Consumers Crave Open & Honest Relationships

Consumers Crave Open & Honest Relationships

by | May 19, 2020 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, ScLoHo's Collective Wisdom, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo

Last month I was cleaning out my email inbox and found an article from 2018 from Mediapost that I had been saving for the future.

Today is the future.

As much as things have changed this year, I’m sure you’ll agree that somethings have changed very little.

The Mediapost story is titled Boomers Crave Open, Honest Marketing and when I first read the story, I thought, not just Baby Boomers, but everyone craves honesty in the advertising and marketing they are exposed to.

First, let me share some quotes from this 2018 article:

Target. Equifax. Cambridge Analytica. Our system of voting.
It seems every day a new report comes out explaining how a major company has failed to protect our personal data or attempted to monetize it in an exploitative way.

While senior users make up only a fraction of all internet traffic, they are very concerned about their privacy. A 2017 poll by AARP found that 78% cite privacy as a major concern, while 84% fear having their personal information hacked or stolen. The boomer market is fearful about information security.

In recent weeks, the concerns about internet security have hit people of all ages.  The video conferencing company Zoom was discovered to have lax security measures and yes there have been multiple more companies that have had data breaches over the past couple of years.

Healthcare providers and financial corporations are moving away from person-centered customer interactions, automating as much as possible to save money.  In reaction to this trend, we find many boomers and seniors attempting to eschew digital interactions because it makes them feel safer. With the news blaring the pitfalls of Facebook, online credit scams, and major privacy concerns, it’s no wonder that this is a trend. But the modern world makes it hard for boomers to escape the clutches of marketers.

Nearly every boomer and senior has adopted the ubiquitous “membership card” for local grocers and other stores. Maybe they’ve even signed up for emails about upcoming deals. After all, who doesn’t love a sale?

Yet each of these contacts provides a way for a retailer to collect data about consumer preferences and interactions. Even the simple act of having a Facebook account causes this to happen.

The Covid-19 pandemic and stay-at-home orders really made it impossible for everyone to avoid the web.  So what is the solution to give all consumers, not just Baby Boomers and Seniors, what they really want, which is open and honest relationships with the companies they do business with?

In a word, Transparency.

Here’s my challenge to you.

What can you do to over communicate the stuff that your customers might feel uneasy about?

If you are a service business, how about upfront price guarantees?

If you sell online, how about a big bold message that states how you will use or not use your customers information?

If you say, you do this stuff already, is it buried in a bunch of fine print or legal terms and conditions that no one reads anyway?

Change it.

We want to trust you.  Give us open and honest communication and transparency and in return we’ll give you our money.

Signed, the consumers of the world.

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Cutting The Cord and The End of Local TV Advertising

Cutting The Cord and The End of Local TV Advertising

by | Dec 16, 2019 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo, WOWO Fort Wayne Radio Advertising with Scott Howard

It was about three weeks ago when we became a full fledge streaming household.

And now the end of local TV advertising impacting us has hit our home.

It was a gradual process and our story is both personal and widespread.

If your business has been using the local TV stations to advertise, you’ve probably seen a decline in new customers coming from your TV ads.  Today I am going to share with you my families experience with TV viewing and at the end offer you some alternatives.

My wife and I are Baby Boomers and our 5 kids are all in their 30’s.  My wife and I grew up with over the air TV.  I grew up in Fort Wayne, Indiana with ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS and an independent station (now FOX) as my 5 choices.  If we wanted to watch a show some other time than when it was broadcast, my parents would record it themselves on real video tape cassettes.  (My wife grew up in the Chicago area,where they had a few more TV stations available).

In my 20’s I had cable TV with nearly 100 different channels available for less than 30 bucks a month.  CNN was the 24 hour news channel, TBS and WGN were the two local stations that were now national and then there were things like the Home Shopping Channel, the Weather Channel and American Movie Classics that I recall getting significant viewing in my family but the local channels were still getting the majority of our screentime.  This was the 1980’s and 1990’s I’m talking about.  MTV with video jocks debuted and they actually played music videos the way a radio station would play music back then.  I worked on the air at a top 40 radio station and remember seeing all of this unfold and wondered in the back of my mind, what would happen to radio listenership now that music television was competing with us.

