You know the value of free investment advice (or free radio consulting) – not much. So please read today’s blog post with two jaundiced eyes.
I am not a professional stock picker, a day trader, or someone who has always made the best choices in real estate investments. But I have a growing theory about companies and stocks. I don’t check the typical CNBC or Merrill Lynch metrics. You won’t catch me studying P/E ratios, EBITDA, or the other numbers that captivate investment analysts.
Instead, I ask myself this question about companies I’m considering investing in:
Have they become part of the fabric of people’s everyday lives?
That is, do they have a sizable group of customers and are they a company that plays an integral role in the lives of citizens, not just in North America, but around the world?
So that’s why in the past, I’ve actually used this blog space to recommend Facebook and Twitter when their IPOs launched. It’s why I own Apple, Google, and Starbucks stock.
These are brands that aren’t just popular. They don’t just have scale. They have become interwoven in our culture, they always seem to be making news, and people talk about them.
If you’ve visited an Apple store since the new iPhones launched, you know what I’m talking about. There are crowds in the morning, afternoon, and at night. People are excited by the new products, and to Apple’s credit, they have the staff, the vibe, and the in-store experience to get you in and out quickly and efficiently. There’s a buzz that you cannot quantify with metrics, but you know it when you feel it.
But it’s not just a matter of having a viable product and great customer service. Think about the number of times every day that someone you know or work with talks about these companies and how they use them. Consider all the times every day that people in your network make use of their products. Think about how ubiquitous they’ve become in our lives.
When you do that, you get past the questions that consume the analysts on CNBC:
- The new iPad appears to be stiffing so Apple stock may be headed down.
- Twitter still seems to have trouble figuring out how to monetize its platform.
- Starbucks has new low-cost competitors getting new beverages ready to market.
- Amazon just had another bad quarter.
- Facebook is losing it with teens.
That’s not to say that with all the positives about these brands, there aren’t going to be issues, recalls, snafus, and other problems. But by achieving mass usage and by becoming connected with people’s lives, there’s a much better chance that consumers will continue to want to be part of these brands and their products.
And that’s the status that radio should strive to achieve. In a world of scarcity – say back in in the ‘60s and ‘70s – many stations achieved bigger than life status in their markets. By virtue of the music they played, their personalities, and their community involvement, they became integral in people’s lives. They provided companionship, leadership, music discovery, and daily entertainment. They were dependable, accessible, and plugged into the ethos of the towns in which they were licensed.
In order to survive in a world where radios are no longer sold but come with other stuff attached – smartphones and cars come to mind – local stations will need to find ways to become essential…again. The pathway in 2015 may be different, but the goal is the same.
Now you may push back at that. After all, how can an individual radio station in Any Market, U.S.A. achieve what Apple or Facebook has accomplished? And how could this possibly be accomplished in an environment of media abundance, where music services proliferate and the options are many?
But that fact is, there are radio stations that have done just that – oftentimes for years and years – earning a stool at the breakfast table, a passenger seat on the morning commute, and a place on the weekend to help us wind down and kick back. They provide more than a music service or business news at 25 and 55 past the hour.
They fill a need in people’s lives – be it local context, trusted curators who suggest where to go, what to listen to, and what to do, a source for music that matters, or personalities that know the market and what resonates with the people who live there.
We can all think of some radio brands that are operating on this scale in a variety of different markets. But there aren’t enough of them.
Gordon Borrell recently suggested that the options available in “connected cars’ will render half of the existing radio stations irrelevant or extinct. You may disagree with his numbers, but as someone who has invested a great deal of time and energy in learning about the implication of “digital dashboards,” his prediction seems to be more right than wrong.
That’s because if you buy into the notion that in a sea of infinite choice, the concept of “local” actually matters, too many radio stations and companies are rowing in the opposite direction.
I have had more “civilians” as well as non-radio professionals at DASH ask me in the past year why is it at a time when there’s Pandora, SiriusXM, Spotify, and WiFi in cars, so many local stations are featuring syndicated morning shows that aren’t “from here.” It’s counter-intuitive to the way that radio needs to think, act, and strategize in an expanded competitive landscape.
Many station teams continue to meet in conference rooms with the goal of putting together updated S.W.O.T . analyses, outlining their brand’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Too often, these exercises are almost always focused on the AM/FM stations they compete directly against for “radio dollars,” rather than the expanded competitive media landscape that consumers freely choose from today.
But in the same way that many commercial stations ignored public radio because they couldn’t see it in the Arbitron books of the past, being blind to the very real battle for entertainment and information mindshare in the real world of digital competition is a recipe for disaster.
Every radio broadcasting company CEO should be asking its market managers and operations teams to define what it is about every brand in the cluster that will make it essential on the dashboard or on mobile devices in the coming years.
And every brand manager with a plan and a raison d’être should be demanding the tools and the support to pull this off.
That means not standing for loser stations in clusters that simply exist as bonus tools in order to get the buy for a cluster of stations (think about the message that sends to advertisers about how radio values its assets).
It means providing marketing, promotion, and support for the biggest brand in the cluster, often ignored because it is so obviously “healthy.”
It means that radio stations need to earn consumer buzz and talk. You do that by becoming meaningful in people’s media lives.
And this comes from answering these questions:
What jobs are consumers in your market hiring you to do? And are you doing them?
What is the “why” of your brand? What is it that you offer that has value that consumers cannot get anywhere else?
What experiences do you offer that set you apart from other entertainment and information services that consumers can get at the touch of a button or the click of a mouse?
How’s that for some free advice?
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Jacobs Media has consistently walked the walk in the digital space, providing insights and guidance through its well-read national Techsurveys.
In 2008, jacapps was launched - a mobile apps company that has designed and built more than 1,300 apps for both the Apple and Android platforms. In 2013, the DASH Conference was created - a mashup of radio and automotive, designed to foster better understanding of the "connected car" and its impact.
Along with providing the creative and intellectual direction for the company, Fred consults many of Jacobs Media's commercial and public radio clients, in addition to media brands looking to thrive in the rapidly changing tech environment.
Fred was inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame in 2018.
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