There are so many metaphors that tie Radio to politics and even romance. And since some of these are fairly large, I guess they would be megaphors.
Politicians are prone to embellishing the truth. I know. It’s a shock. Do you need to sit down and collect your thoughts? They will maybe exaggerate a little to make their events or policies or successes seem even bigger or better or more successful than they might actually have been.
Why? Because sub-conciously people want to be affiliated with things that are larger and more popular than the competition. Or, at least have their choice validated.
The same goes for romance. I’m not going to tell the woman I met at Happy Hour at Chili’s that I drive a 1998 Ford Explorer with rust spots. I will probably tell her that I’m looking to upgrade my ride and am pitting two dealerships against each other to get me the best deal on a ’17 Escalade, and if they want my business, the rims had better be free.
I know a woman from my little corner of east central Minnesota whose ex-husband wooed her with his management job at Aveda and he was also enrolled at St. Thomas where he was working on a Masters in Business.
Uh…”management at Aveda” turned out to be in their distribution department (loading dock) and the St. Thomas thing was really some kind of highschool equivalency course. Whoops. He now drywalls and she got the kids.
Even the marketing of products is tweaked to improve or embellish their appearance. When I worked at Emmis in Minneapolis/St. Paul there was a photo studio on the level below us that specialized in menus and labels and other imagery of food. It was fun to hang out and they showed me the ropes in their kitchen on how to prepare a Perkin’s hamburger so that it looked bigger and juicier than it already was. It involved under-cooking, some coloring and lights.
How does that apply to us?
Well, we’re in the shopper comparison business too.
When Hot 99.5 in DC went and did a Taylor Swift concert in 2015, they approached it from the standpoint knowing that they were going to be next to several other stations, so they wanted to be BIG. They wanted to give people a first-impression that this station was a monster. So all of their planning focused on how to build and keep a crowd in front of their set-up. It worked, as evidenced by them…and the others.
Really? It’s just semantics. Just like Dry Wall Dude.
Every radio station on the planet has a prize closet. Yawn. Power 96 in Miami referred to theirs as The Prize Vault. It sounds bigger even though in reality it was a locking cabinet in Sarah’s office.
Mancow, who was a genius at embellishment would add a “0” to every station-related total he ever gave out. We didn’t have 25 guys show up to get posed porn shots with Nina Hartley. We had 250. 100 people didn’t come to his remote at West Coast Furniture. 1000 did. We’re not giving away $1000 in a group contest that you have no chance to win, “Someone who texts in at 2:08 (because that’s the way people talk, right?) is going to have a grand ‘ole time trying to pick out which golf clubs to buy because Belinda Jensen over at Channel 11 says that this Saturday? It’s topping 70. In MARCH.”
The Last Contest? Prize #272? Instead of saying “You’ll win $10,000”. The promo said, “Pick prize #272 and win thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars in CASH.”
When I used to drive a station van and pull people over who had a sticker on their bumper, I was always “Paige in Sticker Spotting Van #14”. We had one van.
Never EVER post a photo of an event that was taken before it started. IE: an empty plaza. I spot checked a client’s site and literally every event photo was of an empty tent. As a first impression, it would lead me to believe that the station might have something communicable.
It’s just taking a little and making it sound larger. Because that kind girl in the dorm who took pity on you after the kegger, was right. Size does matter.
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