However as you know, the MTV of the past couple decades is nothing like that now.  It’s just another one of the 200+ video channels out there.  Music radio has had other competitive challenges but MTV and their sister station VH1 don’t compete with radio anymore.

When I returned to Fort Wayne 20 years ago, I was talking with a friend of mine who worked in TV advertising about the impact of cable TV and he said it was minimal at the time.  Despite the fact that Comcast was in 70% of the homes, people were still watching what we call Live TV.  Live TV is what the stations and networks are broadcasting live at the moment.  Well that has changed.

Just like the internet of today is nothing like the internet was when Facebook launched about 15 years ago, TV viewing is different too.  Even the terms have changed.  The words screentime and video are replacing viewership and television and for a good reason.  My first computer was a desktop computer with a dial-up connection in 1998 or so.  It was slow and clunky and you had to sit at a computer desk.  Watching video over the internet was unheard of.

Within 5 years I bought a new desktop for the family, a laptop for myself and we had flip phones now too.

Fast forward a few more years and the kids are all out of the house, some in college, some married, everyone has a phone in their pocket that is more powerful than my first desktop computer and we can now watch video on any number of devices.  The concept of the family gathering around the TV together is gone forever except for special occasions like perhaps the Superbowl.

Meanwhile there’s this company called Netflix that started out as a DVD rental company but has evolved to an internet delivery system.  Amazon has grown from the original bookseller to the seller of everything and their Prime Members are now able to watch movies and shows online too.

YouTube started in 2005 and 15 months later gets bought by Google which continues to support it and make it a huge money machine for them.  Want to learn how to fix a leaky faucet?  Watch a video on You Tube.  I give this example because the radio station I work for, WOWO in Fort Wayne had a long running home improvement show every Saturday morning for a couple of hours. Listeners could call in and talk to an expert free about their home project.  Over the nearly 20 years the show was on WOWO we started to see a decline in listener participation.  From my own experience as a homeowner, I can see how this corresponded with the growth of YouTube.  No longer did I need to wait until Saturday to get my answers,  I could search for a YouTube video on Tuesday and get the answers. YouTube has been listed as one of the top 5 search engines in recent years.

So now you know the backstory of how TV viewership converted to video screentime over the past 30+ years, there is more that has been going on in the past couple years that is hurting local TV viewership today.

It’s two things actually.  Cord Cutting and Television Programming.

Television Programming has had the biggest impact.  The shows that the big broadcast TV networks are showing are not getting the viewers compared to years ago.  Part of this is ABC, CBS, NBC and FOX have failed to recognize who watches Live TV.  It’s not the younger generations.  My kids have no need to watch.  Sure they’ll watch some PBS Kids shows with their kids, but not over the TV broadcast airwaves live.

Most of my 30 year old kids don’t have access to local broadcast TV.  But they have Netflix.  Which brings me to the Cord Cutting revolution.

With my wife and I being empty nesters, the last time we moved we had 5 TV’s hooked up to Comcast/Xfinity which I scaled down to 3. One TV in the family room, one in the bedroom and one in the guest room for grandkids.  Our internet and TV package was $200 per month and going up.  I called this stupid money.  For a couple of years I tried cutting the cord but could not get my local broadcast TV channels.  Finally in the summer of 2018, after researching on YouTube I came up with a way to boost my local TV’s broadcast reception and switch to an Internet only package from Frontier.  $40 per month instead of $200.  However since my wife wanted to watch her cable news shows, I also added another $40 to get the DirectTV Now streaming package, which made it $80 per month.  Still less than 1/2 the price of having cable.

I had to add a few inconveniences, to make it all work like Chromecast on the two main TV’s so we could send the streaming from our laptops to the TV’s but we worked it out.

Direct TV is owned by AT&T and recently they renamed the DirectTV Now streaming service to ATT TV Now and they’ve also been jacking up the price.  What was $40 became $50 and now is $65.   ATT has been losing money on their streaming services and losing subscribers too.  Millions of them have left.  Last month I left too.

