Friday, June 13, 2008

Marketing With No Message... Or, With Nothing BUT Message


Rob Walker had a very interesting conversation yesterday with NPR and WAMU's Diane Rehm about the barely-visible borders between the lives we lead and what we consume.

Then, I checked out the advance of his new book, "Buying In - The Secret Dialog Between What We Buy And Who We Are" - and now I am rethinking everything I know about why certain people love country music radio while others seem to wear a repellant to all of our attempts to convince them that our music is hot, cool, fun, exciting, contemporary, reflects their values, etc, etc.

Who's wearing your station logo? What message does that send? To whom? Is your product designed with the market messages built in?

Do you have the courage to create your radio brand in an open model, letting your listeners draw those lines themselves?

Can you do so in such a subtle way that Millenial prospects don't see it as a bogus hype?

It's happening with some of the artists you're playing right now. You may be riding that surf and not be aware of it. (listen to a few episodes of these vignettes and see if you can guess who these guys really are, creating them for Jeff Stone's morning show. Hint: the daily bit is "BS" in more ways than one...).

That's marketing.

No comments: