I can deal with assholes and I can deal with sleazebags and I can handle when promotions don’t go perfectly but the thing that just makes my head do the whole Star Wars Death Star Blowed Up Thing is when stations miss opportunities to market themselves.
And when I say “miss” I mean it in the context of not changing up the imaging, doing something on the morning show, doing some social media posts, maybe some web graphics or a weekend theme, or even just showing up for it.
The reason that a station in Chicago missed the Bears in the Super Bowl was that “Our CHR audience doesn’t care about football.” In Chicago. Maybe the biggest grouping of sports nuts on the planet.
CBS had a CHR in Phoenix circa 2007 and it was being over-seen by another PD in the company that was prone to anger and really profane diatribes.
Hannah Montana was coming to the market and while we were discussing on email, things for the street team to be at, I mentioned her show and asked if the station had a game plan for being on-site.
I got this in response. “We don’t (bad term) Hannah (bad term) Montana. I’ll sooner (incredibly disturbing sexual act) her (term for morbidity) corpse before I play her so we sure as (redundant bad word) will not be on site.”
I suggested that for a new station with a limited marketing budget it would be a great opportunity to introduce 18,000 people to the brand.
This suggestion was not well-received.
Michael Martin with CBS has this amazing idea: Phenomenon transcend format.
Outside of “Margartiaville”, who plays Jimmy Buffett? But would you want your Rock or AC station to miss out on engaging 30,000 50 year-olds on a Saturday afternoon? Of course not.
If everyone in town is going crazy about a local basketball story, should you ignore it because you’re not a Sports station? No.
Don’t get caught up in “We don’t play them…” because in some situations you find that it just doesn’t matter. Missed opportunities suck. Write that on a post-it and stick it on your office wall.
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