The Infinite Dial

In the last 24 hours one person from our company did a station visit and we got a new set of data back. Both slammed home a point that the radio world seems to be missing: Awareness is no longer free.

It is not that long ago that merely changing a format came with so much attendant publicity that within weeks a majority of a market would know about the new station. There were so few choices, or so the marketplace felt, that the existence of a new one was a major big deal.

On the station visit, the representatives of a station that is about 15 months old were bemoaning that the cume of their station quickly zoomed to 46,000 (in their target demo) and has since receded to 35,000. When the Edison employee asked about external marketing, he was told: "We haven't ever done any external marketing." Encouraged by a good first book, they apparently figured the rest of the market would get on board soon.

In the other situation, the data showed a station, also about a year old, with only 50% aided awareness in their target demo. AIDED awareness. Again, it's not that long ago that aided awareness in the target for pretty much ALL stations was well north of 80%.

With an infinite dial, word of mouth can only get you so far. But you are no longer going to reach a commercially viable place depending on word of mouth. Just as radio cuts its external marketing budgets farther, the non-marketing strategy is failing worse than ever.