The Long Game

The Long Game

by | May 30, 2023 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, ScLoHo's Collective Wisdom, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo, WOWO Fort Wayne Radio Advertising with Scott Howard

When I say the word “Future”, how far off in the future does your mind think?

Is the Future 5 years away?

Is the Future 20 years away?

Is the Future next week or even next month?

Does it hurt your brain to think beyond today?

Here in the United States we live in short time spans, relatively speaking compared to some other countries around the world.

We elect a President every four years which for many countries is very unstable.  And the election cycle has become shorter and shorter.  If you like your President then, you want them to last not just 4 years, but 8 years.  However if you don’t like your President, you start talking about the next election as soon as possible, sometimes within 6 months.

I find it interesting that we elect government representatives who then create laws that outlast their term in office or in some cases, the laws don’t come into effect until after those that wrote them are out of office.

But enough about government and the Future, let’s talk about business and the Future.  In my world of radio broadcasting, I work for a radio station that is now 98 years old. WOWO radio began broadcasting in 1925 and was one of the first AM radio stations.  This year there was big news about the death of AM radio because certain automakers announced that they were not including AM radios in their new vehicles.  Ford was the big one that caught peoples attention.

The National Association of Broadcasters rallied their members and lobbyists to save AM radio and due to the bad press or pressure either publicly or privately, Ford reversed course and their CEO announced: “For any owners of Ford’s EVs without AM broadcast capability, we’ll offer a software update”.  As a broadcaster who knows how radio broadcasting works, the “software update” made me suspicious.  If all it takes is a software update, that means the hardware was built-in all this time.

Anyway, the future of AM radio accessibility in Ford manufactured vehicles is safe for now.

On the other hand, there has been a lot of noise in government regarding the social media app TikTok.  The concern is that users information is being given to the Chinese Communist Party for evil and it endangers all of us.  The app has been banned by one state and the Federal Government is prohibiting it from being downloaded on devices that are connected to government sites.

Changes are coming as the Future continues to move closer and closer.  How prepared are you for the changes that could occur next year?  Forget about 5 years down the road or 20 years into the future… I bet there are changes that are taking place in your industry that are going to impact your business in the next 18 months or sooner and you have not prepared for them yet.

The idea of The Long Game which is what I titled this piece is not that you need to stick with doing everything the same way forever and ever, but to look to the Future and plan for what is coming or could be coming.

As I announced in May, WOWO radio prepared for the future by adding a strong FM signal, 92.3 to our options for listeners to tune in while they are driving in case their vehicle doesn’t have AM radio.  We were prepared and you need to be prepared too in your business.

When it comes to inviting people to spend their money with you and your business, I have tons of options and ideas that you should consider.  Some are nearly 100 years old, while others are in their infancy.  Contact me and let’s play the Long Game together for today and the Future.

The Difference between Principles and Practices

The Difference between Principles and Practices

by | Jul 12, 2022 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo

There are certain Principles that are Timeless.

There are certain Practices that have a limited lifespan.

We need both.

We also need to know and understand the differences.

I’ll use two different examples, one of which is my area of expertise, the other is simply an observation.

Personal Land Transportation is the example I’ll use for the latter.

The United States of America is just shy of 250 years old.  Our ancestors, the ones that arrived from other continents, came overseas way before the United States became a country.  Water travel, boats, ships with multiple people… it was a form of mass transportation.

On land, we have had, horses and other animals we could either ride or attach to something that was pulled.  Eventually bicycles became a popular form of Personal Land Transportation and then automobiles mostly powered by gasoline. Today the growth and popularity of electric vehicles continues to grow but it was be years before they replace gas powered personal land transportation automobiles.

I almost omitted rail transportation because it’s not a personal but a mass transportation system, however we as individuals have the freedom to use trains, subways and other rail based transportation to travel from one place to another over land.

The Principle is simple.  Get from one place to another over land.  It takes action and energy.

The Practices have evolved over time, and yet some of the early practices are still available.  The most independent is perhaps ourselves, walking.  All we need is fuel for our bodies and appropriate clothing.  You can go faster riding a horse or bike.  Motorized transportation is the Practice that most of us use these days to implement the Principle of getting from here to there.

Now I’ll apply this to my area of expertise, Advertising and Marketing using Human Relationship Principles.

The Principle is the closer you can spread the word about you and your business using what we as Humans respond to, the better.  Boiled down to a couple of words, it’s the Trust Factor.

The very basic is called Word of Mouth.  I ask you where to go for lunch and you recommend a place and tell me why.  Because I trust you, I trust what you tell me and I go there and spend my lunch money.   That Practice is probably equal to walking in my previous example.  Very effective, but a slow way to grow your business.

Signage is another practice.  If your business has no sign identifying it, I’m not going to trust I am at the right place. That kind of signage serves as an identifier of a physical location.  There is also the physical signage that is more closely though of us advertising. I’m talking about billboards that advertise your business. Or it could be a smaller sign I see somewhere.  Signage create a little bit of trust, but not as much as a friend telling me.  The benefits of signage is that one sign can inform many more people than word of mouth and it can be placed strategically to potential customers.