Our family now uses the YouTubeTV streaming service.  I did my research and even signed up for a 5 day free trial.  After the first day, I saw a vast improvement in the user experience.  So did my wife.

On the second day, I bought a Roku Streaming Stick to convert our family room TV to the smart TV experience.  Our bedroom TV I bought last year was already a Roku smart TV.   My wife was instantly impressed with the options and quality and the convenience, considering that before I did this she had to lug her laptop from room to room and chromecast her stream to the TV.  This new experience was reminiscent of the convenience we had with cable TV but even better.

So here we have two baby boomers doing what the younger generations have already been doing and that is abandoning local broadcast TV and traditional cable TV for a streaming package that offers more at a fraction of the cost.  YouTubeTV in Fort Wayne does offer the local broadcast channels live if we want to watch them.  However the programming from CBS, NBC, ABC or FOX, we are more likely to watch later, not live and we can do that easily.  When we watch Bull, or NCIS on our own time schedule, we don’t get any local ads.  This is much different from decades ago when my Dad used to record his favorite shows and they included the local TV commercials.

Here is the advice I give my friends and clients regarding local broadcast TV advertising.  Buy the local news. Skip the rest.  However even that idea is questionable.  My local newscasts are now broadcast online live without the commercials.  Because they are doing whatever they can to find viewers.  The sad part for you as an advertiser on those local TV newscasts, is it doesn’t include your business.

Here’s the other advice I give.  Buy ads on my radio station.  WOWO radio has remained the most listened to radio station for decades for grownups age 35 and older.  You know, the people who are buying stuff, big stuff like homes and cars and kids stuff and grandkids stuff and vacations and well, you name it.

WOWO is wrapping up the year with another record breaking year in producing results for our advertising partners and I expect this to continue for many years ahead.  Sit down with me and I can share more with you.

UPDATE: I just received information that the time spent with radio each week is DOUBLE the time spent with TV. 

According to a new report from Nielsen, the ratings firm says adults 18 and older spend just shy of six hours with their TV-connected devices every week. Time spent with radio is nearly 12 hours per week. Also News/Talk (like WOWO Radio) is the most popular radio format nationwide.  Details are here: https://radioink.com/2019/12/18/radio-listening-dwarfs-tv-watching/

Also if you are looking for Sound ADvice on business and marketing, fill out the form below for my Sound ADvice weekly newsletter.  We take time off during holiday weeks but every other week, it will appear in your email Wednesday mornings.

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What’s Your Plan B?

What’s Your Plan B?

by | Dec 2, 2019 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo

If what you are doing is working for you, fantastic and congratulations.

I want to know more about your story of success.

Sometime in our conversation I also want to know, “What is your Plan B?”

For those of you who answer, “What do you mean, I don’t need a Plan B, I’m a success!”  You might want to listen up.

Some of you are a success and you don’t even have a Plan A.  Things just fell into place.  It was a combination of hard work, luck, and timing that put you and your company on the success track you are enjoying right now.

Honestly, that is how most companies start out.  Some trial and error and sticking with the stuff that works while you set aside the stuff that didn’t work.  It’s okay that you didn’t have a gameplan, blueprint or what ever you want to call it, you made it work.

The reality is that one day, the economic forces that are in place now will change and unless you adapt, your success can become a failure.

Take some time now to document what enabled you to grow and succeed.  Include the stuff that didn’t work out as well as the stuff that did. This exercise is what I call creating your Plan A with hindsight.

The reasons for creating this are multiple.

First off, for your own sake, you will probably discover that some of the trial and errors from your earlier days that resulted in discarded ideas… those ideas may have been premature.  Perhaps you had a concept that wasn’t feasible at the time, but with advances in technology or consumer behavior changes or some other factor, those ideas might be worth revisiting in the future.

Next, it’s important to preserve some of the history for future generations. There’s a theory about the 3rd generation of a family business that I’ve seen happen multiple times.  Here’s how it goes:

The first generation, the ones that started with nothing and worked their tails off day and night to create a successful business are the ones that pass that work ethic and understanding of what it takes to the second generation.

