My partner in this think tank, John Peake, recently sent me yet another radio station email blast which looked more like a newspaper insert than a rich, personal message.  He subscribes to a mind numbing amount of these things just for the purpose of seeing if he can find a gem or two amongst the traditional box-on-top-of-box porting out of the liner cards from the control room.  So far, he hasn’t found many.

Rather than dwell on the negative, let’s ask: what can we do to move digital marketing forward at radio?  Who can we take cues from to really transform and enhance these relatively inexpensive and powerful marketing tools? Here’s a start. 

A new article from Simm Jenkins, CEO of BrightWave Communications, “Email’s new role in digital marketing” really gets into the detail of why and how you should put together a well thought out plan for your digital marketing.  He discusses the broad range of digital channels available and how to use them.  Here’s a powerful quote from Jenkins: “Most companies won’t thrive if the only way of opting in with the company is through a website-based email signup form that captures only an email address”.  He goes on to detail how a network of digital channels, including mobile, social networks, and more will compliment your email efforts, and has ideas on how to interact and engage with your audience.

This reminds me: do you still consider your station’s webmaster just the webmaster?  That’s for another article.

Let us know what you’re doing to round out your digital marketing.  Also please feel free to post links to other relevant articles or blog posts.

- STEVE WYROSTOK

FURTHER READING

Edelman Research whitepaper on Barack Obama’s Social Media Toolkit

]]> http://radioxdigital.wordpress.com/2009/02/05/beyond-email-rounding-out-your-digital-marketing/feed/ 0 Wyro people-together http://radioxdigital.wordpress.com/2009/01/26/2009-the-year-of-cellphone-radio/ http://radioxdigital.wordpress.com/2009/01/26/2009-the-year-of-cellphone-radio/#comments Mon, 26 Jan 2009 08:32:08 +0000 Wyro http://radioxdigital.wordpress.com/?p=366 ]]>

2009 will be the year of very quick, very widespread adoption of the mobile phone as the primary music and radio consumption device. This will have a swift and profound impact on radio and digital music going forward.  We wish to highlight and predict the speed with which this sea change will happen.

We’re not talking about a few MP3s and crappy playback quality for the few bleeding edgers — this trend will reach critical mass as music and cellphones finally converge into full blown primary portable media devices.  This will begin to finally complete the full circle (wireless to wired back to wireless) for the 100 year old radio business, and create completely new listening opportunities, business models, and programming configurations for radio and music.

We’ve been seeing it feeling it coming for a while, but it’s finally taking hold now because of a number of factors all coalescing at once, some very recently:

1. Music licensing models for certain types of streaming are relatively stable.
2. Mobile network bandwidth is increasing and WiFi enabled devices are becoming common.
3. There are now multiple manufacturers of smartphones that have crossed the threshold of high quality streaming and excellent quality output.  App multitasking (listening to streams while running other apps) is here with the Palm Pre and no doubt the next generation Apple iPhone.
4. Distribution channels for the most sought after device, the iPhone, are wide open (Best Buy and Wal Mart).
5. There are fast becoming new ways to customize and sync music ‘stations’ originating online or sourced from your own collection.  These services can in various ways sync your music or custom stations automatically – without moving files.
6. Some mobile providers may begin serving up free unlimited high quality music with your phone service.
7. Shuttling your own files around, or sideloading, will become less necessary as the availability of music and programming from the ‘cloud’ becomes more prevalent.  Music as a service wherein you own the rights to listen, but don’t physically have the soundfile.
8. A huge explosion of new apps for radio, music services and other programming in recent weeks and months has created a plethora of choice.
9. Much improved software functionality to compliment the hardware capabilities of phones.

I predict that within the next year, Apple (and others) will unveil a mobile music service and begin to do away with downloads and locally stored files, which will satisfy many.  They will perhaps also adopt a service such as the one nuTsie is offering up in which your existing music collection is ‘placeshifted’ to multiple devices, without file syncing, and played it from the cloud.  Extremely interesting.  And if you think nuTsie is another one of the million startups clamoring for attention, think again: nuTsie has deep ties to mobile device manufacturers and provides solutions for getting music apps on phones and to consumers as part of basic services.

Think about it: in the next year or two, the vast majority of consumers could get unlimited, customized streaming music as part of a basic service plan with AT&T, same as you get free Music Choice with your Comcast TV now.  And companies like nuTsie will provide them for carriers like AT&T to bundle it and work with Nokia and Motorola and Sony to make sure the software runs on their hardware.