Other Practices for advertising and marketing your business is the traditional media models of newspapers, television and radio stations. Online we also have a multitude of ever evolving tech.

Some Practices work better than others and it’s due to the Human Relationship Principle, the Trust Factor and how closely it is applied. Some of the online practices have evolved to attempt to create a more personalized advertising experience. As you and I do ANYTHING online, we are adding to the meta-data that is used to serve us ads that are supposed to be more targeted and relatable to each of us.

This is where I want you to really pay attention to the Difference between Principles and Practices.

The Practice of personalized and targeted ads makes sense, but it does absolutely nothing when it comes to following the Human relationship Principle of the Trust Factor.

I’ll talk more about the what and why of creating the Trust Factor in your advertising and marketing in the weeks ahead but for now, please understand that just because the an ad message is targeted and personalized the way tech can do it with algorithms, doesn’t make it better if it ignores the Principle of Human Relationships.

Are You Living In The Past?

Are You Living In The Past?

by | Feb 8, 2022 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo

There is an old perception among TV people that “everyone watches the Olympics”. Because of this, the old broadcast networks of ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox usually air reruns of regular shows instead of new episodes. (NBC is the official network this year).

However there are millions of people who are not going to watch because they either have no interest, or time to watch. Our TV viewing habits from 40 years ago simply are not applicable in 2022.

Live TV viewership is a fraction of what it was. Screentime has increased when you count our phones, laptops and tablets but what we watch and how we watch is radically different.

In the middle of the 2022 Olympics we have the Superbowl. This one live sports event is guaranteed to have more viewers than any single event of the Olympics.

My take away for all this is to question things you are doing that may be outdated but you keep doing them anyway.

And since I write about media and marketing, this caught my attention because the couple of TV programs my wife and I like to watch are in their winter hiatus and it’s going to be a few more weeks before they present new episodes.

No, I’m not going to switch from watching NCIS to Figure Skating this month.  I’ll find something else to do with that hour of my life. Much of the media I consume is by appointment. Not all, but nearly most of it when it comes to TV.

What is “by appointment”?  It’s the ability to watch what I want when I want.  The emphasis is on the when.  As a baby boomer who grew up without this option, I really like it now.  In our house we cut the cord a few years ago an instead use streaming services.

Amazon Prime I’ve had for years originally for the free shipping since we have many family members out of town, but we also use the video platform to watch stuff, “by appointment”.  YouTubeTV is our main replacement for Xfinity and we have a choice to watch something live or recorded.  The shows my wife and I used to watch live, like NCIS, we now watch on the weekend, at a time that works for us “by appointment”.  Because of this, we don’t get any local TV commercials.  If your business is trying to reach me by spending money with the local TV stations, it isn’t working.

My screen time is further divided up between other streaming services including Hulu, Netflix, HBO+, Paramount and Peacock.  No, I don’t watch all of these, but they are coming into my house and maybe my wife has a show that she watches on these streaming services.  The point is, you need to reconsider where you place your advertising and see if the expectations and results that you had in the past are even achievable today.

I’m not just picking on TV by the way.  Printed media has undergone tremendous changes too. Newspapers, magazines and remember the phone book?  Are you still paying for ads in any of these because it’s been traditional and you want to do what Dad and Grandpa did to build the business?

I must caution you however,  there are some value to nearly any kind of marketing you do, but you have to understand the return on investment principles and other factors and not just continue because the advertising salesperson had a slick sales pitch.  I’ll be talking more about some of the specifics in the weeks ahead, and if you want my help now, reach out to me.

 

ReOrganizing The WorkPlace

ReOrganizing The WorkPlace

by | Nov 2, 2021 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo

In less than 2 months it will be 2022, nearly two years since the American Lifestyle was disrupted due to a mysterious virus we call Covid-19.

The pandemic and our response to it created a acceleration of certain changes that were happening but at a slower pace.  For example working from home created a boom for video conferencing and tele-meetings. Did you realize that Zoom was founded over a decade ago? It was one of those software companies that was just chugging along, took over 6 years to become profitable, and then it seemed like everyone discovered it in 2020 out of necessity.

I had been using it for a couple of years before that with a friend and client of mine for our weekly meetings with her team that were all across the country.

On-line shopping was something we had been doing with national companies like Amazon, E-bay and Zappos to name a few, but out of necessity, in 2020 if you were a small mom and pop or a local chain, you needed to create a way to sell your stuff besides coming into your brick and mortar store.

My wife and I did most of our grocery shopping online and still do some of it especially as the weather gets uglier.

That’s some of the consumer side, how about the business side of life?

It was announced that McDonald’s is going to take a Chicago experiment and make it a national innovation.  McDonald’s is partnering with IBM to automate the drive-thru experience.  We’ve already seen many fast food joints install kiosks to place and pay for your order when you go inside, and the popularity of mobile apps has surged in the past couple of years too.

