How To Make The Morning Drive Less Painful
When my wife took a
new job in Newark, NJ recently, I started driving in with her and then taking
the train into Manhattan from Newark Penn Station. This has awarded us some
decent quality time together, despite the fact that we are usually both slightly
grumpy as we sit in traffic. There is one thing on the radio that never fails to make us laugh, and
that’s the Scott & Todd morning show on New York’s 95.5 PLJ. Well, as of
Monday, it’s The Todd Show now. Todd’s personality is our favorite, but we were very
sad to see Scott retire.
Despite the fact that
we love the show so much, we find ourselves switching the channel at times to Elvis
Duran or anything else. Why? The
commercials are so incredibly painful; who wants to spend their precious downtime listening to them? From time to time Scott & Todd have done live
reads, or pre-recorded spots, and we will typically listen to those. But they
are relatively boring as well.
I come from the print
and digital publishing business, where sponsored content – or native
advertising – is all the rage. With sponsored articles, an advertiser is able
to join the conversation in a natural way, as opposed to a banner ad or
something else that is meant to interrupt the experience. Branded content has
also been popping up more and more on TV recently, but it’s not something that
radio programs are offering to their partners. Every once in awhile you might
hear the traffic reporter say something along the lines of, "This traffic report
is brought to you by Auto Zone, get in the zone,” but that’s about
it. I can't help to imagine the opportunities for branded content on the
radio.
Here are some ideas that would bring value to the morning drive:
1.) Get a brand to buy
an entire commercial break. How amazing would it be to hear the morning radio
show host say, “We are not going to a commercial break, thanks to our friends
at Starbucks we are going to have a coffee break. In the studio with us is a
team of baristas to give a quick update on what’s going on at your neighborhood
Starbucks.”
2.) Allow a brand to sponsor
a specific segment. For instance, “Today’s phone scam is presented by Geico, 15
minutes could save you 15 percent or more on your car insurance. We are going
to call Gloria, her husband let us know that on her way to work yesterday
someone rear-ended her. We are going to pretend to be the guy’s insurance
company – True Blue Auto Insurance. Yeah, it’s no Geico.”
3.) Let a brand
sponsor an original segment. You could record a day in the life of the host, or
create a new interview series with famous athletes or even little league
baseball players, or have an open mic segment for listeners - America’s got
talent via the radio. It would be a way for a brand to align themselves with
content that they know their target would find interesting.
Local radio is facing
steep competition from streaming services, but at the same time if they have a
good enough product they can use the technology to their advantage by picking up a global listener following.
In this
multi-platform, always-on world we are living in, radio is one of the few
mediums left where you nearly have someone’s full attention. Radio executives, if you are reading this, I don't expect you to follow all of my advice, but please try to be a little more
creative when it comes to advertising. And stop playing crap music!
