For years, radio executives have been saying “we need to tell a better story” in order to drive more revenue to the industry from more big-brand advertisers. Kudos to RAB CEO Erica Farber and her team for bringing representatives from Comcast Cable to the 2017 Radio Show. They told a pretty darn good story about the power of radio and the success they are seeing from the medium. And as every sales manager in the industry says, there’s nothing better than a testimonial. This was a testimonial on an epic scale.
Comcast loves radio and we found out exactly why Thursday morning at the Advertiser Breakfast. Pankaj Kumar is the Vice President for Media Sciences at Comcast Media, Larry Scweber is the Division Vice President of Marketing & Communications for Comcast Media, and Kim Thompson is the Senior Vice President and Managing Director for Spark Foundry. They were met with thunderous applause on several occasions for what they said Thursday.
Kumar started off the Q&A session with RAB CEO Erica Farber by stating, “I’m glad to be here because radio is doing phenomenally well in our results. It’s an important medium. It performs well. It’s an important part of our media mix.”
Schweber told the crowd, “The power of radio being local is something I can’t get with anything else. We want to connect with listeners and we do it locally.” Larry spoke about the power of DJ endorsements, then played a soundbite of an endorsement from a sports station that he loved. And the reason he loved it was how the host went from content right into the live read. Larry said about the ad, “that is organic. That is real. I can’t get that from TV. That is the power of radio and why we need to keep investing in radio.”
The Comcast team was also impressed with how radio has meshed with social media. They said radio has expanded their reach by bringing in their social media channels, and that the beauty of radio is that it’s quick, organic, and expanding into social.
And perhaps most impressive was when they told the audience eight out of 10 Comcast customers tell them they learned about what Comcast was doing from listening to the radio.
