Monthly Archives: June 2012

Happy Birthday, Dear iPhone!

June 29, 2012
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Happy Birthday, Dear iPhone!

Today marks the fifth birthday of the iPhone. Does it seem like five years to you?  Longer?  Shorter? Well, at any rate, this little device has changed our lives.  Thomas Hazlett (a law professor at George Mason University) wrote a great piece in the Wall Street Journal cataloging the history of the iconic device, the long lines that accompanied its debut, and some of the wrong-headed predictions that never came to pass. When it first came out, Columbia University law professor Tim Wu called it “iPhony” when analyzing Apple’s business...

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Don’t Build A Walkman II

June 28, 2012
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Don’t Build A Walkman II

In yesterday’s post, we discussed an article from Steve Smith about mobile: “The Age of Branded Action.”  Today, let’s take a deeper dive and look at radio brands and how they’re approaching the mobile space. In my mind’s eye, I try to picture two guys sitting in a bar.  One whips out his smartphone, and says to the other, “Have you seen the app for _________?”  And in the process, Guy A shows Guy B something about that app that makes it fun, buzzworthy, and cool. Not all of...

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Don’t Build A Walkman

June 27, 2012
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Don’t Build A Walkman

The conversation about the impact of mobile and how to best utilize it is occurring in every smart company among marketers, content creators, and hopefully, CEOs. Google’s Eric Schmidt intoned the mantra back in 2011, “Whatever you’re doing, do mobile first,” to explain how every new initiative in his company is now filtered through the mobile lens.  Mark Zuckerberg has admitted that Facebook’s inability to monetize mobile is a conundrum and a priority.  Every automotive designer we spoke to at CES in January reinforced that the mobile phone was...

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Video Boot Camp

June 26, 2012
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Video Boot Camp

I started with this question as I opened “Must See Video,” a panel I moderated at the 2012 Morning Show Boot Camp: “Why are we talking video at a radio conference?” And of course the truth is that video is the radio star.  For Boot Camp attendees who grew up with the mantra, “theatre of the mind,” we had a great crowd on hand to learn all about how video can be applied to radio shows. After a review of Techsurvey8 – especially the big finding that nearly six...

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Papa’s Got A Brand New BHAG?

June 25, 2012
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Papa’s Got A Brand New BHAG?

BHAG?  Oh no, not another acronym! And to show off my PPM prowess in teasing and creating occasions, I’m not going to tell you what BHAG is until the end of this post, but trust me when I tell you that most people in radio don’t have one.  (Don’t scroll down!) Today’s entry focuses on one of Lori Lewis’ favorite examples to use when our clients ask, “So who’s doing a good job with social media?” And the answer is almost always Coca-Cola. And it’s not just because Coke...

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Marketing Prowess

June 22, 2012
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Marketing Prowess

We recently ran a post about the need for radio sales reps to become proficient marketers. The fact is, successful marketers have never been more challenged to deliver the goods in a rapidly changing media environment.  And that reminded me of a MarketingSherpa email alert that Entercom’s Tim Murphy forwarded to me. A recent survey of 1,600 marketers asked about which tasks are part of their overall responsibility.  The chart below clearly depicts just how tenuous and challenging it is to be a marketer in 2012. The first big takeaway...

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First Occasions

June 21, 2012
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First Occasions

I like to think of myself as a “Consumer Whisperer.”  Over the course of any given year, my company is involved in umpteen research studies, from quantitative to qualitative, all designed to determine what it is real people are trying to tell us about our stations, our brands, and our medium. So, we tried something different in Techsurvey8 this year, our national tech survey encompassing 170 radio stations across North America who produced 57,000+ responses. We wanted to find out how people start their media day.  With radio, TV, Facebook,...

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Radio Dithers, Tim Smiles

June 20, 2012
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Radio Dithers, Tim Smiles

The strategies of “radio” pure plays aren’t a mystery.  In fact, the CEOs of the biggest streaming brands are telling us exactly what moves they intend to make as they march the ball down the media field. Radio either responds to the challenge, or it faces an inevitable world where new competitors have better presence than these up-and-comers.  That may sound hard to believe, but it is beginning to become a reality, thanks to the aggressiveness of companies like Pandora and the myopia of radio broadcasters. A case in...

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Power To The People

June 19, 2012
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Power To The People

We all work hard at building our brands, promoting our products, and trying to cash in on our equity – whether it’s radio or any other business. That’s why we continue to hear clients ask us, “How can I make money on Facebook?” or “Where’s the ROI on Facebook?”  As Lori Lewis has discussed many times in this space and on “Merge” in All Access, the real question should be, “How can I engender better relationships with the communities we serve?” All of which will lead to more loyalty,...

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That’s Showbiz!

June 18, 2012
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That’s Showbiz!

David Field’s on Twitter. No kidding, and it’s a great thing to see one of radio’s finest CEOs sending out interesting tweets about his company, his personal observations, and what catches his eye and moves him.  You can check out his musings at @DavidFieldETM.  He’s setting a great example for his fellow broadcast CEOs. I’m telling you this because Twitter continues to grow, evolve, and become a go-to source for the sharing of information.  For many people, all they knew about Twitter was that NBA stars and Ashton Kutcher were amassing millions...

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