by Jim Kerr
The power of media today is that there are literally limitless ways to create a multimedia and interactive experience. I’ll outline one fairly basic radio example to get you going, but before I do that let’s look at some simple guidelines to keep in mind in when envisioning a truly unified and interactive brand experience: 1. Start with the on-air experience. 2. Think using multiple media. 3. Think interactive. 4. Leverage your listeners.
Start with the On-Air Experience
Every Web site will and should have content that extends the station brand and creates something new, but when focusing on brand integration, you have to start with that which the audience is most familiar — the on-air experience. In mobile and Internet terms, this means that you should focus on the elements that are already on the air or can be launched from the broadcast medium. We most often see this mistake made in terms of large-scale web initiatives that are launched in a vacuum, like a social networking site element that goes nowhere or a chat room that never has anyone taking part.
Think Using Multiple Media
The Internet involves not just audio, but video and words on the page, as well. And mobile literally encompasses people moving along the paths of their lives. To integrate these media and experiences you need to think in those terms. What can you do on the air in audio that translates to the visual or via the printed word? The visual is easy: Simply represent what you talk about in pictures and video. In his case it’s all about the execution. And don’t forget text. Text has fewer limits on time and depth, so translating from on-air to the Web requires creating more — more depth, more insight, more entertainment.
Think Interactive
The most fundamental difference between the one-to-many relationship of broadcast radio and the many-to-many relationship of the Internet is interactivity. When integrating broadcast and Internet it is critical that the listener be given a voice, to speak with the station and to speak with other listeners. All online initiatives should be looked at through the lens of allowing the active participation of the audience and the active response of the broadcast staff. This means active participation by the airstaff in things like chat rooms, blog conversations, and social network sections of your site.
But it also goes beyond that. You can’t go halfway in focusing this on the Web site. This is about integration. It makes no sense to give the listeners a voice online and to not have it represented on the air in some fashion. This can be as basic as the “listener hate email” that PD Sean Demery read over the air at KITS in San Francisco to having a listener song-of-the-week that is generated via an online music discovery section.
Leverage Your listeners
The final step of integrating the broadcast brand with online is nurturing your community of listeners online. When your airstaff participate in the community, sparks conversations, respond to questions, and generally just immerse themselves in the activity around the site, a strange thing starts to happen: The site starts to grow and thrive beyond them.
This is the power of an engaged community online: The listener community moves from reacting to interacting. The result is that the listeners start to talk amongst themselves, and — eventually — start spreading the word outside the community.
One Simple Example
Here is one simple example of how to integrate the broadcast with online and mobile. This is a simple contest around Valentine’s day for a Rock station: Which listener has the hottest wife / girlfriend / partner?
This, of course, starts on the radio broadcast with a talent bit. Perhaps the morning show starts talking about ugly rich guys with hot wives or sports stars with beautiful girlfriends. The bit would then conclude with an appeal for listeners to email in photos of their girlfriends and wives to see who has the best-looking partner. The next day, the jocks talk about how the response has been overwhelming, and that they are going to put the photos online so listeners can vote. They would also invite listeners to upload their photos if they hadn’t already done so via the station’s Web site.
The Webmaster would then put the photos received online and integrate them with a listener upload and voting mechanism. The ideal implementation (via a platform like KickApps) would work like this:
* All listeners who are members of the station’s Web community are able to upload a photo of their hot girlfriend or wife.
* As the photos come in, they are looked over by a station staffer, who approves it or deletes it based on whether it is objectionable or not.
* Once approved, the photo goes into the gallery of hot girlfriends / wives.
* Listeners can then vote on each photo from 1 to 5 or some similar mechanism.
* On the front page of the Web site, a box is embedded that keeps a real-time ranking of the top five photos with their scores.
* Any time a listener wants to see who is winning, they visit the site and see who is at the top of the list.
* When listeners upload a photo, they can opt into receiving text alerts when someone votes on their wife or partner.
Throughout the event, the morning show discusses what is going on. They call the person who has the number one vote-getter that morning, along with some of the challengers. They editorialize about who they have voted for and talk about the strengths and weaknesses of various challengers.
At the deadline, the winner is highlighted on the front page of the Web site and interviewed on the air. Perhaps the station makes her a station spokesmodel.
How is this powerful?
The first way this is powerful is that it provides a wealth of material for the show to talk about on the air, from the initial discussion to the follow-up calls and interviews while the contest is ongoing. The second way this is powerful is that it is highly engaging for the audience. Male listeners who don’t upload a photo can still vote, and they will keep coming back to the site to see if there are any new women uploaded that day.
Perhaps the most powerful aspect of this contest is that the voting is compiled in real time. When you combine the mobile alerts with the real-time voting, you have an incredible engine pushing site usage and user expansion. Think of a listener who uploads his wife’s photo to the site:
He’ll call all his friends to vote for his wife. If they aren’t members of the station site, they’ll have to join to vote. Let’s say that this fellow’s wife is in the top five, every time she gets a vote he’ll get a text message. He’ll immediately log on to see if she is moving up or moving down. Eventually, if she is close to winning or even close to the top five or top three, he’ll call all his family and friends to vote. She is most likely doing the same thing. Each of those people will not only be visiting the Web page, but they’ll have to join the station’s database.
In the end, you have an incredibly compelling contest that works great on the radio, works great on the website, and is all the more powerful because the two are working together.
Jim Kerr is Vice President of New Media at Pollack Media Group. Reach Jim at 214 324 9060 or Jim@pollackmedia.com.
