Our resident imaging expert Rich Van Slyke looks at ways your station’s imaging can make an emotional imprint on listeners. In this week’s Programming To Win column, Van Slyke gives six different tips (complete with audio examples!) for injecting more emotion into your imaging.
By Rich Van Slyke
Rich Van Slyke
Have you ever been listening to your radio station and heard a great sweeper right into a song you love? Did you get a great feeling that made you proud and put a big smile on your face? THAT, my friend, is an Emotional Reaction, and it’s what million dollar ad agencies, movie directors, and recording artists strive for everyday. Because if you cause an emotional reaction, people will like you, remember you and come back to you. I’ll bet after hearing that sweeper and song on your station, you couldn’t wait to hear the next one. It was a good feeling, and you wanted more!
Getting people to remember us and come back to listening to us is the goal of radio imaging. Emotion creates more powerful lasting memories, and it’s a great idea to inject emotion into your imaging. Most everybody understands the importance of straight positioning statements. “Your Station for Today’s Best Music” or “The Classic Hits Station” It’s critical to define who you are, and keep repeating it. But after a while, the same message over and over becomes wallpaper. You stop noticing. Unless you hear something different that touches you. Radio has the power to touch people in an emotional way. It’s one of the main reasons people listen to us, instead of digital jukeboxes. As Fred Jacobs said in his recent Programming To Win: “We know that many, many people are not living the lives they dreamed about. Many hopes and dreams have been dashed. As the data suggests, for significant portions of the listening audience, improving their emotional well-being is something that radio can uniquely provide.”
Hear are six tips (with audio examples) for injecting Emotion into your imaging:
Go Forward – Create imagers that celebrate and tease the music. It’s like good foreplay. Refer to your music as the most important thing in life. Equal to food, sleep or sex. Use emotions that express joy, happiness, pleasure, love. Even make jokes about how potent it is. Here’s a few sweepers for classic rock WCSX in Detroit. Click here to listen:
They go beyond simply stating the positioning statement. PD Brent Alberts explains: Imaging is almost more important than the music. Most stations play much of the same library for extended lengths of time, our imaging expresses the stationality and keeps the tunes sounding fresh. We produce over 100 pieces of imaging every month. We don’t let anything become wallpaper. I have always been fairly good at writing strategic imaging, since coming to Detroit I am learning how important emotional triggers and forward momentum are. I love it when we produce a piece that catches the listeners attention, draws them in, builds up to a climax then we hit with a strong up-tempo song. When you feel that chill go down your spine and you want to go “Hell Yes!”… you know you’ve connected. Forward momentum engages the listener, and makes it hard to turn the station off.
Go Local – Think of the playground or park where you grew up. Does it bring a good feeling to remember it? Yes! We love things that are local, in our town, meaningful in our lives. Like the radio station we grew up with. Ditch is the APD/Afternoon Host at classic rock WEGR Memphis. He wrote these sweepers about Memphis landmarks the locals love!
Ditch explains: Rock 103 has been around forever and has had a dominating history, but over the last few years, that heritage has been challenged. So I wrote these to strike at some very specific landmarks and features of Memphis neighborhoods. From the historical peanut shop (the nuts at 24 South Main) to the smoke shop (the butts at Poplar and Mendenhal), these are places that have been here as long or longer than the radio station. “From the artists in midtown, to the cougars in Germantown” …if you live here, you know exactly where those places are. Our whole, “we’re back” message is part of a bigger campaign that coincides with boards and TV. CC has brought in local live talent again and the station is alive again. The “round here” liners are even more of a local poke. “round here, you remember when the new bridge was actually new”. Everyone in in Memphis stills refers to the I-40 bridge as the “new bridge”. It was actually built and opened in 1973. Now THAT’S an emotional connection.
Get Passion – When you talk about the best concert you’ve ever seen, do you get a little emotional? I sure hope so. Does that lead to funny stories about your concert adventures? Yes it does. So take those stories and experiences and turn them into statements about loving your music and your radio station. Listen to these examples from Production Vault Classic Rock:
The genius writer/producers at Production Vault Classic Rock go for these emotional triggers. ke “Flounder” Daly likes funny passion. “I think it’s important to connect with the audience without wasting their time. People are inundated constantly with messages from all sides, so just make sure yours isn’t one of the annoying ones. If you have a passion for the product, it will come through in your imaging. Victor Lisle goes for meaningful passion. The world can take away my job, my house, and my confidence. But they can’t take away my music. My music is bundled with memories that take me back to my teens, my first girlfriend, my first car, my first job, my first house…..when the world was or wasn’t bringing me down. Make me hear that music like I’m hearing it for the first time….again. Tell me a relatable story or something new about that classic song. We’ve heard these songs before. The trick is to weave “me” in these songs I know by heart. Be passionate about the music with imaging, that not only respects the music, but more importantly…..respects the listener. Bob Coates goes for humor: Laughter is like an instant vacation. And next to medicine, it’s the best medicine.