The second generation grew up in the business, they were there when their parents were putting in the work and as kids, they too were involved in the business perhaps mopping the floors or sorting papers or something and then as they got older they took on more and more responsibilities in the family business.  The 2nd generation didn’t suffer through the hardships of the 1st generation in the same way because they were still kids and not yet adults. But the second generation did see the efforts and actions of their parents first hand and sought to preserve those winning principles when they took over the business.

The third generation, well sorry but they are the ones that are likely to ruin the company if it has survived this long. Third generation is the grandkids of the founders of the company.  They are the ones whose lives and lifestyle are the result of the hard work of their parents and grandparents who wanted to create a better life for their kids.

Third generation business owners are not aware of the work that created the wealth and prosperity that they grew up with and so their attitude is not the same as their grandparents 50 years previous.  The first generation may have had to put in 100 hours every week into trying to stay afloat at first, while the third generation may be trying to live the 4 hour work week lifestyle.  Sometimes the third generation will attempt to make improvements in the company and end up harming the company because they don’t understand the big picture of how it became a success.  For them, the family business was always a success.

What I just described is not true of all businesses that last through multiple generations, but I have seen it way too often.  By writing down your Plan A in hindsight, you have created something that can help future generations.

If your business is less than 15 years old or less than 20 years old, your business hasn’t had to weather the economic changes that are beyond your control.  If you are a success now, in times of economic growth, you are living your Plan A.  One day, you will need a Plan B because the economic factors will change. 

When I returned to the radio advertising business in 2003, we were 5 years away from the 2008 recession that upended our country in so many ways.  We saw companies lay off staff, we saw people lose their homes, we saw job opportunities disappear.   I saw businesses fold because they didn’t have a Plan B.

Fortunately the company I worked for at the time already put their Plan B into action a couple years before the economy went downhill. We reorganized our team and work in 2006 so when 2008 came we didn’t have any lay offs, we actually grew. 

That’s the other reason to have a Plan B now. There are probably some aspects of your business that you would need to take a hard look at their worth and value to your company if you were faced with a downturn.  When you have a Plan B in place, you can actually start implementing it now instead of waiting.

A few more random items in support of having a Plan B:

Between 30% and 50% of the new jobs available in the year 2030, don’t even exist today. This is due in part to the rapid advances in technology and that impacts all of us.

The population shift as the largest generation, the Baby Boomers leave the workforce. Many are living 20 or more years beyond retirement.  How many are retiring? 10,000 a day. Do the math on that and we see up over 3 and a half million people leaving the workforce each year which over by 2030 ads up to around 35 million Baby Boomers that are working right now, that will no longer be in the workforce.  The number of people entering the workforce is less than those leaving so changes will occur and that will have an impact for your business to consider when creating your Plan B.

Let me wrap this up with a bit of insight I observed from the 2008 recession.  Companies that aren’t prepared will look for ways to save money by cutting costs and often they cut the wrong things.  Advertising and Marketing  is the wrong thing to cut.  Those companies that cut their ad budgets stopped inviting people to spend money with them and eventually went out of business because they had no customers.  Those that had a Plan B and continued to invest in advertising and marketing, reaped the rewards.  Advertising and marketing was a required part of their Plan B.

What are you going to do?  Are you prepared to create your Plan B?  Do you need insight from someone who has guided others?  Let’s talk. Contact me.

 

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Where Are All The TV Viewers?

Where Are All The TV Viewers?

by | Oct 10, 2019 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo, WOWO Fort Wayne Radio Advertising with Scott Howard

My wife and I are Baby Boomers and we have been the generation that most advertisers targeted their marketing to over most of my lifetime.

That is until we “aged-out” of the 25-54 age demographic.

That started happening in 2001 when the oldest Boomers who were born in 1946 turned 55.

This is the year, 2019 when the youngest Boomers who were born in 1964 hit double nickels.

About 10 years ago however is when the marketing people started to wake up and realize that the Baby Boomers still were a valuable demographic for a lot of products and services.  That was when the first Boomers were preparing to hit that magic age of 65, the age of retirement in the United States.

