Richard Harker
by Richard Harker
The publication by Al Ries and Jack Trout of Positioning, the Battle for your Mind in 1981 was a water-shed event for radio. Until then, efforts to grow ratings were focused entirely on the on-air product. Programmers spent all their time making the product as good as it could be. Ries and Trout introduced radio to the notion that what we did on air wasn’t nearly as important as how we positioned the station in the minds of listeners. Our slogans were soon replaced with positioning statements. Taking on the competition meant repositioning them. We became less concerned about the product and more concerned with our on- and off-air marketing. And that’s how things have been now for two decades.
The reason radio embraced the notion of positioning was Arbitron and how it measured listening. Until Arbitron, most radio listening measurement was done by telephone. Phone coincidental surveys measured recent listening, generally what a person had listened to in the past day. Arbitron instead asked listeners to keep a week long diary of their listening. Arbitron’s competitors showed (and Arbitron now admits) that most diary keepers reconstruct their listening. They fill out the diary long after the listening has taken place.
Arbitron diary based ratings are therefore no more accurate than the memories of dairy keepers. And we know when it comes to radio listening, one’s memory is not very accurate. As evidence, take Arbitron’s oft repeated finding that the average diary keeper listens to less than three stations. Our research shows that most people listen to five or more stations, which means most diary keepers forget to write down at least two stations and probably more.
In an environment where ratings depend on participants remembering which stations they listened to days before, positioning becomes very important. Developing a position, that is, creating a mental picture of the station, helps the listener remember the station. This in turn increases the likelihood that it will be one of the few stations that get written down. Positioning is what cognitive scientists call a mnemonic. A mnemonic is anything that helps a person remember something. A radio station mnemonic might be a slogan (best mix of the ’60s, ’70s, and ’80s); a set of call letters that spell a meaningful word (Mix106); or a station mascot (a bumblebee logo for a station called B94).
As long as radio listening is measured by way of diaries, positioning will continue to be an important component of getting as much diary credit as possible. But what about PPM? Will positioning be just as important in a PPM world?
For many years Harker Research has conducted radio listening simulations so that we could observe how people listen to the radio. Even before Arbitron released its first PPM data we knew that listeners tune to more stations than the diary suggested, and that they spend relatively short periods of time listening to one station. We knew that there was much more “punching around” than the numbers showed. Consequently, it did not surprise us that PPM ratings showed that listeners tune to far more stations and spend far less time with each station than diary based ratings suggested.
It stands to reason. PPM is a passive device. It records exposure to whatever encoded audio it can detect, regardless of whether the PPM holder is aware that he or she is being exposed to it. A person may not know what he is listening to, but the PPM will treat the exposure as listening. So as a listener punches around in search of a traffic report, special song, or just to avoid commercials, the PPM will pick up at least some of the stations. (It will also pick up stations as the person walks past the stereos in Wall-Mart.) Snappy slogans or well crafted positioning statements serve little purpose in this ratings measurement environment.
The transition to PPM may usher in a renewed attention to the on-air product. Our industry may return to pre-Reis and Trout radio when programming was king. With fewer participants, higher cume and lower TSL of PPM, individual quarter-hours of listening become much more important. In a PPM world, keeping a listener just five minutes longer can have a significant impact on ratings. And a clever positioning statement won’t keep him another five minutes, compelling programming will.
We are entering a new period for programmers that is strangely like the early days of programming. In the old days before Arbitron, a programmer was glued to the radio. Every second of every hour was monitored and critiqued. Every break was treated like a ticking time bomb. Jocks scripted and practiced their breaks so that no seconds were wasted, every word counted. As we adapted to a diary world, the need for constant vigilance declined. What we did on the radio became far less important than what listeners thought we did on the radio. That all changes in a PPM world.
PPM market programmers need to quickly ramp up their attention to the product. Constantly monitoring the station and the competition, regular air-check critiques, and the like are activities that may be new to Program Directors that grew up in a business fixated on the writings of Reis and Trout, but these will be the new keys to winning. To be competitive, the temptation to assign one Program Director to several stations may have to end. When the quality of the product wasn’t all that important, one PD could oversee multiple stations. Today in a world where every break matters, Program Director consolidation may hurt not help the bottom line.
In PPM markets programmers will also discover that while PPM tells us more accurately what people are listening to, it does not tell us why. Vendors are quickly assembling products that claim to synchronize PPM minute by minute ratings to a station’s programming, but flaws and methodological problems within PPM make ratings shorter than an hour in length unreliable. To maximize TSL, programmers more than ever are going to need to use research to determine why people tune in and out. Programmers will need to focus on flow and how elements fit together, another throw-back to the 1970s.
Does that mean that positioning is now obsolete? Not quite. We still need to convince potential listeners to try us. Positioning is important in creating curiosity and sampling. For generating new listenership, positioning is just as important as ever. The difference is primarily one of priorities. In a diary world, programming took a back seat to marketing. In a PPM world, programming is back in the driver’s seat. We also have to keep in mind that many markets will continue to be measured using diaries. In these markets, positioning will remain center-stage in the battle for ratings. If you’re still measured with diaries, don’t put that bumblebee suit away quite yet.
Richard Harker is President of Harker Research, a company providing a wide range of research services to radio stations in North America and Europe. Twenty-years of research experience combined with Richard’s 15 years as a programmer and general manager helps Harker Research provide practical actionable solutions to ratings problems. Visit www.harkerresearch or contact Richard at (919) 954-8300.
