Jon Coleman, Founder, Coleman Insights

February 7, 2020

Jon Coleman

by Fred Deane

Jon Coleman began his career in 1978 when he was working for Dallas-based Media Associates, a radio and TV research and consulting company. The growth of the company’s radio business was accelerating beyond its television business and given Jon’s inherent pronounced interest in radio, plus his vision for how to better serve radio clients, he decided to launch his own company.

Before you knew it, the research firm that Jon and his wife Linda started blossomed into Coleman Research, and Jon and his staff began to develop a portfolio of products and services. His goals were to provide quality data, while also providing clients with in-depth analysis.

The approach worked as the company grew substantially. Jon attracted former executives Pierre Bouvard and Chris Ackerman and current President Warren Kurtzman, and they began to establish one of the radio research industry’s leading teams. During this period, the company opened its office in Hamburg, Germany from which John Mönninghoff began to build Coleman’s European radio research business.

In 2000, the name of the company was changed to Coleman Insights, to better reflect the benefits the company delivers to its clients. Further growth ensued with the addition of John Boyne to the executive team and the acquisition of mediaEKG in 2009, which resulted in Sam Milkman also joining the company.

Today Coleman Insights reflects Jon’s vision to be much more than a media research company. Through its work with hundreds of radio stations in more than a dozen countries, Coleman Insights shares with its clients a vast amount of diverse learned experiences that its accomplished executive team has acquired over decades.

How has your overall philosophy changed over the years about how radio should be dealing with the micro and macro competitive challenges going forward?
The available audio media may have changed, but the psychological needs and motivations of people have not. We continue learning new things about audio consumer behavior and apply them to our understanding of how to compete against other radio stations and other media. However, we are still a consumer-driven business that seeks to solve problems by listening to consumers. That approach allows us to evolve our thinking at a pace commensurate with changes in the marketplace. Consumers always tell us when we are wrong, which helps prevent us from getting stuck in our ways.
          That said, this does not mean that radio can or should continue to program itself or communicate with potential listeners in the same ways that it did five, ten, or twenty years ago. Listeners’ perceptions and uses of radio have changed, and radio needs to adapt. Radio more than ever needs to focus on its unique position in the media landscape and let go of some things that are no longer valued by listeners.
We use a device called the Image Pyramid^SM that measures why people listen to radio in general and to specific radio stations to drive their decision making. We believe the Image Pyramid is the best model even if what consumers want from radio and how radio will compete changes. We recognize that an individual station’s programming or Image Pyramid will evolve as conditions change. Research done properly and regularly and the Image Pyramid model, allows companies to monitor where a station is in its evolution. 

Regarding relevancy and priority in the lives of consumers, what should be first and foremost in the medium’s mindset regarding these issues of the day?
Relevancy is a good word because it is exactly what radio needs to think about. What is relevant to the consumer? Relevancy means offering content that is meaningful to a listener’s life. Music is part of it, but relevant entertainment offers stations a big palette from which to do its painting. A concern of many clients is how to attract and develop content makers to the medium who know what is relevant to today’s consumer. That should be a very important part of the mindset for today’s radio owners.

How advisable is it for the medium to cast aside some traditional “best practices” and craft a new set of practices that challenge the norm and dare to be different?
This is a great, but difficult question. I think it is paramount that radio innovates and evolves with the times but without jettisoning all best practices. If radio moves too slowly, it will be a problem because it will lose its relevancy. If it moves too quickly, it won’t be economically viable today.
Radio can be different but within the framework of best practices. You can be daring and use best practices at the same time.
One area in which I think the industry can be daring is in developing new formats­­, formats that may not have fit the market a few years ago. I also think there can and should be more programming innovation in the ways we present our formats. We have recommended to large companies to take some strategy-based best practice risks in markets and situations where there is little to lose and much to gain. There has to be new ideas for formats that are not being served right now. There are a few in the incubation stage that I am familiar with, but have not hit the airwaves just yet.
One of the issues with being daring is that radio is a business. If radio were not a business based on selling advertising, based on the size of an audience, the industry could be more daring in programming. In the current environment, one needs to be daring in ways that don’t undermine the “in-the-moment listening experience.” Stations need to make noise and be noticed but in ways that don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater.
          I would say becoming an off-air marketing machine is a very good way to be daring and make an impression and build your audience, but without hurting your ratings in the short term. Being daring on-air can be a very dangerous pursuit. One should think about how to capture a listener’s attention in social media, local press and word of mouth, but not always on the air. This type of off-air communication used to be a forte of radio, but nowadays, I am not so sure. This off-air communication is where a station can make an impression and build a reputation. 

