11-20-13
During the Radio Ink Forecast 2014 luncheon, Clear Channel CEO Bob Pittman candidly spoke about his thoughts on the radio industry?s need to be more ?in the face? of marketers and not rely so heavily on agencies and buyers alone. He admits that many marketers don?t always understand radio and it?s up to the leaders in radio to make them understand our business better.
Pittman is also concerned with the concept of changing the positioning of radio to ?audio,? explaining that it?s not something that consumers would use or embrace. You also won?t hear him refer to Pandora or similar pureplays as ?radio? because ?radio? is the exact opposite of what they can offer. Pittman continued his discussion by citing Clear Channel?s management style ? to create team leaders and teams which confront problems head on and strive to find areas of concern, as well as take chances on big ideas. If a company doesn?t do this, it will find itself floundering in mediocrity very quickly.
(11/20/2013 11:23:01 PM)
To my knowledge, has Mr. Pittman ever 'fessed up and admitted that radio was an abject failure at servicing audiences and advertisers with the utmost in programming and commercial production.
There's a broken-down, rusted-out Caterpillar dozer blocking the driveway. Until that thing is dragged away and replaced - nobody's going anywhere.
The rest is about forced posing, posturing and pathetic attempts at re-framing.
Although weird, it is possible that Mr Pittman was never told and doesn't even know! His considered comments are hardly those that would sustain any motivation.
Board room antics. Not reality speaking. More political posturing. Go get em guys !!! You can do it !!! Now I got to get back to my yacht.
Lets see Pittman go on a call and try and get around an agency to speak to a "marketer". Good fricking luck Bob.
We need to start realizing that radio does not fit the "Ad Agency" business model of high creative fees, high production fees, and high-cost media. The reason so much ad agency money goes to television is that medium perfectly fits the ad agency business model. When a client has their ad agency create a $5,000 to $1,000,000 tv commercial, the ad agency gets to keep all that money. Not the case for radio, which is by nature a much more efficient medium. Lets start talking about this issue!
(11/20/2013 4:54:00 PM)
The best place for radio industry leaders to start is with the large automakers. Automotive continues to make up the largest category share for radio and we are under attack. Local dealers are being instructed to spend less in radio and more in TV by corporate representatives.
(11/20/2013 4:25:37 PM)
Mr. Pitman made a good general point, based on what was covered in this article. But the one thing he did not mention was that in talking to marketers, you need to speak in their language and position the radio audience not in quarter hours like you would with ad buyer, but in how they discuss their audiences, in lifestyle groups. A format like Top40 or HotAC has very distinct lifestyle groups, usually two to three across an 18-34 or 25-54 audience.
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