Inside Thinking vs. Outside Thinking

...Article by Tracy in Hits Magazine Radio is one of those peculiar industries that permeates all aspects of a programmers life. The radio station(s) you are responsible for require so much time and attention, it is hard to keep it in perspective. Programmers become so immersed in the radio life they cease living in the real world. As your market becomes more and more competitive, with more outlets providing similar entertainment choices, successful programmers will have to find new ways to win. This means rising to the challenge of focusing more on the audience than on the product. For some, this is an exciting breakthrough. For others, it is a daunting, scary venture into the unknown. It is out of the comfort zone. If you really want to make a difference on your radio station, you have to adjust your approach. Get outside the box and think like a listener. Here is a start on getting into the listeners world, and how it contrasts with a programmers perspective: 1. To listeners, radio stations are not that important. They dont pay attention to what station is on while they go about their lives. They dont compare stations. Their choice of station is a casual one. Programmers tend to believe that people care, think, choose and pay close attention to our business. We believe they make conscious, informed decisions, as if they were comparing aspects and prices when buying a car. Our image promos prove that we fail to understand how and why listeners choose their stations. These promos demonstrate why Station A is better than Station B, or why we play more music or better music. Music promos are loaded with hooks of songs that listeners dont recognize and artists that arent relevant in their world. The result is that these promos rarely cut through the clutter and hit their mark because we arent locked into the audience mind-set. We would be much more effective focusing our promotional messages on how listeners can use our station easily, and how we fit it into their lifestyle. 2. Listeners pigeon-hole radio stations, registering one dominant image that, to them, represents the sum total of the station. Its the same with any product. A word, or perhaps a phrase captures the sum total of what your product can be to your audience. That word may be fun, variety, relax, party, or any number of other images (positive OR negative). In a programmers world, listeners understand and retain multiple concepts. We want them to think of us as the station for variety, personality, new music, party songs and more. Try to promote too many images, and youll miss the mark on all of them. 3. In the real world, listener behavior is driven by station images. When they get to work, they put on their favorite station that fits their at-work environment. When they want to relax, they find their personal favorite relaxing station. In our programming world, listeners are manipulated by our perfect execution and well-orchestrated contests and promotions. If we are programming in a listener world, we will design all programming elements, including promos, contests and features, to build a desired image. Success in a programming world is almost always measured in terms of actual active audience response. In the real, listener world, it should be measured by how images are impacted. Listeners respond to strategic imaging. To influence them, we must own a position in their minds. Programmers prefer to believe that they respond to tactical programming. We manipulate clocks, set up strict formatic guidelines and spend hours studying our competition to out-program other stations. Meanwhile, listeners dont care! Put your time, effort and resources into molding your image in the minds of your audience. 4. The audience responds to repetition and reinforcing images through repetitive teaching (see #1, above). Programmers listen to their radio stations for many hours a day, and pay particularly close attention to the elements between the songs. Programmers become fatigued with these elements quickly and in their natural desire to be entertained by their own station, constantly alter promos, production elements and even marketing messages! Constantly striving to freshen the station, we often only succeed in confusing our audience and end up frustrated with our lack of progress in establishing our station images.