Another thing that occurs to me is that this year, the very concept of ‘owning’ music may shift.  If you ‘own’ music and that file never gets downloaded (you simply listen off the cloud), then ‘ownership’ is redefined as ‘having unlimited access to’ your file, not literally having it on a device in your possession.  Again, very interesting.  It’s an extension of the quickly growing trend called cloud computing, a phrase that you will hear much of in 2009 as more and more services become network based.  Services like GMail, Google Docs, Mapquest, and social software like Facebook and Twitter fall into this category – rich applications on the network.

There are a million questions as to how traditional radio programming brands can fit into all of this, but one thing is certain: those questions must be rephrased to consider the cellphone radio evolution that is fast taking place this year.

For now, educate yourself further with these three particularly insightful articles from Wired, the New York Times and SF Weekly.  You may want to read these twice to make sure you get the full impact — particularly the article from Wired.

Welcome to 2009: Year of the Cellphone Radio!

- STEVE WYROSTOK

FURTHER READING:

Wired Magazine  –  5 Ways the Cellphone Will Change How You Listen to Music “the next great thing in music technology will be smartphone applications that replicate the experience of listening to interactive, customized radio stations at a computer.”

SF Weekly  –  Cell Phones: The Future Of Music Broadcasting

New Tork Times  — Music Industry Imitates Digital Pirates to Turn a Profit

President-elect Barack Obama did it during his campaign.  Dave Matthews is doing it, and Lance Armstrong is doing it.  Should your radio station do it?

Micro-blogging is the technology of the moment. It seems that everyone is posting SMS-style bits of his or her latest life events on Facebook or Twitter. Take Janis Krums, who was on board a ferry in the Hudson River in New York City and helped rescue passengers from crashed US Airways flight 1549.  Krums was on his Twitter account and provided some of the very first images of the event using an iPhone and Twitpic.com. Even the Israeli Consulate is posting on Twitter and Facebook in an effort to manage the spin of their Gaza offensive.

I speak with radio managers everyday that wonder if their stations should participate in the micro blogging craze.  The answer is yes, with one caveat: it must be done correctly.

Don’t be afraid.  Micro-blogging is just another tool to add to your station’s branding strategy. But micro-blog messaging must be personal, literally meaning it should to come from a person, not from the brand. This is an opportunity to have your talent communicate very powerful and personal messages.

Take a close look at micro-blogs and you will realize that the most effective messages are sincere and that they embody the unique point of view of the writer. The lesson here is to skip the liner style promotional mentions and have talent post personal messages that relate a behind the scenes perspective.  Air talent personally posting the message “Can’t get enough of this new Kelly Clarkson song “My Life Would Suck Without You”, I am obsessed.” carries far more impact than the station tweeting “X100 plays today’s best music – listen for he new Kelly Clarkson song, My Life Would Suck Without You”. Don’t automate this process or assign it to an intern; every message should be unique and sincere and personal.

Micro-blogs can be easily and instantly updated. Expensive and complex database programs are not required – anyone can navigate Twitter or Facebook.  A secondary benefit is to your image; your station will be known as an adopter of new technology.  And there are viral marketing opportunities as you expose your brand to others on the social networking sites.  Virally spreading positive word-of-mouth about your station can help attract new customers that discover you on the site.

Whatever you do, do it consistently.  A stale Twitter feed is as bad as an outdated website.  Also, there are tools to help you link together the statuses, tweets, and other content so that you can post once and have it flow to the other systems.

How can micro-blogging and other social networking tools can be used as part of your branding strategy?

~ JOHN PEAKE

Further reading:
David Pogue of the New York Times: Twittering Tips For Beginners 1/15/09
The Dynamics of Viral Marketing
Marketing via social networks a no-no?

Together with iTunes announcement that they are going DRM-free comes a new standard of audio quality across the board with the near universal adoption of the 256k bitrate throughout the iTunes store.  The quality shift is very noticeable – cleaner, punchier – and shifts the quality paradigm for standard audio quality.

How does the audio quality of your online offering hold up by comparison? Take a close listen to your stream and see if it’s time to rethink your processing or up your basic bitrate (or offer a higher option).  Remember that more heavily processed audio sound worse at lower bitrates, like 96 or 128k, so if you heavily process your air signal, terrestrial people, you might consider a lighter touch online.

