(By Buzz Knight) We are living in an era where there are increasingly more challenges to build something new in the media landscape. Building a successful brand requires patience, discipline and courage.
Whether it be a radio station brand, personality brand or podcast brand getting to a position of market acceptance is never easy.
Once you arrive successfully in that position in the mind of your customer or listener it’s easy to get stagnant.
In order to stay relevant radio needs to be willing to look for fresh angles to find new listeners and engage with current listeners.
This is important for all facets of the business.
We all know the importance of creating and maintaining successful benchmarks but we also know there is an art to keeping an audience guessing.
Former boss Steve Goldstein used to push his programmers to consider moving benchmarks to different fixed times to expose the content to a different audience.
The artful ability to create a balance of disciplined planning with a dash of spontaneity is vital to keeping an audience engaged.
Brilliant programmers know how far to push that boundary in a way that allows for the edges to move ever so slightly while not creating audience dissatisfaction.
Fresh angles can play an important role for the sales end of your organization.
I remember a big agency person lamenting that they see the exact same look, feel and proposal points from a radio cluster every year when business is pitched.
When you hear dissatisfaction coming from the agency ranks it’s time to create some fresh angles from sales.
Habits and routines are important but it’s time to take a pledge on creating a pledge for fresh angles.
Be the “anti-stagnation station.”
Buzz Knight is the CEO of Buzz Knight Media and can be reached by e-mail at [email protected]
