I don’t do this often, but I’m starting the week with a guest post from Seth Resler I think many of you will appreciate. In case you don’t know, Seth is Jacobs Media’s Digital Dot Connector, and after you read today’s post, you’ll understand why.
Seth’s experience as a programmer and on-air talent at radio stations throughout the U.S., combined with his experience in Silicon Valley, uniquely prepares him to look at the changing world of broadcast radio and digital media differently. And that’s why his post caught my attention. I want to make sure you read it.
When I programmed WRIF in the early 80’s, swag, merch, bumper stickers, and station T-shirts were a huge deal. I insisted that the airstaff and I have a trunkful of this stuff to hand to listeners, merchants, and anyone
we encountered in town. If I heard the station blaring from the car next to me at a red light, I’d toss the driver a shirt or a sticker. If I walked into a store and the station was playing, I’d leave them with a nice array of swag and thank ’em for listening. This activity reinforced the station’s “community,” as well as giving a Detroiter a serendipitous moment and a story to tell.
As you’ll read in Seth’s post today, these activities from radio’s past meant something. They built station brands, created memories, and made listeners feel like they were part of something special. All in all, that’s a pretty good ROI. At a time when budgets are tight, and promotional spending may be down to a crawl, an investment in swag might provide your brand with a unique way to cut through – and keep building your community – FJ
“Rethinking Radio Swag In Light Of Social Identity” by Seth Resler
Lately, I’ve been diving into the world of community building. While many companies, especially in the tech industry, have had Community Managers on their payrolls for years, this role has historically been viewed as having a customer support function. It’s only in the last few years that companies have realized that brand communities have positive impacts on every aspect of the business, from product development to employee recruitment to marketing. With this realization has come an increasing amount of literature on the topic. Here are the books that are currently on my night stand:
In the broadcasting industry, we do not have Community Managers. That’s because radio stations don’t build communities; they attract audiences, and audiences and communities are not the same thing. Here’s an explanation of the difference between the two.
Nonetheless, I am finding a lot of principles in the community-building literature that radio stations can put into practice. For example, a few weeks ago, I wrote about the difference between prizes that try to bribe people to listen and prizes that recognize people for listening. I singled out the prize that NPR’s Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me! gives away, a voicemail greeting recorded by one of the show’s celebrity judges. Wait Wait‘s Doug Berman pointed out that “winning it, and even wanting it, made you part of our club” (emphasis mine).
When I asked my readers to tell me about prizes that their stations give away which are similarly “worthless but priceless,” I received a wide range of creative answers, including everything from participation trophies to bits of concrete. The lesson is that listeners can find a lot value in inexpensive but meaningful symbols of appreciation. Many of these symbols come in a form that radio stations call “swag,” including T-shirts, stickers, and coffee mugs.
What Radio Gets Wrong About Swag
I thought I had exhausted this topic until I ran across this passage in David Spinks‘ 2021 book, The Business of Belonging:
Swag is obviously a popular reward. Giving your members a comfy T-shirt, a mug, a sticker for their laptop, or something else representing your community can be effective if that person genuinely cares about your brand. [emphasis mine]
I find that a lot of companies think about swag in the wrong way. Too often, companies just slap their logo on a T-shirt and hope that their members will wear it around and spread awareness of the brand. In reality, you just gave them a really comfortable pajama shirt that will likely never leave the house.
Instead of thinking about swag as a billboard, focus on how the swag will make the member feel when they wear or see it. It doesn’t even have to have your logo, as long as they remember that it’s a representation of your community, and a reminder of a positive experience. A beautifully designed piece of swag that people actually want can be more effective at reinforcing their sense of identity as a member, even if your logo doesn’t show up anywhere. (page 105)
These days, many radio stations have gotten out of the swag business entirely. Record labels aren’t as apt to foot the bill for this stuff as they used to be, and as radio stations look for line items to cut from their budgets, it’s easy to nix the swag. After all, the swag doesn’t appear to be a very cost-effective marketing technique.
But what if Spinks is right? What if the value of swag isn’t in attracting new fans, but in thanking existing fans? Put another way: The power of swag doesn’t lie in cume-building; it’s in retaining P1 listeners. Suddenly, axing swag from the budget looks like a big mistake.
