Radio doesn't need to be sexy. It has other advantages, like, well, the fact that unlike most other technologies, it has a nearly 100% market penetration. There's a radio in every car, in practically every home, at almost every bedside. It's not about convincing people to buy a radio; they already have one, or several. It's more intuitive than anything Steve Jobs can design, primarily because it's been around so long, people are practically born knowing how to use it.
And that leads to the problem: It's everywhere, sure, and people know how to use it. The trick is getting people to USE radio. The competition has invaded the same space that radio had to itself for the last 70 or so years, namely, the car. When I get into my car today, I can turn on the radio. I can also turn on Sirius or XM or my iPod or my EVDO cell phone or the music player in my GPS. That may be extreme, but a lot of people have at least the iPod connected, and Internet streaming audio is around the corner. No amount of marketing will convince me to get rid of any of that.
So how do you market radio to maintain or increase its share of listening? ("So, genius, what would YOU do?") I'd say the one surefire way to get people to increase radio listening, or pay more attention to radio, or think more highly of radio, is to develop and market programming that you can't get anywhere else. Instead of trying to sell radio as the Next Big Thing that it can't become, sell the programming. If that's hard to do when the programming's "another 10 in a row commercial free," that's another argument in favor of talk and personality radio. If the industry wants to spend a lot of money developing a campaign to market radio, perhaps the money would be better spent on talent development and luring creative people to work in the business and....
Okay, let's also recognize that the campaign is also aimed at media buyers and agencies and decision makers. Certainly, the fact that the radio group heads are doing the dog-and-pony show tour for the advertising industry indicates that there's a need to sell those folks on the relevance of radio in an iPod universe. But you're marketing to the marketers. They know what you're up to. They do that for a living. They can come up with counterarguments to everything you throw at them -- your huge audience is also an inability to narrowly target buys to specific demos, your it's-everywhere is also my-kid-never-listens. But if you can say that you have popular content unavailable through other media, that's something. Radio needs stars and hit shows the same way that TV needs "American Idol" and the music industry (and your iPod) needs hit records and satellite needs Howard Stern. (Stern... hmm... seem to recall a fella by that name around these parts...) Radio still has a few national and local stars, but it needs to develop and hold onto more of them. That takes time, money, and coaching, and that's a good topic for another Letter down the road.
Spending the money to develop star content instead of doing generic industry marketing, that's my fantasy. But there's probably no danger that anyone will listen. Maybe you have a better idea, or you violently disagree, or you think all hope is lost and it's time to man the life rafts. Let me know what you think at psimon -- at -- allaccess --dot -- com and maybe I'll do a follow-up with your suggestions. Think of it like I'm taking your calls. Or maybe it's like the Fairness Doctrine. (shudder)
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