If you were developing today’s new model of terrestrial radio’s paradigm, what would it look like?
I think we first have to make one assumption and that is there will be a need for “free” advertiser supported programming. I would start there and figure out how to be successful given that need, but within competitive circumstances. So, if we were starting today, the model would include far fewer commercials. People unwilling to pay for subscription music services will seek out free advertiser-supported options, and would be in a better position to capture that audience. Because there would be fewer commercials and therefore shorter spot breaks, we would charge more. The willingness to pay for digital services would dissipate if there were good free offerings. Radio can be one of those.
          Also, we should put a higher value on ensuring commercials have the best opportunity to be successful. That means choosing better clients and valuing things like copywriting and production value. That sounds crazy right now, but in a low commercial environment it would not be.

Has radio in general leaned too heavily on national programming, out of market voice-tracking, and national contesting to its detriment of local engagement of these critical areas?
The answer to this question is, “it depends.” Our research tells us that local is very important to radio, but not all things local are of equal value. Research has helped many companies determine which local things are valuable and should be maintained, defended and even grown and which things can be done just as well through national programming.
A couple of examples might help. Generally, local personality can be extremely beneficial, but it has to be compelling. Not everything a local DJ does is considered important or entertaining local content by consumers. If deciding between a local personality and a national show, make sure the local show is compelling, if it is not, the entertainment of a national show may very well trump local.
Music is an area where localness is also very important. However, this does not necessarily mean local execution but rather locally driven design. By design, I mean that the music is researched locally, including both strategic format research and library testing, and based on the history of the market and the current market format mapping. I think it will be hard in smaller markets to have experienced well-trained music directors so it may evolve in this way even more than it has already. Also, in some markets this model will be the only way to go because of the economics of radio down the road.

We are in a data-driven culture where analytics apply to every industry. Given your background in research, how can the medium optimize its use of sound analytics while avoiding paralysis by analysis?
We strongly believe in analysis and analytics. That is the basis of our business. Recently, we have been talking to our clients about the need for more analysis, not less, as they navigate the media landscape. We are big fans of Daniel Kahneman’s book “Thinking Fast and Slow,” which addresses the difficulties of quick, data-less, intuitive problem-solving. Kahneman calls for people/companies/organizations to try and slow down, not speed up the decision-making process. Why? Because without analysis and slow/rational problem solving, the odds are greater that your intuitive decisions will be wrong.
          As a side note, I do believe that Thinking Slow (meaning taking time to get data and analyzing it) is an even greater part of our approach than ever. Years ago, an intuitive decision to change a radio format could fail, but that failure might only cost a few million dollars. Today an intuitive failure could devastate a whole company. A company that abandons the current radio paradigm or discards best practices in the wrong way or at the wrong time, could damage itself far more and for longer than a flawed intuitive format decision it might have made in 2005.
A problem with analytics is that it can sometimes be hard to interpret. Ratings can wobble a lot and still be very “accurate.” We say that just because you get new data all the time, it does not mean you should react to every new number.  Part of slowing down your thinking is waiting until you have enough data to be certain that your analytics are on point. 

As you look back a decade ago to your tips on PPM, what is still applicable today from those tips, and what new advice of guidance can you offer about PPM’s current efficacy?
For the most part, the rules of PPM have stayed true to our first learnings on this topic. I just went and looked at our piece on the rules of how to program to PPM, which, as you note, we first offered ten years ago and reprised a year ago. It all holds today.
Two things I think are particularly pertinent today. First to root your programming in a coherent strategic plan. You can’t win in PPM if you don’t have a unique format that has a legitimate place in your market. All the PPM tactics in the world won’t make up for not having a strategy. The second thing is not to be afraid of causing your audience to react emotionally, even if sometimes (not all the time!) the emotional reaction undermines in-the moment-listening. People affiliate with brands that create an emotional attachment (the right emotion for your format).  In the early days of PPM, the industry sterilized formats to the point that they never tweaked the emotions of their listeners. Where radio ends up in this category is a story not yet fully written. See all 10 of our Top 10 PPM do’s and don’t’s here: https://colemaninsights.com/coleman-insights-blog/10-ppm-tips-for-program-directors-10-years-later

If you were to impart advice to young programmers in the business and those aspiring to gain a career in radio, what would it be?
Study psychology, science, marketing and math. Immerse yourself in empirical research, rational thinking, problem-solving, and the how’s and why’s of human behavior. Volunteer at a radio station for hands-on learning and for building a resume. When given the opportunity, offer fresh, new, bold ideas rather than accepting the status quo. It is innovation from young programmers that will help move the medium forward.