Swag Reinforces People’s Social Identities
Spinks dedicates an entire chapter of his book to “Creating a Social Identity.” He says:
Humans form much of our personal identities around the shared identities of the groups we participate in. We adopt the beliefs, styles, language, symbols, rituals, and other forms of expression that exist within the groups we’re a part of. (page 55)
While Spinks is talking about communities, not audiences, this principle can also be applied to fans of a brand. We often display our affinity for particular brands because we think it says something about ourselves. When you see people associating themselves with these brands, what message are they trying to convey?
- Harley-Davidson
- Louis Vuitton
- CrossFit
- Ben & Jerry’s
- The North Face
- Apple
- Lululemon
- Hennessy
- Lexus
- HubSpot
- Nike
Not all products send strong messages to other people about social identities. When I order a local craft beer at a bar instead of a Budweiser, I am sending a message to others; when I buy paper towels at the grocery store, I am not. But for many years, associating yourself with a radio brand has been a great way to tell others about yourself. Think about the messages people are conveying when they let you know that they listen to these audio brands:
- Hot 97 (New York City)
- KSHE (St. Louis)
- KEXP (Seattle)
- WFAN (New York City)
- Magic 102.3 (Washington D.C.)
- WRIF (Detroit)
- NPR
- K-Love
- BBC
- The Bobby Bones Show
- Comedy Bang! Bang!
- The Bob & Tom Show
- Pod Save America
- Rush Limbaugh
When I see somebody showing their connection to one of these brands — through a keychain, a coffee mug, a screensaver, etc. — I instantly know something about how they perceive themselves. They aren’t displaying their affinity for these brands because they want to tell me about the brands; they are displaying it because they want to tell me about themselves.
When we stop giving our listeners swag, we force them to find other ways to tell people about themselves. Instead of using radio stations to convey their social identities, they will do it through the TV shows they watch or the sports teams they root for or the cars they drive. This will strengthen their ties to those brands and weaken their ties to ours.
When radio stops being a social identity signifier, it hurts our entire industry; we become more like paper towels and less like beer brands. After all, there’s a big difference between listening to a radio station because “I like the music they play” and “It’s who I am.” The latter is far more powerful.
The point of radio station swag isn’t to attract new listeners; it’s to strengthen your bond with your most passionate existing listeners. It has value even if the recipient never shows the swag to anyone else. But if they do show it to other people, it’s a happy byproduct that illustrates just how strong your connection to that fan is.
Other prizes can’t do that. So maybe radio stations should worry less about bribing listeners with cash and concert tickets, and focus more on stickers and shirts. There’s power in swag.
A postscript from Fred: Seth’s post isn’t just about all those Loop shirts that made a major statement in Chicago back in the 80’s. There’s an interesting public radio idea here, too. Swag is widely used as premiums for donating, becoming a station member. For the most part, stations look at the shirts, hats, stickers, and yes, tote bags as branded “thank-you” gifts for contributing. But as Paul and I hear so often in public radio focus groups, loyal listeners value this merch to show the world – and their communities – who they are, and what they stand for. It very much coincides with what Seth talks about in this post. – FJ
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Fred, in my experience, there’s nothing like a story and smile from a former regular listener of mine/my station who remembered me giving them some swag… 10-20 years ago! Doing so is similar to giving a friend something and them keeping it for God knows how long… just because YOU gave it to them… haha! One station I worked with had agreements with special annual events that attracted mega-crowds, permitting the station to giveaway t-shirts and tank tops with the event and station logo. That shirt became more than just a piece of station swag. It became a special memory:).
Yes, there’s a big difference: I cherish my memories. I paint my basement wearing my unwanted swag. The trick is getting the swag into the hands of fans who will really care about it.
Our morning guy at U93 in South Bend back in the early 80s bought a hermit crab at a local pet store, and started to talk about it on the air. Creating all these “adventures” and personality traits that a dog or cat would have for a hermit crab. That resulted in us printing a run of U93 hermit crab t-shirts, that were a very hot item. The pet store quickly sold out of hermit crabs. It all came and went in a couple of weeks, but still memorable. It was just one if the many little goofy promotions, along with the big ones, and the right music of course, that gave us 20 shares at the time.
That’s a great story! And the shirts are a perfect example of something that “worthless but priceless.” What a fantastic way to excite listeners!
I believe that the great lesson that Seth teaches us, beyond giving swag a new value, is that a radio station must have a personality that leaves a mark on listeners, that makes them feel like they are part of a club, to which they are proud to belong.
