11-20-2013
Requiring air talents to bark out tag lines every time they open their mouth is wasting precious time. Time that could be better spent delivering a hook headline to instantly engage the audience. You don?t want to waste even a nanosecond when the average attention span is down to nine seconds, according to one study.
Saying ?The Best Mix of the ?80s, ?90s and Now? first, every talk break, will be rattled off ineffectively at best by most air personalities. Tag lines have become meaningless commercial noise to most listeners. We have moderated many focus groups and have been surprised to find that the majority of respondents could not recall a radio station slogan even though it had been pounded for years every break.
Take the first step toward more impactful branding, and only include your tag line in the produced imaging where it can be sold effectively and where it will stand out more prominently.
The second step is to devise a way, through your imaging and marketing, to entice people to want to be associated with your brand. Think how brands like Apple and Starbucks have created the cool factor.
Brand questions to address:
What is the experience of listening to your radio station and/or morning show? How is your station/show connecting emotionally to listeners? What makes people come back to you again and again and become loyal to your brand?
Check out the Geoffrey James article from INC magazine, "Forget Your Tag Line. It?s Obsolete."
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(11/20/2013 2:41:06 PM)
While I agree that tag lines are, at best, worthless wastes of time (and here in San Diego, if they were eliminated, we'd have nothing but dead air in the place of stop sets), there's a certain . . . um. . . shall we say arrogance in denigrating the listener's "attention span."
No wonder people don't listen to you. You talk to them as if they're idiots.
Say something interesting or engaging and they'll stay tuned. Keep babbling drivel and of course they'll tune out.
Why wouldn't they?
I suspect Randy might agree that it has taken way too long for the old "robo-jock" formatics to die off.
So, yes, by all means, let's just hunt them down and blow them away.
I also realize: That ain't gonna happen - if only because of the disaster that would ensure were most jocks invited to "open up".
Music radio has become so trite (generally) that even the (alleged) nine-second attention span may be a bit of a stretch.
This leaves us in a position where programmers are having to choose which kind of "tripe" would be acceptable.
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