As bandwdth increases and competing audio entertainment offerings increase their quality, radio and digital music offerings should be careful to pace or exceed the standards of the time.  It’s worth a close listen to your HD channels as well to make sure that the program material quality holds up to this test as well.

~ STEVE WYROSTOK

What?? Four words you must understand: critical mass adoption stage.

It’s critical for each station and/or audio brand to have it’s own unique app, rather than be listed in a larger stream aggregator, whether you use Jacobs’ service or not.  Here’s why.

The reason you want to have your own app is for pure simplicity: less clicks and having that prime real estate on your listeners devices: the mobile desktop.  Being part of an aggregator means you are one item on a menu of hundreds.  This way you get a shortcut to your listeners and vice versa.  Your logo, your brand, your stream is one click away.

Also for simplicity sake, have your station begin streaming upon launching the player, without the need for further clicks.  Some stations require you to click to play; one more step is never good.  I can understand it for stations with multiple streams, but avoid it whenever possible, or at least have your main stream start automatically when the app is launched.

With WalMart announcing iPhone distribution there is no time to wait on having a critical tool such as your station’s own iPhone app.

There are only two other hurdles to complete the circle to mobile networked handheld devices becoming a new version of portable radio: (1) everywhere WiFi (3G or the forthcoming 4G broadband cellular network, now in development), and (2) perhaps more importantly: the ability for mobile devices to run multiple apps simultaneously not have streams stopped when switching apps.  [Update: The new Palm Pre smartphone, unveiled at the January 2009 CES, does just that].

- STEVE WYROSTOK

POST SCRIPT 1/10/09 — With the announcement of the Blaupunkt/miRoamer Internet car radio (Gizmodo, Wired), which will run the miRoamer internet radio portal as its interface, the need for radio brands to get high profile real estate whenever possible has never been more pronounced.  Why?  Because in this new device, one company – miRoamer – controls who gets on the “dial”.   On the iPhone, conversely, it’s wide open to consumer choice.  As long as you can get in the app store, which is theoretically unlimited, you can become a choice.  In a partnership like the Blaupunkt / miRoamer one, miRoamer provides the software and interface and decides what will go on it, and Blaupunkt provides the hardware.   This creates a closed, controlled choice environment for the car stereo unit, much like the old radio and cable, etc.  miRoamer becomes the gatekeeper of listener options. They can potentially showcase — or bury — stations.

FOLLOWUP TO POST SCRIPT 1/22/09 — The New York Times reports their theory, similar to mine about the hardware manufacturers becoming the the TV “gatekeeper” as new internet enabled TVs come to market:  NY TImes: Are Consumer Electronics Makers the New Content Gatekeepers?

iPHONE APP DEVELOPERS FOR RADIO (partial listing)
Jacobs Media  www.jacobsmedia.com
CodeMorphic  http://codemorphic.com
Stormy Productions  www.stormyprods.com

It’s a powerful mix of two off the shelf products, podcasts and streaming audio, with – and here’s the magic ingredient – a bit of code added that pulls together themed radio stations of current podcasts that make incredible sense as a whole once ‘stitched’ together.

Basically, Stitcher harnesses the incredibly vast world of podcasts and brings them together into constantly updated themed ‘stations’ you can click on and stream – and skip forward if you don’t like the current selection.  No downloading, syncing, subscribing. Perhaps Stitcher has figured out how to do an end run around the glass ceiling of podcasting?  (That glass ceiling is the sheer complexity of subscribing and syncing and maintaining your podcast library).

The American News & Politics ‘station’ might be a string of 3-5 minute headline news podcasts from CNN, NPR and more.  The Foodie Network might have a “Recipe of the Day” from one source followed by a Whole Foods podcast.

The stations aren’t perfect — because they are auto-generated — but when you click on the “San Francisco” station you can’t help but be impressed that you have just tapped into the collective podcasts – and people – of the Bay Area; a very impressive feat.  What a great way for listeners to find new content, and what a great boon to podcasters to bring some of their content to the surface.  This makes the granular world of podcasts look sensible as a whole, as a mosaic.  Plus you can create your own mix.

How it works – the selections, sequencing. etc. – is still a mystery, and probably not as complex as Pandora‘s is for music, but nevertheless Stitcher is very, very interesting and represents a way of looking at radio and content in a way that only people from outside the radio industry could.  Which is part of the reasong RadioXDigital exists – to change the paradigm of how we think about our own industry.

