports on for 5 minutes. You then flick it to the news audio stream - maybe some days you listen to the national, some days the state, some days the international streams - for another 5 minutes. Then for the final 20 minutes into work, you select a pop music stream.
No adverts, no DJs, no inane banter, no thickie phone-ins. Glorious, eh?
But who pays for it? How is it funded? Audio streams don't come for free.
Of course not, but lets look at another scenario for a moment. I pay $90 a month for my Broadband. Telstra approach me and offer me for another $30 a month, not only wireless broadband for my car, but also offer to install the receiver and equipment needed to not only listen to those audio streams in my car, but also for the kids in the back-seat to watch YouTube, the wife to check out our destination on Whereis.com.au and for us to upload Google Street Maps to check we're heading in the right direction.
Radio is no longer a part of the equation.
I had a similar conversation with someone from Channel 10 the other day about how, with TV moving closer and closer to being under total control of the consumer, advertisers continue to survive?
THe solution is simple: subscription. Charge me $100 a month and remove my adverts. Charge me $60 a month and drop bite-sized ads in the shows - twenty second ad every, say, 10 minutes. Charge me $30 a month, drop more ads in. Give it to me for free and make me watch all the ads.
How about this model:
Desperate Housewives Season 8 With No Ads: Download for $200
Desperate Housewives Season 8 with Fast Forward Ads: Download for $180
Desperate Housewives Season 8 with Locked Ads: Download for $140
Desperate Housewives Season 8 with Locked Ads & Promo Slots: Download for $100
Which would you pick? The point is...there's a choice.
Back to the original problem of the radio stations. Is there a solution? Maybe, maybe not. Myabe I'm just too fickle in my music tastes to really embrace any commercial music station, but the point is, unless they act now and work out the next step for their industry, they'll end up like the record companies, scratching their heads and wondering how they lost control of what they had.
And Pink won't care...she'll still be being streamed into cars...
Showing posts with label radio. Show all posts
Showing posts with label radio. Show all posts
Wednesday, December 5, 2007
Monday, October 8, 2007
Bananas
Bananas have their own advertising campaign. Bizarre as that may sound, 97.3FM today was running an advert for bananas.
Now I'm sure they deserve their own advertising campaign, after all they've put a lot of hard work in, in the world of fruit. They've frequently led from the front when other fruit failed to step up to the mark, but now it seems that bananas are in need of some moral support.
Bananas: Well Hung
The advert today was 30 seconds of a smack-in-your-face reminder that bananas were in shops, they were a great price, they were healthy and that you should go and buy some bananas today.
I'm convinced. I rushed out straight away and bought a car full of bananas.
Well, obviously I didn't really, but this radio campaign was a prime example of pouring money down the drain when it could have been used a hell of a lot more effectively. How about spending some money on effective point of purchase? When people walking into the supermarket, how about some sort of ingenious signage around the fruit counter reminding us of how great bananas are? Even a man in a giant banana costume walking up and down the aisles of your local Coles would have more impact than throwing cash away on pointless and very banal radio ads...
Sure its another rant about pointless radio campaigns, but its painful to see money spent on - and I don't use this word lightly - shit advertising. Funnel a 1/4 of that money into the creative process and the remaining 3/4 would have worked ten times harder for you...
Now I'm sure they deserve their own advertising campaign, after all they've put a lot of hard work in, in the world of fruit. They've frequently led from the front when other fruit failed to step up to the mark, but now it seems that bananas are in need of some moral support.
Bananas: Well Hung
The advert today was 30 seconds of a smack-in-your-face reminder that bananas were in shops, they were a great price, they were healthy and that you should go and buy some bananas today.
I'm convinced. I rushed out straight away and bought a car full of bananas.
Well, obviously I didn't really, but this radio campaign was a prime example of pouring money down the drain when it could have been used a hell of a lot more effectively. How about spending some money on effective point of purchase? When people walking into the supermarket, how about some sort of ingenious signage around the fruit counter reminding us of how great bananas are? Even a man in a giant banana costume walking up and down the aisles of your local Coles would have more impact than throwing cash away on pointless and very banal radio ads...
