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Two-thirds of all local radio commercials tested in Philadelphia are failures. That might actually be good news.
“Facial Coding” is a form of research based on evaluating the facial reactions subjects have to various stimuli - a way to measure their emotional reaction and engagement. The science has been around since 1978, it’s effective, and one of the leaders in the field is a company called Sensory Logic.
Over the past seven days Starbucks brilliantly captured millions of dollars in free publicity with its version of a morning show stunt. You could hardly find a late-night TV monologue, or a Facebook community, that didn’t include some comment about the Unicorn Frappuccino.
Why would Starbucks create a drink that, according to most reviews, tasted like sour birthday cake - and then only make it available for three days? It’s all about the buzz. And I can’t think of an industry or product that benefits more from “buzz” than a radio station and/or its morning show.
12 Things You Can Do to Make Radio Commercials Easier on the Audience
We already know listeners don’t love commercials, right? If we needed any fresh reinforcement, our 2017 “What Women Want” study showed that one of the most important drivers of Pandora and Spotify usage is “too many commercials on the radio.”
You don’t hear much about paintball lately, but at its peak in 2004-2006 nearly as many people played paintball in America as played baseball - over 12 million people were shooting at each other for fun. Beginning in 2006, though, paintball suffered a horrendous decline; by 2016 annual participation had declined by over 70%, to about 3.5 million players.
One day I found myself in a video editing suite with four radio execs as we watched and commented on the editing of a TV commercial for their female-targeted radio station. At one point a spirited debate broke out over whether to include or delete a specific image from the spot. The arguments for and against boiled down to variations on two statements, which were:
As we wrapped up the last presentation of data from the public portions of the “What Women Want-2017,” Strategic Solutions Research partner Hal Rood and I compared notes on what we thought was most significant from the study. Several people have asked me what I thought was the best or most surprising thing to emerge from the research. I learned a couple of new tricks from this year’s data, but to me the very best thing about the study was getting another strong reminder of just how powerful radio truly is. Radio is the ultimate survivor; if cockroaches are the only life form still around at the end of the world, they will be listening to radio.
Burns/Strategic Solutions Research Study Profiles AC Music Tastes
Yesterday’s final presentation of data from the Burns/Strategic Solutions Research “What Women Want-2017” study included a close look at music preferences among Hot and Mainstream AC listeners. The two formats agree most on strong scores for soft contemporary hits (Adele’s “Hello” for example) and differ most on pop hits, which scored much higher at Hot AC than at Mainstream AC. Scores and sample songs include:
Top 40 Hot AC and Mainstream AC Fight Over Women in Their 30s
Results to be released today from the Alan Burns and Associates/Strategic Solutions Research deep dive into AC and Hot AC will show that all three contemporary pop music formats fight over thirty-something women. “While top 40 dominates women in their 20s, and women in their 40s gravitate to mainstream AC,” noted Strategic EVP Hal Rood, “30-39 is a dogfight. It’s the top end of Top 40, the young end of mainstream AC, and the core of Hot AC.”
Adult Contemporary Fans: Radio’s Variety Better than Pandora/Spotify!
Women who listen most to an adult contemporary radio station feel that their favorite station plays a better variety of music than online streamers such as Pandora and Spotify, according to data that will be released tomorrow (Wednesday) in the final webinar in the Alan Burns and Associates/Strategic Solutions Research series “What Women Want.”
We've been consulting radio stations since 1985. During that time Alan Burns & Associates is proud to have helped hundreds of AC, CHR and Gold AC stations succeed in even the toughest of market circumstances. The result of our accumulated knowledge, experience, and skills is successful clients.
