Audience Conditioning Secrets

We're In The Audience Development Business

Once we recognize that we're in the audience development business, it's easier to adjust to the fact that a different mindset is needed to attract today's key, target life-group. We have to begin to understand audience conditioning. Which audience do we need to condition? For Urban stations it's the "young end" audience. PPM is showing more young listeners are using radio than many originally believed. Even for Urban Adult-targeted stations, we have to keep in mind the "young end" now means 25-year-old females and not 18-year-olds.

Younger Urban listeners are hearing more of their peers on their favorite stations, but many of those acts' songs are just as often geared to their parents. It may just take their parents a little longer to get there. Some programmers may see this as further evidence that younger listeners can't be pursued at the expense of any possible discomfort to the upper end. But the truth is that Urban stations can only grow their audience by offering that discernible separate young end brand that seems to have disturbed the format community up until now. The mature young end listeners are happy enough to get their hip-hop fix along with other the other music they like.

The secret to reaching them is to first get the music right, then look beyond the music and find the other pieces that make the format puzzle work. Then you have to make sure these pieces are glued together.

Contest Conditioning

One of those pieces involves contests and promotions. When you've done contests and promotions over the years, the audience becomes conditioned. They pretty much expect (or become conditioned to expect) that when an artist whose music you play has a concert or there's another related event in town, your station will be involved, perhaps give away tickets.

Although they are an integral part of every music station's ratings strategies, contests and promotions are not really marketing steroids -- and if you're not careful they can cause irreparable damage.

Damage is caused and contests can end up working against you when you reverse your priorities - when the main concern of the station becomes the contest and not the overall entertainment value of the music you play. As long as you realize that the music you play and the features of the station have to remain in the forefront of what you do at the station, you're all right. Then when you add creative contesting, it simply adds spice to the overall plan. It's a lot like adding vegetables and seasoning to the meal. As long as you don't put so many vegetables and seasonings on the plate that you totally forget about the meat, it will work. Not everybody is a vegetarian, but for those who are, the same thing applies.

In other words, when there's a lot of contest hype with little or no substance, or if the contests are so overbearing that they take control of the station, you've got problems.

Research continues to show that the music audience can become very anxious and excited about participating in contests if they are clever or exciting. If your air personalities are sharp enough to get them to play along and do it quickly ... and if you can make it one of the reasons they listen or listen longer ... you've scored.

In its proper perspective, like anything else, contests do have their value. You could take that same argument and apply it to "no-talk segues," for example. They can be a good thing, but if they were all you did on the station and you never said the call letters, it would be damaging.

You've got to find a way to tie the contest into the music or image of the station. Just giving away cash and trips or paying bills can get dull, believe it or not. Furthermore, you have to be careful with certain levels of escalation that can become dangerous. In other words, there's that need to always out-do yourself. Listeners need to realize that contests and promotions are just a part of programming and you have to keep them in perspective.

While you can't artificially hook listeners with promotions and giveaways, if the promotions are part of a creative, well-thought out campaign, it can work for you. Any station that does giveaways and big promotions knows they're obviously just part of a tool to get ratings. The audience can be conditioned to expect non-stop contests and if they are done well, they will be conspicuous by their absence on your competition.

Even the most aggressive promotion or contest has to be fun for the listener. There's got to be a little magic in it. Good personalities presenting entertainment for the listener beyond the music is the key. You want to give listeners a chance to become part of the station. Winning makes a listener participate. When a listener becomes a participant, they feel a part of the station. Picking up a prize at the station makes them special and part of the relationship that no other tool can do. They hear and like the personalities and music.

During the spring and summer, when the weather is nice, listeners win a prize and they come and see the station. Maybe they get a tour or a bumper sticker or a T-shirt. They're touching something they don't normally get to touch. The reality is that we're in the business of entertainment. Whether it's an artist on stage, an air talent in the control room, a writer, a programmer or a MD doing the music logs, we're in entertainment and a large part of the job of entertaining is to be fun.

A big part of the entertainment element is that fact that you give people a chance to win things they can't buy or that they might not normally be able to afford to buy. You've got to provide some sort of escape value or bonus to listener. In a day and age where people have to choose between groceries or filling up their tanks, by giving them upfront concert tickets, you're almost performing a public service.

The reality is that today many people don't have an opportunity to go out. Contest conditioning has to be a form of responding to the marketplace. While part of the competitive nature is also to be more aggressive promotionally, you have to walk a thin line.

