Ruth Presslaff started her career in Affiliate Relations at United Stations, where she gained an understanding of how all aspects of radio fit together, creating The Media Gallery in the late-’80s, selling emerging listener outreach technologies to radio. As Presslaff gained tech savvy, she renamed the company Presslaff Interactive Revenue, working with newspapers, television and radio, including small, individually owned stations up to national clients like Clear Channel Media & Entertainment, developing business and promotional opportunities across all media platforms.
Ruth Presslaff
When Ruth Presslaff discovered radio during her college years in New Orleans, what drove her was the chance to share her favorite music with like-minded listeners. But after moving back to New York after college, Presslaff found herself working in Affiliate Relations at United Stations, where she had the opportunity to be involved with not only creating the content, but also selling it to affiliates while also selling the inventory to advertisers. The experience gave her an understanding of how all aspects of radio fit together, and culminating in her tenure as VP/Affiliate Relations. From there, it was a small leap to the opportunity to start her own company in the late-’80s, then called The Media Gallery, and learn just a little a bit about the technology of selling, which led her to where her renamed Presslaff Interactive Revenue is today, working with newspapers, television and radio, including small, individually owned stations up to national clients like Clear Channel Media & Entertainment. Sitting down recently withFMQB, Presslaff explained what she learned and how she has used it to develop business opportunities for clients across all media platforms.
How did a career on the talent side lead you to develop a business helping broadcast companies manage the revenue and Digital Media sides?
This is a really serious point that concerns me about the business. I had been at this college station for four years, including overseeing underwriting and sponsorships, so there certainly was an awareness of the finance side. When I worked at my first commercial station, you’d see there were carts that you played, but for a college kid who was really intent on the business, this is the holistic view of how radio worked: Talent was talent, sales was sales. There was no connection of the dots in terms of people out there selling spots. From there, I moved back to New York during a terrible recession, and all I wanted to do was anything in radio. So I got a job at a syndication company which led to another job with United Stations and that’s where I got an amazing perspective on the whole thing. We were creating shows – Country, AC, Top 40, and there were sales people who were selling the shows, and sales people who were selling network inventory, and I got to do all of it. I did affiliate relations in NY and DC, and I did network sales in Chicago, and got the whole big picture that anything for radio has got to benefit ratings and revenue, and that has kept me going through everything we do.
What drove you to develop Presslaff Interactive?
I’d like to tell you that this is the manifestation of a carefully crafted business plan, but this was really a matter of having an unusual network of almost every program director from almost every radio station in any rated market because of my affiliate background. When I left the company, I knew I had this really powerful network, and I knew I could sell. The question became if I should go to a local station and start working my way up or try hanging my own shingle. Steve Goldstein at Saga Communications put me together with Carl Barringer who had RadioWare at the time. Steve told me Carl had a great product, but needed help selling. I knew nothing about software or computers, but Carl is a terrific person, and he said, ”Here’s a computer – we’ll take it out of future earnings – and here are some 5¼ inch floppy discs and this is a music scheduling program that we have. When you want to talk to people about one or the other, you press M and you’ll get to the music programming, press R and get the research demo,” and that’s how I got into technology. Our slogan at that time was “Marketing To The Media.”
How did that lead to offering the services you offer today?
I was selling other people’s programs that all tended to have a technical bend, which led to creating a concept. We called it the Radiophone and it was interactive and allowed you take clutter off the air. You could have your listeners call in and press one for the concert line, press two to register for a contest, and it also was a way to build a data base, which was starting to become very interesting to me. I had gone from being a reseller to hiring my own programmer and now really starting to build my own business around technology, as well as my own technology. And over the years we were using that technology at a time when unemployment was down around five percent, so we crafted the system to work for classified ads, which was a very lucrative direction. We had television stations doing it, we had radio stations doing it, but I hated the project. What I really liked was what we were doing with data once we could start doing this online and start building what has become Date-e-base, which is a program for registering website visitors and doing contests and surveys. Listeners came in, they registered, you had the information and you could start looking at it. The evolution became just “this is exciting and this has huge potential. Let’s really mine this!” So I stopped doing every other product that wasn’t focused on database building.
Talk about how you help broadcast companies create synergy between their business and creative units.
There are no boundaries anymore. The opportunity for any media company – and it’s true for any company in any field – is the relationship they can create with their customers. So in radio, it’s the relationship they create with their listeners. And because there is now so much competition I can sit here and listen to all radio stations all around the country from my desk in L.A. The question is who your radio station is building a relationship with. You want to build it with people who you know already listen to you. We don’t want to cast the net so wide that we capture a Country listener because of one song that was played. But it’s so much more than just getting them to register and blasting them with emails every week or two.
