Katz Media Group division Katz Marketing Solutions was founded about two years ago, with a mission to develop new ad business and keep radio advertising strong. Industry sales veteran Bob McCurdy leads Katz Marketing Solutions and recently spoke to FMQB about his division’s close relationship with radio and some of the issues facing the industry today.
Bob McCurdy
By Joey Odorisio
Bob McCurdy has spent over three decades in the radio sales realm, and has been a part of Katz Media Group since 1980. When the company launched its Katz Marketing Solutions division two years ago, McCurdy moved from his position as President ofClear Channel Radio Sales to head up the new Katz division. McCurdy recently took some time to chat with FMQB about Katz Marketing’s objectives and its goal to keep radio front and center in the minds of the ad industry.
What are the origins of Katz Marketing Solutions and how does it differ from the other divisions of Katz?
Katz Marketing Solutions was started about two years ago, primarily due to the fact that Katz and Clear Channel combined represented 95 percent of the industry’s national dollars. We felt it was a good time to collectively work together approaching advertisers and saying to them, “We’re more interested in making sure radio works for you than we are in which stations you chose.” We all benefit when the industry grows. We wanted to approach agencies and advertisers with creative concepts to move their business forward, and we’ve done a pretty good job of that so far. The other part of what we’ve done was taking it upon ourselves to make sure we do everything within our power to protect the current spend in the radio business. We’re really tasked with a two-fold challenge: developing new radio dollars, and in the course of developing business, protect what’s currently being spent.
How involved is Katz Marketing Solutions on the creative end of radio advertising?
In some ways we’re like a full service agency, in that we do have a creative department that’s comprised of four extremely talented people. They work hand-in-hand with our salespeople as they go out and talk to the different agencies and clients. This team has played a very large role in our success as they develop the concepts that really address what the marketer is trying to accomplish. Once the concept is approved and sold, we then turn it over to our activation team, which is comprised of eight terrific people. It is their responsibility to make sure we flawlessly execute whatever was agreed upon. So we have the creative arm, an activation arm and a sales arm all working together towards one common goal.
How has Katz Marketing Solutions been received so far in its first two years in existence?
Last year, we just about doubled what we did in our first year, so it was a pretty good year for us. This year we expect to generate double digit increases over 2010. In 2011, our relationships should be deeper and our expertise greater, which ultimately will lead to increased billing.
Can you describe Katz Marketing Solution’s relationship with radio?
It is our lives. We are totally consumed in the quest to effectively position radio and its assets. We represent over 4,000 stations and we take the development of dollars very seriously. We’re the only medium that can single-handedly deliver on-air, online, onsite and on-demand marketing solutions. Radio provides the best of social media. It is conversational like Facebook, intimate likeTwitter and provides the audacity of YouTube. It’s our mission to get out and educate agencies, as well as clients, about the value of radio. We worked with Nielsen to extract the audio data from their Video Consumer Mapping Study several years ago that still serves as the benchmark regarding radio’s position within the audio and media universe. It tells a terrific story for radio. We’ve also overseen some other studies and research that substantiates the fact that radio is incredibly vital to many millions of people. Our radio platform reaches about 240 million people each week, which is virtually the same number of people who tune to TV each week. Fifty percent more people tune in to terrestrial radio each week than visit Google, and 20 percent more tune in and use radio in one week than use the Internet in a month. It’s a medium that has been undersold and under-appreciated of late and we intend to change that.
There is definitely the perception in some circles about radio’s reach not being what it was.
That’s right, and it is wrong. I believe one of the reasons for this perception is that a lot of the planning and media decisions occur in New York where many in the advertising business take the subway to work. We say there is no “me” in “media,” meaning that you can’t project your media consumption patterns onto the rest of the United States. There are no subways in Louisville, Ft. Wayne, Cleveland, Columbus, Seattle, Denver and Pittsburgh where people commute in large numbers in cars and listen to a ton of radio. Radio is an incredibly important medium to these people and is deeply ingrained in their daily routines. Radio’s reach is over 90 percent in every demographic breakout. Television is not the only medium that can reach the masses. It’s a message we’re touting every day.
What lies ahead for Katz and for radio in 2011?
We’re working on ways to empirically substantiate that the medium does work, in the language national advertisers understand and embrace: intent, consideration, advocacy, unaided awareness and affinity. A medium that cannot substantiate its performance will remain an under-appreciated medium. We partnered with OTX and have conducted seven studies over the past six or seven months for various advertisers and metrically they’ve shown radio to be an incredibly effective medium. We have also begun providing creative diagnostics to advertisers suggesting ways in which their creative could become even more effective. Any medium is ultimately only as effective as the creative it airs, so it’s in our best interest to work with both the advertiser and their creative agency to develop more compelling radio creative. We know the radio medium delivers results and we are investing dollars to reconfirm this fact.
What have been some of the more interesting ad campaigns that Katz Marketing Solutions has worked on in the past few years?
We did a great program with Ford where we identified different venues for Ford Fiesta automobiles to be showcased across the Midwest. We created a very effective program for Honda, which had a Facebook tie-in. We also partnered with Starbucks on a very successful program, as well as working with NBC, Target and TJ Maxx on separate programs that all won industry awards.
How is the ad recovery going from your perspective? There was recently a Katz study about how radio ad revenue is starting to come around, but there’s still a long way to go, especially because the recession created such a large hole for radio to itself dig out of.
We’ve have some pretty good momentum. We’re starting to get some people to look at radio a little bit differently than they might have in the past. Good selling is never wasted. Historically, the radio industry has been largely absent from some of the decision making levels within the agency and with the advertiser, and we’re trying to change that. The longer we do it, the more effective we’ll be. We’ve got some good stuff up our sleeves that should make it a little bit easier for us to move forward and generate a greater appreciation of radio’s ability to move product.
I think the medium is extremely well positioned. If you go back ten years, everybody was talking about satellite at that time just as everybody’s talking about Pandora right now. When I first got in this business in the late ‘70s, we had automated FM stations. A lot of the Internet pureplays come across like the automated FMs of the late ‘70s. We believe these types of audio services are supplements and not substitutes to terrestrial radio and the research we’ve seen confirms this. People like convenience and radio is awfully convenient. People also like listening to other people sharing the same moment in time with a living, breathing human being. Radio provides people with the intimacy of a magazine but the trust of a friend. It is a terrific way to reach people on the go. You don’t need to put your life on hold to consume it. You still have the automobile, which is extremely important to radio and will continue to be for many, many years to come regardless of what is put in the dashboards. Radio broadcasters are aggressively improving their digital offerings. The increased penetration of smartphone will lead to more listening. [Clear Channel Chairman of Media & Entertainment Platforms] Robert Pittman recently came out saying Clear Channel is going to compete in the control variety and choice space. There’s a lot of good stuff going on within the radio industry right now. We firmly believe the best is yet to come.
[eQB Content by Joey Odorisio]