- STEVE WYROSTOK

PS – Another “why didn’t we think of that” feature is the ability for iPhone users to “receive SMS updates when their favorite shows are updated. When new content becomes available, Stitcher will send a text message to a user alerting them that the show was updated along with a direct-play link” (Source).  Simple yet amazing.

As radio has become increasingly distant from listeners and traditional research tools have largely disappeared, the digital age allows us to remain more connected than ever.  The foundation of branding is building a strong relationship with your listeners. Consider the following tools to enhance your listener interaction and improve your listener relations.

• Monthly Listener Panels. Use your station database to invite a focus size group (10-12 persons) to the station conference room, or perhaps a private room at a local restaurant, to discuss your radio station.  Use a carefully planned agenda and have an extra person on hand to take notes.  Follow up each panel with an action list.  Make sure the session includes a thorough exploration of the listener’s changing media habits.

• E-mail surveys. Seek listener feedback in your e-mail blast. Set aside a dedicated section that will link to a simple on line survey.  Track the results.

• Listener satisfaction team. Invite the innovative leaders in your organization to participate in a group that identifies listener needs and expectations. From this group develop a strategic listener satisfaction plan that includes benchmarks for success.

• Mine social networking sites. Keep them updated and fresh, and treat them as peers to your main website. There’s a ton of value in going where listeners already congregate, communicate and hang out online.

• Post your email address on the station website. Sounds simple, right?  Direct programming contact information is absent from most radio station websites. Encourage listeners to send their comments, read them and – critical — send each one a reply.

Utilize every digital touchpoint you can.  Engage your listeners, get to know their needs and expectations.  The latest digital tools will help close the gap between your radio station and your listeners.  Adapt today by developing an action plan that allows you to develop a meaningful relationship with your listeners.

- JOHN PEAKE

Plain content is just the start; a shift is necessary — away from creating just ‘programming’ and toward creating experiences.  Radio can do this by unlocking the hidden value in existing content to deliver innovative new listener experiences.

• Treat each digital outlet with as much attention as you give your air signal.
  

  • Institutionalize the planning and execution of quality digital content on par with the planning of terrestrial content.
  • Incorporate regular planning sessions for digital during or separate from your regular planning programming/content meetings.

• Assess the potential content that is under your nose.
  

  • Set up systems and assign people to capture and produce out each and every interesting bit of content that happens at your station and deliver it digitally.
  • Put a still camera with movie capability in everyone’s hand, then match up an intern or interested employee with a computer with video editing software and easy access to post video.
  • Creatively work with your partners, clients, and sister stations to figure out ways to not only capture, but enhance and share content.

• Inspire your staff to dream up and produce extended content – bonus material – for your digital outlets.
  

  • Extra bits with the morning show, behind the scenes peeks at your station, the in-studio interview before the on-air interview, the music meeting, the setup and rehearsal for your acoustic sessions, a short piece on the music meeting.
  • You may even consider occasionally running exclusive content such as a hot artist interview on your digital platform first.

• Examine and identify the best, most innovative practices.
  

  • Look in technology, design, content and marketing at both cutting edge traditional radio (which tends to be public and college outlets such as KEXP and KCRW) and digital
  • Pony up to the bar with content and a functional, innovative design and deliver an experience that meets or exceeds current offerings from these peer and digital-only outlets.

• Realize that building out this part of your product line will take an investment before you see profits.
  

  • Consistently and regularly release compelling, fun, interesting and exclusive content and expect it to draw eyes and ears.  The audience and revenue will follow.
  • Stations are launched with investments, ratings are delivered, and advertisers come — in this order.  It’s hard to remember in this quarter-to-quarter world.

There is no question that the full circle of radio becoming wireless and portable again is about 3/4 complete. In the next few years, a tipping point will happen where most people will again hold a single, portable, always on radio replacement, on which you will need to be front and center.

Digital draws a much larger online audience than you may think, yet the ground keeps shifting. Radio still has a unique, personal relationship with many listeners, is local, and has a wealth of exclusive content that can be repurposed, reinvigorated and expanded upon for digital.

Further reading: “A matter of scale – local media websites’ traffic vs. the portals” Highlights the drastic chasm between local media and top digital numbers (from a TV perspective, but making a radio comparison is easy to do).   You may not look at your ratings the same ever again.

