Every once in a while I come across an ad campaign and just scratch my head in puzzlement. There's always some kind of process to create a campaign. At least a couple people bouncing ideas off each other, honing promising pieces until you have the moment when everyone looks up and goes "Yeah". At least that's how it's supposed to work. Yet somehow some really weird campaigns still get loose on the world.
I was driving recently up in Buffalo when I saw a billboard for a radio station up there. I'll save them the embarrassment of naming them and just say they use a station "brand" that's designed to make them sound edgy and independent, go their own way, do their own thing kind of image. Which would be cool unless you know that people have been using that same "brand" all over the country for about a decade now. A quick check shows at least a dozen stations using it in the U.S. and Canada. It's stock, it's standard, it comes with a whole package. In other words it is NOTHING like it pretends to be. What got me was the supposedly cool billboard liner they are using. I'll clean it up a little in case the kids are with you "We don't take any "crud" but we play some". Okaaaaaaay. A little further down the road we hit another billboard for them. This one says "Come for the good songs, stay till the bad ones end".
Really?
So they want you to know that you should listen to them while admitting right up front they KNOW that they play cruddy songs. Once upon a time I was a music director at a radio station. I knew that everyone wouldn't like every song I programmed but I would never play a song that I thought was "crud". Why would I do that to my listeners? Why would I do that to myself?
So I guess the concept is we are SO COOL that we can play anything we want (yet another station image statement I discover) if it's a bad song. The concept is very simple, we run this radio station for us. If you want to hang out with the cool kids then you'll listen to whatever we play. This is radio marketing taken straight from every bad high school TV show of all time. The jocks and the cheer team are in charge of the music and you nerds and other assorted losers just need to be happy that a radio station can't give you a swirlie.
How's it working for them? The most recent ratings I can find put them in 11th place in the market overall. So I guess they can play what they want. And we get to listen to what we want, which appears to be pretty much anyone else.
Call that the View from the Phlipside.
"The View From the Phlipside" airs on WRFA-LP Jamestown NY. You can listen to WRFA online HERE
Copyright - Jay Phillippi 2010
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