Except Baby Boomers were not like the previous generations that were in the 60’s.  They were not in the last couple years of life, they were living a full and rewarding life.

The kids were finally out on their own, yes even out of the basement and grandkids were coming.  Some Baby Boomers still have parents alive too.

The wealth was and still is in the hands of the Baby Boomers.

Baby Boomers grew up with the mass media of radio and TV.  We remembered AM Radio and Black & White TV and saw the transformation to Color TV and growth of FM Radio.

Radio has been our portable entertainment with every vehicle on the road being a virtual sound machine while TV was our home entertainment with news and prime time shows dominating our evenings.

So it is no surprise that even with the advent and growth of the internet and all the advances from dial-up AOL to always connected smart homes, traditional TV and Radio stations were still relevant to the Baby Boomer generation.

I have seen plenty of studies that have shown the shifting audience demographics for TV especially that is top heavy with older people.

More than half of all traditional TV viewers are age 55 and older.

Traditional TV encompasses both the traditional broadcast and traditional cable TV networks.

However in 2019, for the first time ever, traditional TV viewership in the age 55+ is now declining.

Here’s what Mediapost said about this:

It’s no secret that linear TV viewing has been declining as American consumers — especially younger ones — shift to digital alternatives, but a new analysis from the equities research team at UBS shows that even older TV viewers have begun eroding for the first time.

While total viewers (two years or older) have been eroding for some time, the fact that TV’s most diehard and heaviest viewers also are abandoning the medium should come as a wakeup call for many in the TV and advertising industry.

The article also shows data that over the past ten years TV has lost 50 to 60% of their younger viewers and the only age group that grew was the Baby Boomers  but now they are watching less TV.

I can tell you why, from personal experience.

We have access to 100 channels and there’s “nothing on”. At least that’s the way it seems.

A lot of the shows are targeted to younger viewers and are simply stupid or overly sexually juvenile. The jokes would have made the teenager in me snicker, but that was over 30 years ago.

Here are the actual shows that I will watch with my wife either live or on demand almost every week, now that the fall TV season is back:

NCIS, Grey’s Anatomy, Jeopardy, Bull, The Good Doctor, Chicago Med.  The first four are without fail, the last two are likely to watch.

My wife will watch Dancing with the Stars and the Bachelor series, but I won’t. I may watch The Voice.

That’s it. Each year the number of shows we watch declines.  Not because there are less programs available, but the networks are trying to reach the younger audiences they have already lost which is stupid.

My kids are all in their 30’s and none of them watch traditional TV.  There is nothing that will change that so the networks need to wake up and do what they can to keep the viewers they have from abandoning them.

Now we do watch other things on TV.  The network news channels get a healthy amount of evening viewing along with some occasional HGTV, and we also stream stuff like Amazon Prime Movies. Netflix is a must have for my kids and their families.

As a side note, since I work in the radio business, there is also an undercurrent among the youngest, I’m talking teens and 20 year olds to listen to less traditional radio than people of that age group did decades ago, for many of the same reasons they don’t watch traditional TV. However for grown-ups age 35+ radio listening is still as healthy as ever.  I have specifics for the Fort Wayne, Indiana market if you ever want to see who listens to what, contact me. Scott@WOWO.com

Last week I read the results from the first week of the new Fall 2019 Fall TV Season and it’s not pretty.

The article I read says: TV’s broadcast network premiere week for the 2019-2020 season showed more double-digit percentage declines. 

If you are a business that uses TV to advertise, let this be a warning to you that the audience that you are trying to reach is shrinking.  If you want to see some viable solutions and alternatives, let’s talk.

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Boomers Still Have The Money

Boomers Still Have The Money

by | Jun 13, 2019 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, ScLoHo's Collective Wisdom, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo, WOWO Fort Wayne Radio Advertising with Scott Howard

Last month when my wife and I were on vacation, the publication Mediapost shared a story that I was living at the moment.

My wife and I are Baby Boomers.

Our kids are Millennials.