- STEVE WYROSTOK

Rewind to 2000, prior to Pandora’s existence, when the Music Genome Project was launched as a way to gather detailed profiles of songs — some 400 data points about everything from rhythm to vocal style — in order to be able to match songs based on similarity  The “Genome” was marketed to companies like Amazon as a recommendation engine to suggest additional purchases based on customer choices.

Profitability did not come, and the company faced extinction.  However, the passionate and determined team knew that they had developed a unique and valuable service, and they set out to find a way to succeed.

They had to adapt or die.

In 2005, Pandora radio was launched, based on the Genome’s engine, providing listeners the unique ability to build personal online radio stations from a few song or artist “seeds”.  At first the service was free for a trial period of 10 days, then switched to a subscription based service.  This, too, did not work, even at a very low subscription price.

Again, the company faced the need to adapt or die.  Eventually, they decided to offer the service as a free, ad-supported service, while at the same time remaining true and focused on their core user experience principles which involve a pure music experience, now coupled with an acceptable level and method of advertiser support.  Today — although webcasting royalty uncertainties may change things yet again — Pandora is a company that has beaten the odds and is confident and pointed to the future because of their incredible ability to adapt.

Fielding questions at the Apple store event, Pandora developers began their answers to many questions with, “we’ve discussed that during our creative meetings, and…”.  These guys seem to spend all of their time looking for ways to improve their product by remaining completely focused on their listeners.  They developed a single-minded obsession of improving the experience for the end user, and that led to a product that has garnered raves and the type of marketing money can’t buy: word of mouth.

When was the last time your team held a meeting where improving your listener experience across all your touch points was the main and only point of discussion?  When was the last time you brainstormed unique and meaningful ways to significantly enhance your audience’s experience?  This creative process was once very much a part of the development process for building and growth at radio, before the primary internal focus became cost-cutting, staff reduction, increasing sales promotions, etc.

Do this.  Next week, take a half day and set aside those 2009 budgets for a moment and focus on 2009 Listener Experience.

• Assemble the most creative minds in your building (hint: they are usually not the ones wearing suits).
• Brainstorm in a free and open environment with the goal of significantly enhancing the user experience across all your touch points.
• Listen to and consider every single idea that comes up no matter how wild it may seem.
• Encourage an atmosphere where there are no sacred cows.  Everything is fair game.
• Then take the ideas and turn them into action steps that will translate to meaningful positive change for your listeners’ experience.

Repeat this process on a regular basis.  We suggest monthly.  Adapt and thrive in today’s tumultuous, insanely competitive entertainment landscape.  Or, you can choose to not adapt .. and die.

- JOHN PEAKE

Go ahead,  We dare you.  After this context-changing experiment, you will see firsthand how the media landscape looks, how decisions are made, how exposure is gained — and just how easy it is for radio to fade into the background.  You must gain this perspective firsthand in order to understand how to move your product again into the foreground.  You can’t just read about new media and understand it.

So, here’s what you do:

• Unplug every piece of electronics made before 2005 — radios, TVs, cable, all of it.  Don’t use the radio in your car unless it is to play your iPod.
• Access all of your media online or via your computer and iPod for a full week.  Use iTunes or station web apps to stream radio on your computer or phone, and experience how choices are made, how attention is diverted by other apps and activities, how long it takes you to restart the stream, etc.
• Watch video content exclusively online, experience the commercial vacuum, and develop a sense of the lower key of advertising online.  Feel just how far users get from marketing messages, and note the messages that do get through — and how and why they do.
• If you are not using it all or very much, get on Facebook, Twitter, etc., and use it a lot.  Make it your homepage.  Use the messaging features that let it interact with your mobile phone too.  Wear Facebook like a second shirt.  Experience the subtleties that existing in this space brings.
• Use texting extensively, if you don’t already, and see how your communications change, how your connections to people change and adapt.

Make notes during your week.  When you go back to your “normal” media consumption habits, remember just how it felt to be a million miles away from traditional media, and try to break through to that place with your radio station and its extensions — web site, use of social media, texting, viral effects, etc.  Try to do this exercise for a couple of days each month or longer.  Keep as many parts of it going continuously as you can.

When you’re done with this experiment, even if it’s for a few days, write us with your revelations and impressions so we can share them with the world.  More “Ways To Adapt” next week.

- STEVE WYROSTOK

Further reading:
>> Social Media.biz – tracks developments in social media
>> NY Times: Brave New World of Digital Intimacy