Ch-Ch-Cha-Changes

Face the strange

 

If you’re involved in running or promoting radio stations, or you’re just a thinker, you should know about Bernadette Jiwa.

Here’s a bit of her wisdom from a recent post:

We have come to believe the success of our companies or causes is dependent on marketing that convinces people to change their story.”

“The chances of changing someone’s mind is more unlikely than we realize. What we must do instead of trying to alter a prospective customer’s version of the truth, is build on the story they already tell themselves about who they are and what they believe.”

If politics in America has done nothing else useful in the last decade or two, at least it’s proof that the “chances of changing someone’s mind is more unlikely than we realize.”

We are not driven by logic and yet we try to use logic to change minds.

In actual fact, we search for logic that supports what we feel. Feeling always comes first. Trump understands this better than any other modern-day politician.

So what will I hear today, when I’m listening to your station, that makes me feel you and I are more than sympatico, that you reflect back to me all the things I believe about myself, the kind of person I am?

What content will you offer that makes me feel so strongly it shifts the way I’ve thought about listening to your station?

What will you say that shows a deep understanding of her life, that makes him feel you believe what he believes?

Music is not exclusive to your station anymore.

I don’t think it’s liners. Face it, liners were created to shut jocks up, to hide their lack of talent, not to showcase it.

So, what other options do you have?

How about hiring really talented people, people who are interesting, who lead interesting lives outside your studios, who are empathic and connected throughout your community, who can use words to paint pictures in your mind, who are aurally charismatic?

How about hiring those people, and then letting them do what you hired them to do: connect with listeners on an emotional level every time they open the mic?

That would be the best marketing your station could ever do.