Trend Setters And Hipness

One of the survival changes that will affect Urban radio in 2010 is the expectation and listening choices of the younger generation. Some call them the "tweens." I call them "generation bling." If your market is currently being measured by Arbitron's PPM, even though they could be as young as six, they're still being measured -- and they could keep the radio tuned to your frequency while their parents are carrying a meter.

They're also the generation that looks at the epitome of hip as necessary. They include young girls who search for expensive accessories, belts, purses and shoes such as those seen in fashion shows, videos and fashion magazines. Their male counterparts are looking for similar status symbols that identify them as not only being with it, but also being the trendsetters.

In some markets the meter shows significantly higher listening among young men than women. Urban stations such as WVEE/Atlanta or WPEG/ Charlotte, with a heavy male appeal, can do very well in metered ratings. Arbitron attributes this to a higher percentage of men among full-time workers. Arbitron rationalizes that full-time workers have more occasions to listen to radio and the meter records them more accurately than the diary. PPM detractors claim fashion-conscious young women may be reluctant to carry the meter as often as men when wearing certain attire.

It's not just the rich kids who are driving these trends; it's any kid with an income. Even in this economy, a lot more kids earn money than they used to, and they feel they have the right to spend their money as they see fit. These young "blingers" will buy brands with allowances or wages earned from part-time jobs. This can lead to a fair amount of spending on brands once known only to the rich and famous. These "tween blingers" are much more brand-conscious than they used to be. They wear everything branded.

The interest in brands isn't just confined to the females. Young men are now looking for brands with which to impress their girlfriends. What has happened is these young men and women have switched from being influenced by their parents and the brands they buy to being influenced by their peers and the brands they aspire to own. For many, identifying with a brand is part of developing an identity different from their parents.

This generations' tweens have grown up confident that they will have lucrative careers, so they feel entitled to own luxury brands. This is the generation that is listening to radio less and plugging in their earbuds to iPods more. Does this mean we have lost them as listeners forever? No, recent studies show simply that they will listen to their favorite radio station just long enough to hear the songs they eventually want to download.

As you may know, Arbitron is finding it more and more difficult to reach these young listeners, particularly young males. Why is it more difficult to measure the listening characteristics of young dudes who are 18-34, whether they're straight or gay? There are several reasons. First, individually they're harder to locate, especially since many of them jam with only their cell phones. Also, in many markets a greater proportion of men between those ages attend college or are in the military. This means their names are not included within their local markets' telephone directories, the main source that Arbitron uses to develop its sample base.

Another reason is that young males are less motivated. Recent studies have shown that traditional marketing approaches are not as effective with young males as they are with other groups. Certainly for those who may be living with their parents or significant others, not all the mail that arrives at their homes gets their full attention.

In the case of African-Americans and Hispanics, there is a feeling that in many markets Arbitron under-represents cell phone-only households in its panels and that both groups index higher for CPO homes than the U.S. average. What's more, young listeners in Spanish-dominant and African-American households provide fewer usable days of PPM data, suggesting that their lower compliance levels are due to lifestyle activities or how they are dressed.

Arbitron will continue to test new methods and procedures designed to grab young males' attention. The goal is to achieve both consistent and long-term improvements.

Programming of any station targeted to younger men has become an even more challenging proposition. In addition to ongoing Arbitron sampling issues and reaching cell phone-only users, the last few years have seen an explosion of competitive media and delivery systems. Everything from Internet audio service and satellite radio to the iPod and the recent emergence of cell-phone mp3s mean the consumer is consumed.

Making Better Music Choices

This year's Urban programmers will have much less margin for error when making musical choices. The challenge is not just trying to adjust its content strategy, propel cume and boost time spent listening (TSL), but also to compel the audience to spend time with their stations.

A number of group-owned stations have switched out of Urban formats altogether rather than fight a combination of demographic trends and increased competition. Others have successfully remained having made significant adjustments to their targeting and music mixes.

The bling that hits fashion, electronics and music is going to take its toll even more this year. While it's too general and perhaps too early to predict that the traditional Urban target demos will shift completely, a growing number of smart programmers have already made plans to adjust their focus.

We forecast that change will be reflected in national playlist trends for 2010. For smart stations, there will be a decrease in gold content along with an increased emphasis on current and recurrent jams.

Finally, effective audience conditioning means being more adventurous musically with an increased emphasis on personality and stationality. Changes in these areas are going to be necessary to win over the "bling generation." They're what's going to be required to keep Urban stations sounding fresh, irreverent and relevant. The design must come first. The ratings will follow. Remember, blessed are the cracked because they let in the light.

Word.