Moneyball: Have You Audited Your Imaging?

• Have you audited your imaging and promos lately? This year? This decade?

With more responsibilities spread across fewer people in most station programming departments, it’d be completely understandable if the answer is “no.” Yet that’s exactly why it’s so important to make the time. With fewer people doing more work, radio risks losing the elements of surprise and delight for listeners. Imaging and promos end up becoming predictable — to the point where some listeners have commented that they know which will likely be followed by commercials, meaning it’s a good time to switch around to see if you can find a good song on one of your other presets.

Even when we set the bar no higher than “smiled or laughed at something you heard on the radio,” only 20% of the sample in NuVoodoo Ratings Prospects Study 26 said that had happened “in the past day.” Country P1s were the most likely to recall a laugh or smile in the past day — and it’s only 27% there, as shown in the chart above.

With fewer people creating imaging and promos for more stations, it’s becoming rarer for stations to have a unique, distinctive sound for their imaging and promos. This is especially bad in diary markets where listeners need to remember which station(s) they heard when it comes time to fill in their listening. It may be less risky for PPM markets, but same-sounding imaging gives up an opportunity to enhance the bond listeners have with the station.

If you’re able to commit the time to auditing your imaging and promos, try to divorce yourself from what you know to be the goals of each piece of audio. Try to HEAR them as a listener would. Ask yourself:

• Am I entertained by or interested in what I’m hearing?
• Does it evoke the sorts of feelings you’d hope listeners might have about your station?
• Does it sound good?
• Does it sound different than elements serving similar purposes on competing stations?
• Is it something you’d want to listen to?
• If it were in a podcast, would you hit the “skip” button?

In the case of contest promos, is it clear to an uninitiated person how the contest works? Does it sound fun? Easy to win? Exciting? Interesting? When you’ve kicked it around in meetings and emails for a month or more, it’s very clear to you that they just need to listen to the station at any of six set times per day to learn the keyword that they should then enter on your station-branded app for a chance at a prize. Would it be clear to someone who is trying to navigate rush-hour traffic?

NuVoodoo’s offerings for programming research are widely known and used (we deliver OMTs and perceptual studies for under $10K). Now we’re working with radio sellers to make sure stations get the revenue they deserve. Using our Brand Lift Studies, stations find success in increased renewals, extensions, and additional sales by proving the effectiveness of campaigns for important clients. We showcased a recent Brand Lift study for an expanding local bank in a webinar for the RAB. You’ll get all the details of their success in less than 15 minutes in the webinar video on our website.

We can scale brand lift studies to make them work for radio ad budgets. Studies can be run across a group or market cluster. We can cover several clients in a study when schedules align. We work to make costs commensurate with budgets. Reach out to me at leigh@nuvoodoo.com for more information.