Are You Sending the Wrong Message?

N/T Consultant Holland Cooke says he  fears that station promos have the potential to frighten advertisers and listeners. How:

• What Arbitron calls "horizontal maintenance" is the ballgame. Listen same-time-day-to-day. If you listen a lot lately, you're hearing Rush/Sean/Beck strain to rise-above-the-cacophony, and compete in-an-era when people-line-up-for a new iPhone and have-a-conversation-with-their-wired/wireless-dashboard, etc. The gloom-and-doom I’m hearing in promos is relentless.
• Radio is a reach-and-frequency machine. Properly-exposed promos can make the-whole-station sound unduly negative.

Two unintended consequences:

• TSL erosion. Gloom-and-doom gets old.
• Advertisers are hearing the consistent message that the-world-is-going-to-hell...thus the inference that consumers will hunker-down. So why bother advertising, at least for now? Ugh.

Recommendation: DO continue to cull Rush/Sean/Beck bites for promos. Just be more selective. It'll take longer to find amusing sound bites, but shoot for clips-that'd-make-the-listener-chuckle...rather than crouch-in-the-fetal-position.

Bottom line: Radio is powerful. Let's be careful that we're not using our clout to send-the-wrong-message.
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