Breaking The Rule Of 3

Last week I shared with you the “rule of 3”.

It’s a standard rule in communication that says in order for a message to really be remembered, you have to hear it 3 times.

Feel free to go back and read about how this is used in teaching and preaching.

In the advertising world, this is usually important too and is a formula we use in creating ads.  When I write ads for clients or even for myself, and I am wanting listeners to remember a website as the call to action, I mention the web address 3 times in a 60 second commercial.

I have been running ads on my radio station, WOWO radio for over a year that offer free business tips if you send an email to Scott@WOWO.com and I get results from those ads because I give my email address 3 times in the ad.

Now there are other reasons why I get results too and that’s what we are going to talk about today.

WOWO’s audience is consistently the largest radio audience in Fort Wayne. We have more adults age 25 and older listening every week than any other station. That is another reason we get results for our advertisers.

Right messaging to a large audience sounds like a winning formula, right?

However there are some special characteristics of the WOWO radio audience that allows us to break the rule of 3 sometimes.

WOWO is a news and talk radio station, so our listeners are not using us as background music.  Many music stations have what I call passive listeners.  They may listen to their favorite music station but it’s not something that they are doing as a primary activity.  The music plays while they are working or driving or doing stuff around the house.  When ads play on a music radio station, many listeners subconsciously or even deliberately tune out.  The impact of an advertisement playing on a music station is less than a talk station, generally speaking.

Ads on a music radio station are also more likely perceived as an irritant. 40 years ago when I was a top-40 radio personality and the station I worked for created and promoted “commercial-free-music sweeps”, we were actually implying to our listeners that listening to ads on the radio was bad.

Compare that to a radio station like WOWO that doesn’t play background music. As a news and talk radio station, WOWO is foreground listening, not background. WOWO listeners are more “tuned in” mentally and emotionally to the words they hear on WOWO compared to a music radio station. So when an advertisement comes on WOWO radio, yes it’s still an ad, but it is less of an irritant compared to an ad on a music station.

Both music stations and talk stations can create emotional bonds with their audiences.  We recently saw the departure of a couple of morning shows on two of our companies music stations and listeners were sadden and expressed it on social media.  But both stations listenership levels remained steady despite the change in personalities.

Talk radio, is different.  The radio personality sets the tone for the show and the bond with the listener is huge.

Here’s how the rule of 3 applies and how we can break it on WOWO.

As a loyal listener to WOWO for years before I started working here in 2013, I had a perception of certain businesses that I thought advertised all the time.  Turns out I was wrong.  One example from nearly 20 years ago was a small meat market and deli that I would hear the afternoon talk show host talk about all the time and how they had the best ham salad made fresh in their store.  Turns out the ad ran once a week.

My jaw dropped when I learned this.  Because I was usually listening to WOWO on Friday afternoons which was the one day this ad would air, I thought they were a major advertiser, when in fact they were doing the bare minimum and getting results.  They broke the rule of 3.

However, here’s why they were successful despite having such a small advertising schedule. They were long term.  They may not have been following the rule of 3 on a weekly basis, but over time, yes it worked.

These days, we don’t accept advertising schedules that are that small on WOWO because the rule of three is still important.  Often what we recommend is that businesses follow the rule of 3 when they begin with WOWO so listeners can build familiarity with them as quickly as possible.  I start with placing all of their ads on one of our 3 hour talk shows.  If you air 10 or 15 times per week in a 15 hour radio show, you can create a level of trust and familiarity with that audience. Then, we can make adjustments over time to expand their advertising to include other shows on WOWO in order to expand their audience.

The rule of 3 when applied to music radio stations usually means buying 21 ads per week which divided over 7 days = 3 per day. But as I mentioned earlier, the effectiveness of those ads are probably less simply because of the listening environment and attentiveness of the audience.

Before you decide to use the rule of 3, or break the rule of 3, I urge you to talk with me or a member of my marketing team to craft a campaign that fits all the criteria needed to be a profitable investment for you and your business.