Modern Rock WKRK/Cleveland PD Dom Nardella shares his views on marketing, imaging & staying off your listeners’ B.S. detectors. “What’s between the records really counts more now. With PPM, less talk breaks and keeping live chatter to a minimum, imaging is more important than ever now.”
Dom Nardella
Marketing, Imaging & Staying Off Your Listeners’ B*lls**t Detectors.
What’s between the records really counts more now. With PPM, less talk breaks and keeping live chatter to a minimum, imaging is more important than ever now. With doing what we do here for the last couple of years, I’ve gotten the hang of it! Give your station personality, edge and stand apart with imaging. It’s even more important here because I have no chatter. Jack stations kind of did it right because they developed that Jack attitude. We had no attitude or personality like that when we launched this. You learn from being a radio listener and identifying what gets old and then keeping it fresh. Contesting, marketing anyway you can.
Imaging-wise it really comes down to knowing your market and your demo. Know what your audience is going to put up with. They have really good bullshit detectors. Don’t B.S. them. “We’re as cool as your iPod” – no you’re not. Set a list of expectations and deliver on those. Don’t try to be too much. It doesn’t work.
The first time when we re-launched as K-Rock, we weren’t the “Cleveland” radio station. We would have been awesome in L.A. or San Diego, but people in Cleveland don’t know the third single from Siouxsie and the Banshees. They don’t care to hear Bloc Party 55 times a week. That’s what we were doing. It just wasn’t a station for this market. It was great for somewhere. Not here.
When we first started out, we put a little too much saccharin on our imaging, like “Heeeeyyy, this is what we do because YOU wanted us to.” Now it’s basically “This is what we do because this is what we do.” We don’t have DJs, we like music. We acknowledge sports, but unfortunately in this town that’s not always a good thing. But we do it with attitude and realism. We have Browns sweepers right now that say, “Wow. That was a looong season. Thank god it’s over.”
Chris Rollins is our voice guy and he is really the personality of the station. All of the imaging is dry. His voice is not produced at all; no processing on his voice, nothing. He really grew with us and has really become our “Jack”-like attitude, but not so snarky. I have liners that say “Hey, I’m Chris, the guy that talks between songs…” We’re not trying to hide the fact that we don’t have DJs. Chris is a perfect compliment to that.
Our marketing is totally street-level; like a band that is just starting out. The van is a big rolling billboard, so whenever there is anything going on downtown that’s attracting people – Browns games, Cavs games, etc. – the van is out there circling around. Any parade, walkathon, marathon – whatever it is, we’re there. We also have a great relationship with House Of Blues, whom we do “Cheap Date” concerts with. They market the crap out of them, we have them all over the air and attracts the exact audience that we want – music fans. We’ve had some huge, amazing shows; Passion Pit and Airborne Toxic Event sold out. Cage The Elephant was our first one and they came back around a second time and sold out 1200 tickets. People really know that we’re not going to give them crap. We’ve really built a brand here. Facebook and Twitter have also helped (without spamming our followers).
Again, our audience has really refined bullshit detectors. This was really evident at focus groups, in particular. They see right through those things. This generation has grown up with 8,000 distractions and options going on at the same time. They see right through you if you fake it or you’re overbearing.
