Monday, May 19, 2014 at 12:23 PM
Roy,I was reading one of your great articles about using radio, and there was a statistic how each of us might have 250 people that know us by our first name. And if 10% of them would tell their friends about us (or our product) that somehow influenced 450,000 people. I need some help with the math on that statistic. Can you help me? Thanks.Andrew P. McClureThe Exline Company
Mill Valley, CA
Friday, March 13, 2015
Andrew,
I was browsing through emails I haven’t yet answered when I stumbled across the question you asked me almost a year ago.
You may not even remember asking the question.
I’ve attached (below) the column I sent to the magazine. Take a look and you’ll see that I was referring to a tiny little station with only 18,000 weekly listeners. I also spoke of the fact that the average American moves through life with a rolling cohort of about 250 friends, relatives and co-workers. My assertion was that if an advertiser bought enough frequency (repetition) to become a household word among these 18,000 people – and that each of these 18,000 people mentioned that advertiser to just 10 percent of their 250 friends – the result would be 450,000 people reached through referral. 18,000 x 25 = 450,000
Hopefully, this solves the mystery for you.
I’m sorry it took me 10 months to respond.
Yours,
Roy H Williams
Radio Without Success Stories
It was a bizarre set of circumstances that caused me to succeed during my formative years as an account executive.
None of the business owners on whom I made sales calls had the money to buy any advertising beyond the radio schedule I sold them on my tiny little station. If my ads worked, I got the credit. If they didn’t work, I got the blame. I was never part of a media mix.
Let me qualify “tiny little station” for you. We had a (12+) weekly cume of 18,000 in a market of a million people. Our average quarter hour hovered between 500 and 800 persons.
I proposed 52-week schedules exclusively.
My theory was that 18,000 people each week were enough to make a big difference. But I didn’t pitch my audience as anyone’s “perfect target.” I’d say, “After a few months you’ll be a household word among 18,000 evangelists and ambassadors for your brand. And according to Joe Girard, the author of How to Sell Anything to Anybody, the average American has a ‘realm of association’ of 250 friends, neighbors, co-workers and family members that know them well enough to call them by their first name. If we impress my audience deeply enough that each of them mentions you to just 10 percent of their friends, that’s 450 thousand people. Don’t worry about who you’re reaching. Just rock their world with a message that’s absolutely worth repeating. Now what are we going to tell these 18,000 people that will rock their world?”
That wasn’t a sales pitch. I believed it with my whole heart.
The ads worked, my clients thrived and I got famous.
So why do I never see stories – not even in Radio Ink – about the success of businesses that buy no media other than radio?
I’ll suggest four possible answers to my own question and you tell me if you agree:
- Radio station account executives are being taught to pitch their audience as “the perfect target” for the advertiser. When the pitch to an advertiser revolves around whether or not your audience is “perfect,” the pressure will be squarely on your station to perform and deliver that “perfect audience,” regardless of how limp and pointless the advertiser’s message might be.
- Few people have the courage to pitch 52-week schedules anymore, so they take whatever handouts they can get. Most of these ‘handout’ schedules will deliver sufficient short-term frequency, but they fall short in critical ways: (A.) The product or service has a long selling cycle and the schedule isn’t long enough. It delivers frequency without consistency. Consistency is the frequency of the frequency. There are lots of things that just can’t be sold quickly, regardless of the advertiser’s argument that “someone out there is looking for this product right now. (B.) Products with short selling cycles – those things we’re always in the market to purchase – are being advertised in a fashion that is easily ignored. When is the last time an advertiser rocked your world?
- Those account executives who are creating huge success stories are keeping them secret for the same reasons I rarely publish my own successes: they don’t want their clients to be hassled. A number of years ago, I published the details of a sparkling success story about an advertiser who used radio to grow his modest business into a juggernaut with 30 times as much annual sales revenue. It only took a few years and we used radio exclusively. He was immediately swamped with phone calls from account executives across America asking him to help them pitch radio to their clients. One of them went so far as to say to him, “You owe it to radio. Look at what radio has done for you.” Needless to say, I haven’t made that mistake again.
- There are too few people in radio today that can conjure great creative. Sadly, most radio people don’t think it’s their job. The selling of radio seems to have gotten caught up in the data-frenzy created by the internet. Conversations seem to revolve around targets and metrics instead of offers and copy.
In the February 25, 2014, online version of Harvard Business Review you’ll find an article by Jake Sorofman and Andrew Frank called “What Data-Obsessed Marketers Don’t Understand.” These are the opening 2 paragraphs:
Big data has become the X factor of modern marketing, the hero of every marketer’s story. But it’s a promise at risk of letting you down. You may be thinking that data will magically turn bush-league marketing into a winning ‘Moneyball’ performance. But that’s an artifact of our big data obsession. Data, alone, isn’t what makes marketing move the needle for business.
Data can play a leading role in developing strategy and bringing precision to execution, but it does nothing — absolutely nothing — to stir motivation and create the desire that makes cash registers ring. Data is important, but it’s content that makes an emotional connection.
I think somebody needs to recruit Jake Sorofman and Andrew Frank into radio. These guys would make themselves and their employers a blistering fortune, and help thousands of businesses succeed who otherwise would not.
Their message: “It’s not about the numbers. It’s about the advertiser’s offer.”
Hallelujah.
Amen.
Roy H. Williams