Sure its another rant about pointless radio campaigns, but its painful to see money spent on - and I don't use this word lightly - shit advertising. Funnel a 1/4 of that money into the creative process and the remaining 3/4 would have worked ten times harder for you...
Sunday, September 9, 2007
Definition Of Stupid
Customer On Phone: "So what makes Liquor Superstores so, well, super?"
Manager: "Well there's our lowest liquor price guarantee."
Customer On Phone: "Lowest Liquor Price Guarantee?"
Is he thick? He's managed to dial the number and construct a sentence so what the fook is so hard to understand about those four words?
But actually the manager goes on to say that they'll guarantee the lowest price on only certain products. Ah ha. Here's the catch. Good job thickie customer actually asked that question otherwise the manager wouldn't have been able to qualify the small print behind this seemingly unbelieveable offer.
It's mindless and repetative. It drives you nuts just listening to it. It's mock-up situation that makes you cringe and reach for the CD button. Why do people do this to us? Alcohol is fun and enjoyable - I don't want to be tormented into a shop just to save me some pennies.
We can see through the loss-leader scam - in fact, you've managed to spend an entire advert telling us that this is what you're doing. They mumble some other info about largest choice under one roof only for you to be stung when you get inside the store with mark-ups on everything else.
Okay, so it's nothing new...but crikey, Coles should be able to do better with their advertising. After all, it's CHEAP BOOZE FOR GODS SAKE. How hard can that be to come up with something inspirational?
I always said that when I die, if I go to Hell, I'll find myself crammed in a lift, stuck between floors, with too many people listening to the greatest hits of Tito Puento over the lift tannoy system. I now know that his songs will be interrupted by a stream of poorly thought through radio adverts....
Manager: "Well there's our lowest liquor price guarantee."
Customer On Phone: "Lowest Liquor Price Guarantee?"
Is he thick? He's managed to dial the number and construct a sentence so what the fook is so hard to understand about those four words?
But actually the manager goes on to say that they'll guarantee the lowest price on only certain products. Ah ha. Here's the catch. Good job thickie customer actually asked that question otherwise the manager wouldn't have been able to qualify the small print behind this seemingly unbelieveable offer.
It's mindless and repetative. It drives you nuts just listening to it. It's mock-up situation that makes you cringe and reach for the CD button. Why do people do this to us? Alcohol is fun and enjoyable - I don't want to be tormented into a shop just to save me some pennies.
We can see through the loss-leader scam - in fact, you've managed to spend an entire advert telling us that this is what you're doing. They mumble some other info about largest choice under one roof only for you to be stung when you get inside the store with mark-ups on everything else.
Okay, so it's nothing new...but crikey, Coles should be able to do better with their advertising. After all, it's CHEAP BOOZE FOR GODS SAKE. How hard can that be to come up with something inspirational?
I always said that when I die, if I go to Hell, I'll find myself crammed in a lift, stuck between floors, with too many people listening to the greatest hits of Tito Puento over the lift tannoy system. I now know that his songs will be interrupted by a stream of poorly thought through radio adverts....
Wednesday, September 5, 2007
Extract from Columbia Records Survey
Kids from Unis in America were all interviewed about music and here are some of the results....
“The kids all said that a) no one listens to the radio anymore, b) they mostly steal music, but they don’t consider it stealing, and c) they get most of their music from iTunes on their iPod. They told us that MySpace is over, it’s just not cool anymore; Facebook is still cool, but that might not last much longer; and the biggest thing in their life is word of mouth. That’s how they hear about music, bands, everything.”
Radio, it would appear, is dead. Video finally got it.
“The kids all said that a) no one listens to the radio anymore, b) they mostly steal music, but they don’t consider it stealing, and c) they get most of their music from iTunes on their iPod. They told us that MySpace is over, it’s just not cool anymore; Facebook is still cool, but that might not last much longer; and the biggest thing in their life is word of mouth. That’s how they hear about music, bands, everything.”
