The Long Game

The Long Game

When I say the word “Future”, how far off in the future does your mind think?

Is the Future 5 years away?

Is the Future 20 years away?

Is the Future next week or even next month?

Does it hurt your brain to think beyond today?

Here in the United States we live in short time spans, relatively speaking compared to some other countries around the world.

We elect a President every four years which for many countries is very unstable.  And the election cycle has become shorter and shorter.  If you like your President then, you want them to last not just 4 years, but 8 years.  However if you don’t like your President, you start talking about the next election as soon as possible, sometimes within 6 months.

I find it interesting that we elect government representatives who then create laws that outlast their term in office or in some cases, the laws don’t come into effect until after those that wrote them are out of office.

But enough about government and the Future, let’s talk about business and the Future.  In my world of radio broadcasting, I work for a radio station that is now 98 years old. WOWO radio began broadcasting in 1925 and was one of the first AM radio stations.  This year there was big news about the death of AM radio because certain automakers announced that they were not including AM radios in their new vehicles.  Ford was the big one that caught peoples attention.

The National Association of Broadcasters rallied their members and lobbyists to save AM radio and due to the bad press or pressure either publicly or privately, Ford reversed course and their CEO announced: “For any owners of Ford’s EVs without AM broadcast capability, we’ll offer a software update”.  As a broadcaster who knows how radio broadcasting works, the “software update” made me suspicious.  If all it takes is a software update, that means the hardware was built-in all this time.

Anyway, the future of AM radio accessibility in Ford manufactured vehicles is safe for now.

On the other hand, there has been a lot of noise in government regarding the social media app TikTok.  The concern is that users information is being given to the Chinese Communist Party for evil and it endangers all of us.  The app has been banned by one state and the Federal Government is prohibiting it from being downloaded on devices that are connected to government sites.

Changes are coming as the Future continues to move closer and closer.  How prepared are you for the changes that could occur next year?  Forget about 5 years down the road or 20 years into the future… I bet there are changes that are taking place in your industry that are going to impact your business in the next 18 months or sooner and you have not prepared for them yet.

The idea of The Long Game which is what I titled this piece is not that you need to stick with doing everything the same way forever and ever, but to look to the Future and plan for what is coming or could be coming.

As I announced in May, WOWO radio prepared for the future by adding a strong FM signal, 92.3 to our options for listeners to tune in while they are driving in case their vehicle doesn’t have AM radio.  We were prepared and you need to be prepared too in your business.

When it comes to inviting people to spend their money with you and your business, I have tons of options and ideas that you should consider.  Some are nearly 100 years old, while others are in their infancy.  Contact me and let’s play the Long Game together for today and the Future.

Bigger and Better WOWO

Bigger and Better WOWO

For the past couple of weeks, my primary radio station, WOWO, has been teasing our listeners about something coming that would make WOWO Bigger and Better.

Today, in the 7am hour WOWO Afternoon host Pat Miller joined Kayla Blakeslee, our host of Fort Wayne’s Morning News to reveal what the BIG deal was that we’ve been talking about on air and online.

(At least I hope they did, because I’m writing this article and recording the podcast a few days before.)

The BIG reveal is that WOWO is adding another way to listen to us.

Now Listeners in Fort Wayne, Indiana can listen to WOWO at 92.3 FM too.

Here’s the details and backstory:

For all of my lifetime (and before) WOWO has been on 1190 AM.  When the station first debuted 98 years ago it was on another AM frequency and moved around until 1941, so 1190 WOWO has been “The Place To Go When You Need To Know” for 82 years.

WOWO has also been a full time news talk radio station since 1996, but when I was a teenager in the 70’s WOWO was what they called a full-service radio station that played music along with having a full-time news department too.

WOWO had the distinction of being one of a hand full of Clear Channel AM radio stations in 1954 with the maximum power of 50,000 watts, That continued until the mid 1990’s when WOWO was purchased by Inner City Broadcasting whose intent was to buy WOWO and turn it off.  Why?  Because Inner City Broadcasting also owned a radio station in New York that was broadcasting on 1190 AM, but was required to sign off the air every night because of the Clear Channel license that WOWO had enabled WOWO to be the only station broadcasting east of the Mississippi River at 1190 AM at night.

Fortunately Federated Media stepped in and saved WOWO.  Federated Media owned two other stations in Fort Wayne and around the midwest and negotiated a deal.  The result was Inner City Broadcasting got to go full-time with their New York station on 1190 AM and WOWO would reduce their night time signal to 9800 watts, retaining the 50,000 watts during the day.

1190 WOWO is not going anywhere with this BIG announcement.

Now, why was the addition of 92.3 FM a BIG announcement?

It was a play on words.

Ever since 2016, Federated Media has been playing a Classic Hits Music format on 92.3 FM.  It’s Moniker was BIG 92.3.

Now WOWO has been on FM before.  If you review the History of WOWO website like I did, you’ll see that there was a WOWO FM briefly in 1955 and again in 1985 for a number of years.  When I joined WOWO in 2013 WOWO’s FM signal was 92.3.