That first step is an introduction to learn more: about the music they like, how they listen to the station, what their interests are. Then it’s an understanding from the station perspective that the more relevant you can be and the more you can speak to them, not only through a microphone but also via Facebook, Twitter and emails, the more you can build your relevancy.
Just talking about the emails for a second, those can be so different depending on which segment of your database you’re targeting. That’s where you can really build these relationships. Build your relevancy and build something that transcends what may end up becoming a vanilla or boring relationship with a Pandora or Spotify. That’s what turns it into a very vibrant relationship with the local radio station.
What I always get so excited about is having both the tools to help stations build that relationship and all these years of experience in terms of what works and what doesn’t in turning that relationship into relevancy, into listening appointments and ratings, while being able to aggregate those interests into an amazing revenue opportunity.
Some of your clients are individual stations, while some are part of large media companies. When working with stations in the larger groups, how do you maintain their individuality while keeping a cohesive national image?
We support what our companies are looking to achieve. We might have one relationship that’s very much a software relationship, and they just need the product to do, “a-b-c.” Great, here you go. Yet we have other relationships where they need a product as is, but really need help developing a database. They need to understand how to grow it, how to segment it and how to work with it. We provide different services for different clients depending on their different needs.
What are some of the more remarkable radio successes you’ve had, where a station had a good product, but they didn’t know how to quantify and then monetize it?
I’m thinking of one station where they had a pretty hefty database, but they just wanted to collect email addresses and permissions, and didn’t think they needed anything else. They brought us in because they realized they didn’t have any useable data, which meant we really had to shelve this group of thousands of people and start from scratch. We worked with them to craft a plan to build the database. We managed to completely rebuild it in a number of months and then take it beyond name, rank and serial number and help them take the data and pull it together to use it for sales.
One half of my company is always working on technology and the platform because we always have to be evolving, while the other half is working on the actual benefits you derive from using the platform, because you always have to be focused on using the data. We use the zip code information and how it can help you with sales. We look at information just in terms of what loyal listeners are saying they’re interested in from a station and how to use that to set up listening appointments and drive ratings. We show sales people the value of data and all the different options they can do with our specific platform, and how to use that in day to day sales. But we find that we are frequently the advocate for the data base within an organization; here’s what you need to learn, here’s how you can learn it, and here’s how you can use it to the benefit of ratings and revenue.
What are the most misused or undervalued capabilities or assets in the digital world?
I’ll speak to what I know in the digital realm and that’s the data. The major opportunity I see many broadcasters miss is the opportunity to dig deep into the database they’re building, which will allow them to really understand and monetize what they have. I am sure that data is the new currency. The value of Facebook is not in the ads they create, but in the information they are accruing. I know the last presidential election was won not only based on the “deep dive data” that both parties had, but how they used it. When I see any business believe that they are doing database marketing because they have an email address and can blast emails, and believe that is the culmination of the promotion, time and effort that they put into collecting this information, I believe it leaves a lot of money and opportunity on the table. Database marketing is more than an email that goes out to your database talking about all the wonderful things you’re doing on a weekly or bi-weekly basis.
What’s your approach to database marketing?
We educate our clients about the concept of email campaigns that are part of an overall strategy to understand listeners, to build that relationship with them, to accrue more information, analyze it and how to use it for a variety of goals. One other place we really see a lot of missed opportunity is in the sense that huge numbers are necessary in order for a program to work. However, the power of small numbers and the ability to move small groups of qualified prospects to a business is huge. The clients get it and the account executives don’t. There’s great opportunity within our business in understanding that if you get ten people to tell you what they’re interested in, you can fill in the blanks. Advertisers want to know that the money they’re spending is getting the clients they need and want, and data can drive that. So the difference in collecting data or collecting it, analyzing it and using it, is the difference between a Ferrari and a Lear jet. They’re both transportation but they’re used for different purposes, and they’ll take you to different places.
What is your vision on how all media can impact its respective localities in a world-view era?
We get the world view from a lot of world view curators. We can only get the local view from local view experts, and that’s what local media can be. I watch stations wisely give up early on the idea of out-CNN-ing CNN. Local stations just don’t have the resources to be the breaking news expert on national and international news. But they have local interactions not only with local music, but also have local experience with these national and international bands, and that’s what listeners are looking for from them. They want someone to humanize the music and artists for them; to make it interesting and relevant to them. I can get any of my favorite bands anywhere, but the local radio station’s personalities can make those bands real to me; that becomes the real story.
We have to remember that listeners actually start as people first, so other things that are going on in my community that aren’t music-related are still really important. It’s part of the whole listener/person. That flies in the face of PPM, but if you don’t do something that makes your station distinct, there are too many ways to replace you. But when you do something that makes your station distinct in how you illuminate the music for your listeners, that’s the “secret sauce.” It provides knowledge and interest far beyond what technology alone can provide.
[eQB Content By Jack Barton]