The business world, or more specifically the advertising world, is focused on convincing our kids to spend their money with them, which is great except…

Except they are ignoring the Boomers.

And guess who really has the money to spend on stuff.

Boomers.

Boomers Still Have The Money.

Our kids are having kids.  5 kids and their partners have created 9 grandkids.

When you have 2 or 3 kids to support, life as a 30 year old is expensive, no matter how much you make.

But when you are an empty nester, you have more choices on what to spend your paycheck on.  

And usually that paycheck is just as big or bigger in your 50’s than it was in your 20’s and 30’s.

The Mediapost article asks:

Why do advertisers ignore boomers to focus on the “it” demos: millennials and Gen Z?

Although millennials officially outnumber boomers, let’s not forget the spending power wielded by boomers.

Age is just a number to boomers, who aren’t sitting at home wondering how to connect to the WiFi and counting the minutes until they take their next round of pills. Instead, they are traveling, spend time outdoors — and, according to U.S. News & World Report, control 70% of the country’s disposable income and spend $3.2 trillion a year.

You see, that’s what we were doing.  I had 11 days off counting the Memorial Day holiday and a couple of weekends, so my wife and I traveled to Philadelphia and New York City.  We saw a Broadway musical, took time sight seeing and exploring some historic landmarks.  We hiked in the woods, ate what we wanted, stayed in nice hotels, treated our friends and had a great time.  We really didn’t need to save up for this trip, and we didn’t go into debt.

Meanwhile my younger coworkers, whose incomes are similar to mine enjoyed their 3 day Memorial Day weekends and had to spend a larger percent of their take home pay on regular living expenses for their families.

Are you getting the picture?

Here’s another quote from Mediapost:

Millennials and hot on their tail Gen Z may have some money to spend now — but boomers have it yesterday, today and tomorrow. Targeting boomers might not be as Instagrammable as a millennial demo, but it is instantly gratifying.

Advertisers, for years, were targeting the youth.  I was one of the Pepsi Generation of the 1960’s and 70’s. The sought after age demographic, when I started in the radio business was 18 to 34 year olds.

Then as that group of people who we now refer to as Baby Boomers got a little older, the desirable demographic for advertisers was 25 to 54 year olds.  That worked for awhile, when Baby Boomers were still in the age group, but now the boomers have aged out.  Boomers are now 55 and older.

The so called wise-ones in the advertising world have it wrong.

A mere 10% of marketing budgets is allocated to the boomer audience, while 50% goes to marketing to millennials.

and

Baby Boomers outspend every other generation by $400 billion annually, providing over 50 percent of U.S. consumption.

So, how can you, as a business owner or advertising marketing director, get some of this Boomer Money?

Simple.

Invite Boomers to spend money with you.

Set aside an appropriate amount of your advertising to reach the Boomers.

I currently work with three radio stations in Fort Wayne, Indiana.  I have a rock music station, a sports talk station and a news talk station.

The news talk station, WOWO is king.  It is the station that Baby Boomers grew up listening to back when they played music and it was a personality radio station.  WOWO still is a personality driven radio station with our news and talk format, it is the leading station for all grown-ups and the most listened to by Boomers.

The advertisers that are using WOWO to invite Boomers to spend money are doing very well these days.  

I have a couple of travel agencies that each promoted special vacations to Ireland and Alaska. (Those were two separate trips.) I saw over 50 WOWO listeners and their friends pony up the bucks to go on these exclusive trips and we in the planning stages for next year.  That’s just one example I bring up because of my vacation travels last month.

What else are WOWO radio’s Baby Boomer listeners spending money on?

Health care.

Financial Planning.

Home improvements and new homes.

Nielsen established that boomers spend almost $90 billion a year on cars — nearly 30% more than other age groups. 

and remember those grandkids and their parents?  

We spend money on them too!

Honestly, if you want to grow your business over the next few years, contact me about inviting Boomers who Still Have Money to spend it with you.  Drop me a note to Scott@WOWO.com 

Also for more marketing tips and insight, you can subscribe to my free weekly newsletter titled Sound ADvice in the box below.

 

 

 

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