Surprise!

This Harvard Business Review article isn’t specifically about Radio, but I think it could be.

Titled ‘You Can’t Analyze Your Way To Growth’ (by Roger Martin), it opens like this:

“The biggest enemy of top line growth is analysis…that in turn becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.”

“The fundamental reason is that analysis of data is all about the past. Data analysis crunches the past and extrapolates it into the future. And the past does not include opportunities that exist but have not yet happened.”

“So analysis conspicuously excludes ways to serve customers that have not been tried or imagined or ways to turn non-customers into customers.”

If Radio simply redirected 20% of what they now pay Arbitron to look backwards, and used it to fund effective marketing, or reduce commercial clutter, we’d be so much better off.

Can I hear an Amen!?