Get Goofy – Sports talk radio is full of emotions. But often the imaging is dry. Yet the world of sports is full of emotion. Humor. Drama. Outrage. It’s all there. Waiting for you to incorporate in your imaging. At KXTG Portland, Director of Programming Scott Mahalick, Executive Producer Benard Bokenyi, and Production Director Bryan Griggs use plenty of humor and a little drama to create an emotional reaction in their imaging. Click here to listen:
Bryan Griggs: “Radio is FUN…it was always meant to be that way and when my platform is the theater in my listeners mind, I have no boundaries on the fun I can burst into. I can have FUN in my imaging but I must keep the quality and message memorable to the listener! I am all about making things POP and keeping them TIGHT and smooth! You hear too much imaging these days that is just slapped together in 5 minutes and it’s on the air. I take pride in my product and I want EACH piece I do to make a mark in my listeners mind! When that happens, they come back for more and that’s what keeps us on the air every day!” Bernard Bokenyi likes a multi-layered approach. Our new imaging has brought a punch of energy to what we do. Too often sports talk radio stations don’t pay enough attention to imaging. This allows us to bring personality to all of our day parts, from mornings with Chad Doing to afternoons with John Canzano.”
Scott Mahalick: “Our production and programming team is keyed in on connecting emotionally with our audience. Any time we can make someone laugh ,cry or feel something, we have brand bonding at level that transcends most other media.
Spoof TV – Want to really push the edge of branding your radio station? Take a hot TV commercial and parody it into a promo. Check this out from Active Rock KTUX in Shreveport LA, written by Brand Manager Paul Cannell.
Paul Cannell: Tapping into pop culture or an already existing TV/movie icon makes The Old Spice Guy/Mayhem/The Most Interesting Man in the World a part of YOUR radio station. If you do it right, every time that commercial airs during Sunday Night Football…the listener thinks of your station. And smiles. Maybe even laughs out loud. And has to tell everybody in the room about your ‘version’. When your promos start showing up in your Top Ten Requests, you know you’re on to something…
Go for Drama and Surprise with Humor – One of the best ways to introduce emotion is to start off a promo with a very dramatic line, then turn it funny. Surprise! Silly is ok. The only no-no is to be boring. And if you can make fun of something local, that’s a grand slam. Listen to these from WBIG Washington DC:
BIG 100.3 Creative Services Director Joshua Cunningham: Years ago I read something along the lines of – “Bad art moves no one. Good art moves some. Great art moves most.” Every business has a product or service, and in radio we are in the business of moving people. Our ‘product’ is compelling and intriguing content that keeps the listener engaged and coming back for more. Sure, we make money off of advertising, yet without any sort of emotional connection, our airtime has no value. I believe this is something our industry forgot for a long time, yet we’re slowly relearning and reapplying these facts. So I highly suggest to anyone attempting to ‘brand’ a station to stop looking at modern marketing science and analytics, and instead to study Shakespeare, Dr. Seuss, Shel Silverstein, Bill Hicks, and Rumi. And all of the authors, poets, musicians, thinkers, comedians, and actors who have moved the masses and influenced us in ways that are not able to be measured. Ethereal tricksters of love, passion, heartbreak, confusion, joy, absurdity, and disdain. For without the broad understanding of the abstract nature that emotions play in the human condition, how will YOU ever be able to talk with your audience?
Rich Van Slyke does voiceovers for WBIG Washington, WCSX Detroit, KXTG Portland, KISS San Antonio, WGRD Grand Rapids, WRIT Milwaukee, KCFX Kansas City, KDFO Bakersfield, WEGR Memphis, WZEW Mobile, WKQZ Saginaw, KIGL Fayetteville, WKZQ Myrtle Beach, WTMM Albany, KZOZ San Luis Obispo, KQWB Fargo, KTUX Shreveport, KZND Anchorage, WIXO Peoria, WSFM Wilmington, KKPL Fort Collins, WRZK Tri-Cities, XFM Nairobi, and the new Production Vault Classic Rock. www.richvanslyke.com 770.962.4788 richvs@bellsouth.net