Let’s go down the rabbit hole of 92.3 FM.  WFWI was originally put on the air at 92.3 FM in the mid 1990’s by Russ Oasis.  I happened to work on the air for Russ Oasis for a year, starting out doing afternoons on Music 92 and then we flipped formats to an all 70’s music station as the first version of 92.3 The Fort where I did mornings.  Eventually Federated Media bought 92.3 The Fort and for years it was the Fort Wayne home of the Bob and Tom Show in the morning and then Classic Rock the rest of the day and night.

According to my sources, 2012 was the year that 92.3 The Fort went away and that FM signal was given to WOWO.  However I recall going to breakfast meeting where it was announced that Federated Media was going to put music back on 92.3 FM in 2016.  That’s when BIG 92.3 FM launched.

When BIG 92.3 took over WOWO’s home on the FM dial, they also launched another FM home for WOWO, 107.5 FM along with 97.3 HD2 FM.  Forgive me for going all technical for a moment.

The Federal Communications Commission, which is the licensing and regulatory body of the Federal government created subchannels for FM radio stations that had High Def capabilities. So WOWO has been available on the HD2 channel of our sister station WMEE at 97.3 FM.   However HD subchannels are only available to you if you have a special HD radio, or if your car has an HD radio.

The F.C.C. also created another class of FM, Low Power.  Federated Media got licenses for our two Fort Wayne AM stations to also broadcast on FM using this technology whose only limitation was signal strength and thus coverage area.  107.5 FM has been WOWO’s FM signal but it’s only 75 watts and that limits the range.

92.3 FM is nearly 2500 watts which is full power and covers our the entire Fort Wayne Metro Area of 6 counties and beyond.

For now WOWO will continue to be heard on 107.5 FM but not very long, it’s not needed with the more powerful, BIGer 92.3 FM Signal.

That’s the BIG news for WOWO and let me wrap this up with a couple of answers to questions I’ve been asked:

  1. Why did WOWO leave 92.3 before?  It was a counter-programming move by our company.  Ever since they dropped the Classic Rock format of 92.3 The Fort, the two local stations that played classics had all those listeners.  We wanted to offer Fort Wayne area music listeners another choice and we did by also offering the Two Minute Promise.  During regular programming BIG 92.3 commercial breaks were only two minutes or less.
  2. Was BIG 92.3 successful? Yes and no. Yes, it made an impact on the radio landscape as it gained a lot of listeners, over 32,000 according to the last rating period. That weakened the other two classic music stations listener bases.  But No too. Because as a business, BIG 92.3 was never profitable.  It was the one division of our six Fort Wayne radio stations that wasn’t making money.  Every year since I’ve been in management, the question was do we keep BIG 92.3 or replace it. And every year it was keep BIG until now.  Music licensing fees have been increasing and even though there are no live radio personalities on BIG anymore, we still were paying one of our people to program 168 hours of music every week.
  3. I heard that some car companies like Ford are going to stop offering AM in their vehicles…  and 4. What happened to WOWO on 1190 AM? We live (80 miles away) and can’t hear WOWO anymore?  The answer to these two questions are circumstantial and coincidental.  With the government mandate to move to Electric Vehicles there are some car companies that decided that they were not going to offer AM in EV’s because it requires extra expense to create shielding to prevent interference, or at least that’s their story. Meanwhile the National Association of Broadcasters is lobbying Congress to create a law mandating the AM radio continues to be included in new vehicles.  And regarding the WOWO 1190 AM signal… a few weeks ago, our engineers had to make repairs and improvements to the WOWO towers and power had to be reduced from the 50,000 watts for what was originally going to be a few hours at night and over a weekend.  Unfortunately, once they were up there, they discovered more had to be done and that included ordering parts way beyond the original plans.   As I was writing this today, I received an email saying that WOWO will be back to our full 50,000 watts on 1190 AM by Monday morning too.

While I’m at it, let me leave you with a few applications:

  • First of all, carefully consider all the areas of your business and evaluate their value.  Long term and Short Term.  That’s what Federated Media did with 92.3 FM.
  • Do this evaluation more than once.  We did it every few months and made changes along the way.
  • Not all decisions should be based solely on money.  However there is a cost to the actions you take or don’t take too.
  • Keep looking forward and plan for the potential possibilities.  Even if some of the futurists and forecasters are wrong, it’s better to be prepared for if they are right than try and play catch-up. 
Win Their Hearts Or Lose Their Business

Win Their Hearts Or Lose Their Business

Numerous times I’ve talked about Trust being the biggest Human Relationship Factor that you and your business need to earn and protect when it comes to the success of your business in the eye of the public.

I just saw an article published by MarketingCharts.com that talks about consumer trust outside of advertising, but just as important:

Trust is a key component of brand loyalty, but it’s hard-won and easily lost. According to a Razorfish and GWI survey of almost 1,700 consumers ages 16-64, 58% of respondents said it was a “somewhat slow” or “very slow” process to gain trust in a brand that they recalled building a relationship with.

