The President of Burger King is doing something downright impressive! Tom Curtis has set up a direct line for BK customers and plans to spend FOUR hours a day taking phone calls and responding to texts, looking for ways to elevate the customer experience.
Most company officials for fast food companies usually schedule regular visits to various stores as part of their customer engagement, but this guy is providing a direct line to said customers. I can’t help but think about all the information he will get and how it will improve someone’s visit to a Burger King.
And that’s when it hit me: if a global fast-food brand sees this kind of value in direct, unfiltered customer conversations, why does the idea feel so radical for radio?
This may be the cheapest, most revealing audience research radio could ever do, and I’m betting almost no one would dare try it. Why is that? Are you nervous about the time commitment? This is the guy who runs Burger King, a brand with more than 19,700 restaurants in over 120 countries and US territories. I’m betting that’s a few more locations than you have in your multi-station cluster. Are you afraid of what you might get back? Too many commercials; same songs over and over, etc? Or might you fear that you’ll hear how disconnected you REALLY are from the listeners?
Burger King is planning on recording the calls for two weeks to use them for their digital marketing campaign. There you go! Promo content for the station, if you do this.
Curtis promises to continue after the two weeks for as long as needed. I KNOW there is a radio exec reading this right now who has at least considered something like this, so why not give it a shot? Yes, there are risks. But this is also a chance for your station to stand out by doing something bold; something real.
Incorporate your staff to gather and interpret the information and formulate a plan moving forward: sales, programming, marketing, all of it. It might even reveal why the billboard or social media ads didn’t work in the first place. I can almost guarantee you’ll get a lot of the answers you’ve been looking for that you won’t be able to get with conventional research.
It’s your big chance to have direct contact with your listeners via an actual conversation. You hear them, they hear you, and that is what it’s all about, correct? A win-win!
P.S. Tom Curtis’s number is 305-874-0520. Imagine if your listeners had your number — and you actually answered.