Radio, it would appear, is dead. Video finally got it.
Thursday, August 23, 2007
O O O....O Brien
By the fact that I wrote that in the title would suggest that potentially the advertising campaign has worked. The incessant call from the jingle has lodged itself firmly in my head and convinced me that should I ever get a chip in my windscreen, I will know where to go.
So job done. Let's just keep repeating the same ad and eventually have everyone in Australia humming the tune while they lay in bed at night.
Except I would suggest that the advert itself is self-destructive in its communication. Let's look at the reasons:
1) It's a long advert for radio. The 30 seconds actually SEEMS like 30 seconds. It seems like a lifetime. Two jingles and a bloke talking trying to scare you into getting your chip fixed is not engaging me.
2) The guy they have voicing it is one of two things: an actual O'Brien employee or the worst voice over person in the world. Either way, he is doing the brand NO favours by sounding tedious and boring. By the end of the advert, you're so depressed from listening to him, you want to top yourself because your windscreen has a crack in it.
DO NOT USE EMPLOYEES - EVER - unless they have such a strong personality or some USP that makes them stand-out above everyone else - think the speccy bloke from the Good Guys.
3) As mentioned before, the jingle. Think Crazy Frog for windscreen repairs. You want to take a nail gun to your own head to try and rid yourself of the obsession.
The long and the short of it is the advert has done what no radio network wants any advert to do, it has made me switch channels. Coupled with the AMI adverts, the O'Brien adverts and the nails-down-a-blackboard advert that is Diamonds International (which I will dissect at a later date), the state of radio media advertising is currently appalling.
How do you improve then?
Running a bad advert over and over again isn't the answer. Creating a full ATL and BTL promotion which incorporates web, radio, TV, magazines and so on and targeting it at your specific demographic is the proper way to do these things. Analyse the message you're trying to get across and look at your target market, and find out where these people like to be talked to.
Sure O'Brien have probably got it right in that their target market - car owners with chips in the windscreen - are probably sitting in their cars, listening to the radio and looking at the chip, but there are a million other ways to make this stand out more.
Messages without a creative approach are just messages. The average consumer gets hit with 300 of these a day. O'Brien is just number 216.
So job done. Let's just keep repeating the same ad and eventually have everyone in Australia humming the tune while they lay in bed at night.
Except I would suggest that the advert itself is self-destructive in its communication. Let's look at the reasons:
1) It's a long advert for radio. The 30 seconds actually SEEMS like 30 seconds. It seems like a lifetime. Two jingles and a bloke talking trying to scare you into getting your chip fixed is not engaging me.
2) The guy they have voicing it is one of two things: an actual O'Brien employee or the worst voice over person in the world. Either way, he is doing the brand NO favours by sounding tedious and boring. By the end of the advert, you're so depressed from listening to him, you want to top yourself because your windscreen has a crack in it.
DO NOT USE EMPLOYEES - EVER - unless they have such a strong personality or some USP that makes them stand-out above everyone else - think the speccy bloke from the Good Guys.
3) As mentioned before, the jingle. Think Crazy Frog for windscreen repairs. You want to take a nail gun to your own head to try and rid yourself of the obsession.
The long and the short of it is the advert has done what no radio network wants any advert to do, it has made me switch channels. Coupled with the AMI adverts, the O'Brien adverts and the nails-down-a-blackboard advert that is Diamonds International (which I will dissect at a later date), the state of radio media advertising is currently appalling.
How do you improve then?
Running a bad advert over and over again isn't the answer. Creating a full ATL and BTL promotion which incorporates web, radio, TV, magazines and so on and targeting it at your specific demographic is the proper way to do these things. Analyse the message you're trying to get across and look at your target market, and find out where these people like to be talked to.
Sure O'Brien have probably got it right in that their target market - car owners with chips in the windscreen - are probably sitting in their cars, listening to the radio and looking at the chip, but there are a million other ways to make this stand out more.
Messages without a creative approach are just messages. The average consumer gets hit with 300 of these a day. O'Brien is just number 216.
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