We recently criticized the new Radio 2020 campaign calling it ill-conceived and doomed to fail. John Gorman in a RBR guest blog that appears here expresses similar concerns. The broadside is a little unfocused, but it expands on a couple of points that we mentioned only in passing.
Quoting Gorman:
I got a chuckle out of brand strategist Kelly O’Keefe telling the Clear Channel-owned Inside Radio that his group “…tested more than 30 logos and had a very strong positive response to (the one they are using).” He claimed that 74 percent of respondents in his focus group found the logo “energetic.” Energetic? When was the last time you hear someone under fifty use that word?
O’Keefe continues, “The next highest reaction words were “alive,” “bold” and “fresh.”
Who was he interviewing? Music of Your Life listeners? I’m over fifty. Well over fifty – and those words don’t speak to me. You got some 17 year old to say radio is “bold?” I’m supposed believe you, right?
It wasn’t a total loss. O’Keefe did have one direct hit in his research.
“When we pushed it too edgy, we lost the young audiences. They said that’s not what radio is.”
But before you think he was starting to get it, he added, “We need to take it one rung of the ladder at a time. You can’t just jump to the top or you lose consumers.”Lose consumers? Kelly, my boy, you’re supposed to be trying to find them.
Gorman takes the opportunity to take a swipe at research, writing:
Think about it. If you’ve been in this business long enough, you’ve probably worked with a research company that asked you, “What are you hoping the research will tell you?” and wouldn’t you know it? That company's told you exactly what you wanted to hear.
I’ve dealt with the best and worst in research companies. There are those that tell you what you want to hear and those that tell you what you really need to know. I respect the latter, I abhor the former. You should, too.
We too suspect that whatever research was done to create this campaign was more to justify the decision than to reach it. Repositioning a product like radio requires sophisticated research that goes beyond holding up logos and asking for a show of hands. We suspect that O'Keefe's characterization of what people said is unfortunately pretty accurate. That's why this campaign can do more harm than good. It reinforces the negative impressions listeners have about radio. That's the last thing we should do.
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