By contrast, when thinking about a time they lost trust in a company, 70% said they lost that trust quickly.

Now this article was focused on multiple factors that can build trust or destroy it including data privacy policies, online reviews from consumers, compatibility with political views and causes and so on, but to me what really stood out was how challenging it can be to win the hearts and trust of consumers and that it simply takes time.

But more than time, it takes multiple positive touches.

On the other hand, it’s really easy to lose a consumers trust.

When we run advertising campaigns for our clients, we work on under-promising and then over-delivering.  The opposite can destroy a company.

Here’s a link to the article: https://www.marketingcharts.com/customer-centric/privacy-and-security-229090 

If you want help or guidance creating trust for your company, reach out and we’ll talk.

 

Google is the Wrong Answer

Google is the Wrong Answer

I was in a meeting with a business owner this month and as we were doing our usual “Discovery” meeting, one of the questions that was asked was:

Where are your current customers coming from?

He answered, “Google”

Bzzzzzz.  Wrong answer.

Well, perhaps it was really the wrong question.

Google for advertising veterans is the new Yellow Pages.   

For those under the age of 45, before Google was launched last century in 1998 and became the top search engine about 5 years later, consumers would use the Yellow Pages section of a phone book to get the phone number to a business they wanted to call or visit.

Yellow Page ad salespeople trained their business customers to ask new people calling, “How did you get our number?” and a sizeable percent of the answers were the phone book.

I mean it made sense, the phone book is where I got the number, so technically the answer was correct.  This is how the Yellow Page ad salespeople sold ads, by “proving their worth” and getting the business owner to buy a bigger ad each year.  

In the old days of the phone book or today of Google and smart phones, the answer to the question is predictable.  If I’m in front of my laptop, I’ll Google it.  Otherwise, I’ll ask my phone, because I can search with my voice.  Siri, Alexa, and Hey Google are all similar current replacements for the both the phone book and laptop versions of Google.

Here’s why that’s the wrong question to ask if you are attempting to decide where your customers are coming from or where to invest your advertising dollars.

Google is the last step in a long series of steps that your new customer made to connect with you.  We call it the Zero Moment of Truth.  

All they need is the phone number, or if I’m searching from my phone, I don’t even need the actual number, I can call without even knowing the number.

The question you want to know is what are all the other influencing factors that prompted your customer to Google you?  Was it word of mouth from a friend?  Was it a 10 second video ad they had to watch before YouTube played a cat video?  Was it the radio ad, the endorsement from the podcast host?  The highway road sign they drive by daily or even the Pay Per Click Ad they saw when researching the kind of stuff you sell?

That’s what you should measure, and make it multiple choice because odds are it’s a combination of multiple influences that were the steps that lead to that final step of connecting with you because they Googled you.

Google is not the answer to your business success, it’s just the final step that connected them to you.

The Purpose of Your Advertising

The Purpose of Your Advertising

The Purpose of Advertising is to let others know about you, your stuff, or your brand in such a manner that it has an impact.

And before I go any further, the other distinction that Advertising has over other forms of communication is that you pay for it.  It’s not free.

Back to my first statement:

The Purpose of Advertising is to let others know about you, your stuff, or your brand in such a manner that it has an impact.

That word Impact.  What does that mean?

Well my friend, that depends on you.

For most advertising, the impact will not be recognized until sometime in the future.

Only a fraction of a percent of the people who hear or see your ad will respond in the moment and buy what you are offering to sell.

The impact however is not wasted just because the results are not instant.

When we are exposed to advertising messages, they are creating a neurological impact on us.

The ads are creating a preference for what they are advertising for and the more you and I are exposed to an ad or series of ads, the stronger that preference will be.

I’ll give you an example from 22 years ago, when I was not working in the advertising or media world.

My wife and I bought our first house together and decided we wanted central air since the house only had old fashioned window units.  I got quotes from two competing companies that were top of mind because of the advertising and marketing they had done over the years.  Never before was I in the market for central air conditioning and yet here I was calling up two companies that were Top Of Mind for me.  One of them got thousands of dollars that year, and a dozen years later the other company got a few thousand dollars of my money when we bought another home.

Think about it for a moment.  If you are watching a show and see an ad for something, nearly none of us are going to stop what we are doing and go buy what we just saw at that moment are we?

Sometimes, and I mean sometimes, not often, the message in the ad is something that can be acted on right away.  We had our local Home and Garden Show at the Coliseum recently and during the show, some advertisers were inviting listeners to visit their booth to win something.. The results were that a few of the people who heard the ads responded and told us so, but those were listeners who were planning on coming to the event anyway and we just enticed them to visit a specific business’s booth while they were there.

The Purpose of Advertising is to let others know about you, your stuff, or your brand in such a manner that it has an Impact. 

And that Impact will depend on what you are wanting to accomplish.

Contact me for more information.  Scott@WOWO.com.