Do What You Do Best…RADIO!

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Those are the words of John Fixx, Analyst/Manager for Procter & Gamble North America (pictured here with Nielsen’s Brad Kelly and Lana Busignani). Fixx is someone everyone in radio should get to know. He calls himself the voice of reason at P&G and he is a huge advocate for radio inside that massive company, and here’s why: He knows radio works. And that’s pretty good news being that he works for a company which has 20 brands that do more than $1 billion in sales every year.

Fixx’s goal is to reach a large part of America so he needs massive reach with some frequency. His answer to that is radio. “With 93% of the population listening, that’s the scale I need. Our brands are struggling to afford the reach they want — TV gets very expensive. They can’t get the reach they want with TV. The reason I want to talk to you (radio) is because you can reach more consumers than anyone.”

What does Fixx say is appealing about radio? “I listen to a lot of radio. I don’t want to be my own DJ. I depend on the radio and I don’t think I’m unique.” Fixx added that consistency is everything. “Digital is not consistent. There are banner ads, and targeted ads, and streaming, etc. I want to talk to everyone. I was astounded by all the data radio put out. You all got steamrolled by digital. You are selling water in the desert. You have what I want.”

And what Fixx wants from radio is to hear radio people talk to him about radio, not digital. He loves the fact that radio reaches 93% of Americans every week. He told the story of a meeting with a large radio group. They pitched him for 50 minutes about everything, he says, radio doesn’t do. The last 10 minutes were about radio. He wants you talking to him about your bread and butter. He wants to provide good creative to the right audience at the right time.

If you can’t turn a testimonial like this from a company like from Proctor & Gamble into more sales, you may want to consider another line of work.

Kudos to Nielsen’s Brad Kelly for bringing John Fixx to the Radio Show in Austin. Let’s just hope Fixx stays with P&G for a long time to come so he can keep telling his version of radio’s story.

4 COMMENTS

  1. Radio, to continue the discussion, has been clinging to the skirts of its own reach and the influence it has been able to maintain – without any improvements to its audience services and certainly not because of any improvements to its advertiser services.

    In other words: Radio has been getting off “lucky” because of its local reaches and because of the innate power of an electronic medium. The more astute, major advertisers who are successfully using radio have had to figure out the benefits for themselves.

    Otherwise, Radio’s cupboard has been bare for a very long time – so long that most of the ownership and management group are completely unaware of how high are the actual potentials of this medium.

  2. There is an (apparently widely-accepted) assumption here that Radio knows what it is doing!
    To the contrary, Radio has been under the ether for decades and, as a result, has been running on bluster, bafflegab and bullshit for that same period.
    Radio has yet to figure out how to approach its audiences or how to prepare more influential commercial content.
    Radio is so out of the loop, it can’t even have discussions on these matters – not amongst themselves and not with outside resources.
    Although forcing greater sales numbers is so very important, it does nothing to move the medium toward greater efficiencies or better effects.

    • So our choice is to believe you, or an actual major advertiser, who has millions of dollars to spend. I choose to believe the guy with the money. In fact, I can personally attest that P&G is putting its money where its mouth is, because they just made a buy with me. Thanks P&G!

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