As he says, “After all, there’s a big difference between listening to a radio station because “I like the music they play” and “It’s who I am.” The latter is far more powerful.”
Absolutely! It’s a small detail, but back in the day, I was a big Buffy the Vampire Slayer fan. I remember spotting a KROQ bumper sticker in one of the lockers on the Buffy set in one episode, and geeking out because I was also a KROQ fan. Nobody would ever know, but seeing that connection made me a bigger fan of both brands.
Wow, I absolutely love this. I never thought about it this way, but yeah, I buy and wear Harley shirts not to promote Harley, but to show people that I ride. I wear a Cessna hat not to promote Cessna but to show people that I fly. I wish more managers would subscribe to this. Thanks for the article!
Yeah, it’s one of those things where you don’t see it until you see it. Thanks for the comment!
Radio can learn something from the sports gear industry. Yeah, for the most part the swag is free. (I worked at a station where listeners tried to BUY the gear that was assigned to employees at promo events) But the same principle is at work here. People want to identify.
Yup! I’m a bit of a TV geek, so I’ve paid for shirts with The Wire, Firefly, Fringe, Freaks and Geeks, and Arrested Development on them — all because I identify with fans of those shows.
Indeed! I like your sports-team analogy … because I (and probably others) used to refer to wearing our station-branded gear to events as putting on our “team colors” (which is exactly what it was) — and I think that we, too, occasionally had listeners ask us for if they could buy some of what we were wearing. But even all that stuff we gave out for free (such as stickers) allowed them to feel part of the “extended family.” (I think radio is very unique in this respect: Listeners’ affinity for stations — and their personalities — often is not unlike sports teams’ fans’ affinity for teams/players. Other media — TV stations, for example — can’t command such loyalty.)
Stickers, in particular, are relatively inexpensive — and the cost even could be largely (or completely) covered via sponsor ad/coupon on the other side. So, there’s “big bang for the buck,” potentially.
Yes, I think the sports team analogy makes a lot of sense here.
If I were a PD today, the only change I would make to the stickers is to make them laptop-size, not car bumper-size. I don’t see as many “Coexist”s and Peeing Calvins as I used to when I’m out driving, but I do see a lot of laptop stickers these days.
Definitely. Laptops typically are covered with stickers nowadays. At the college station I oversee, around eight years or so ago we went with round stickers (the logo as seen here: https://www.geneseo.edu/wgsu — ideally suited for laptops!).
I’ve seen a handful of ALT stations go with stickers – round and ovals. But rarely do they stick with them (pun unintended). Two things I learned with stickers – you need to make many more than you think and you need to stick with them (pun once again unintended) for years for them to consistently show up in a market.
I agree with your reply (below), Fred.
My philosophy: Buy in bulk (for cheaper per sticker price, obviously) … and never run out (we always have some on hand … for everything we do). And, yes, patience is a good thing; while it might take a little while, we now commonly see our stickers all around our (albeit tiny) town.
Hey guys, everybody that knows me, knows that I’m a sucker for SWAG, which I was once told stood for Stuff We All Get free and that sounds good to me. I have hundreds of radio t-shirts, bumper stickers and anything with a radio station logo on it. At an NAB Radio Show several years ago Randy Michaels said “I see Art Vuolo’s here and he’s actually wearing a nice suite. I’m trying to figure out what station is giving out suites!” At my expense, it got a huge laugh, but I couldn’t care less. Pierre Bouvard at The Conclave once said “we tell businesses that people won’t know who you are if you don’t advertise (on the radio) and what is it that we don’t do? Advertise ourselves! No T-shirts, bumper stickers, TV spots, or billboards” He was and still is absolutely right. Get SWAG back in the budget before it’s too late!
And all that swag reinforces your social identity: “Radio’s Best Friend.”
Thanks, Art!
I wonder if part of the reason for the elimination of swag is that so many stations are just a footnote in some megacorporation’s inventory. No real community connection anyway, so why try?
I’ve always felt that a good promotions department is just as vital to the life of a station as the jocks and the music, and I am still dismayed when I come up on a remote and they don’t even have a bumper sticker on the table. Does the management even care about building the station? Or is Mrs. Carlson sitting back chuckling about her tax write off?
Hopefully we’ve been able to change some minds here today, Bob!