This move of McDonald’s to eliminate the humans from the customer drive-thru experience is expected to actually create a better customer experience and help ease the worker shortages.

That’s the other side of this coin, a lack of people willing and able to fill the jobs has created the necessity for companies to find alternatives to the way things have always been done in the past.  I wonder what innovations are going on in your business or industry?  Drop me a line or comment and tell me.

The company I work for is making some adjustments. Federated Media is a privately owned company with a dozen radio stations in Northern Indiana along with a digital division.  I worked for one of our Fort Wayne Indiana radio stations on the air in my 20’s and then came back 30 years later to join the Local Advertising Sales Team for WOWO radio.  In 2020, I took over as the General Sales Manager of WOWO.

Before I returned to Federated Media, they did some restructuring of their Fort Wayne radio division which created some efficiencies in their operations and also set us up for success for the 2020 pandemic a dozen years later.  One of those changes was the elimination of an office or assigned workspace for the local advertising sales people.  We were doing work from home long before it was the thing to do in 2020.  When people asked me about my job, I would tell them about the flexibility of my work schedule and say, “I only go to the office 2 hours a week”.  One hour for our weekly sales team meetings and the other hour was for a one-on one meeting with my boss.

When I moved into management, I did have an office, but for about 3 months in the spring of 2020, I was also working from my home office again.

Sometime in the next few weeks, Federated Media is going to begin moving into a new larger office space that we recently purchased.  The past 3 years, Federated Media Fort Wayne has been operating from two buildings and this new place will bring us back together under one roof.  However, I noticed in the planning for the new floor plan, we are not creating offices or cubicles for the local sales people because we simple don’t need them.  Currently there are 15, and in the year ahead we will expand to 20 local advertising sales people in Fort Wayne, and they will continue to have the same freedom to come to the office for about two hours a week most weeks.

By the way, I am hiring for a couple of qualified people to join my team.  Email Scott@WOWO.com for details.

What about your workplace?  What kind of reorganization are you doing?

The Power of Planning Ahead

The Power of Planning Ahead

by | Sep 15, 2021 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo, WOWO Fort Wayne Radio Advertising with Scott Howard

How far ahead do you plan?

Recently I was having coffee with a friend who was planning on a trip to Novi, Michigan to spend time with his wife’s family.  It was a day trip and he was noticeably stressed about it.

It was a spur of the moment thing that sounded like fun to his wife but he’s the kind of person who doesn’t like surprises and especially ones like this.

His in-laws moved to a new house recently and he had never been there.  He was going to be relying on GPS to be his navigator and get him and his family to their destination a few hours away.  He also didn’t know how long they would be staying.  He wanted it to be a day-trip but his wife was open to making it an overnighter if she was having fun.

This lack of planning was driving the husband nuts while his wife was clearly excited for a little adventure.

I’ve seen this type of thing play out in the business world too.  Some business owners love to fly by the seat of their pants and see what happens.  Others won’t make a move until every detail is thought out and prepared for.

Do you fall into one or the other of those two mindsets with your business?

There are problems with both.

The person that has to have everything planned out before they take any action can be so consumed with the planning that they never take action.  All they end up with is hours and hours and hours of planning that by the time they are ready to launch, their idea is outdated.

And the person who just goes out there and does stuff, can waste a lot of energy and effort going around in circles or chasing dreams and ideas that are simply not financially feasible or long term sustainable.

You really need a combination of the two extremes.  Planning and Launching go hand in hand.  Once you launch your business, then you make adjustments as you learn.

I call it tweaking.  Not twerking, that was a bad idea from a few years ago.

Tweaking is the adjustments to your original plan to make it better.

In the marketing world, I urge businesses to not use their phone number or street address in their radio ads.  That’s different from a few years ago, but now with the advances in our phone technology, I can ask my phone for directions or I can ask my phone to call any business I hear advertised on the radio.  

We may give a location like at the corner of Coliseum and Coldwater, but not the exact street address.  

One of the issues I saw occur in the past year is many business owners felt like they should do more short term planning and abandon long term planning because what if the economy takes a dump?  My answer is to create a couple of plans.

You need to have a long term strategic plan and also short term tactical plans.  They need to be in harmony with each other.  

Some of you are planning for 4th quarter which is just a few weeks away.  Some of you think you are being adventurous by starting your plans for the entire next year.

I’m in the middle of developing a two year plan with goals focused on what we want to achieve in 2022 and 2023.  It’s something I don’t think our company has done before, thinking two years down the road instead of just one.  At the end of 2020, I had a plan for 2021. 6 months later, I discovered a couple of things.

First off, we were on track to grow and reach the goals we wanted to achieve.

However I also discovered that we had only implemented half of what I planned.  

Those observations are being taken into consideration as I plan for the years ahead, because I already have the ideas to get us where we want to be at the end of 2023 since I still have ideas from this year to put into action.

What if you hate planning, or you’re just not very good at it?

Perhaps you need to bring in someone that can help with planning for your business future.  Sometimes it’s an outsider, sometimes it’s someone you already have working with you.

By the way, when it comes to planning your advertising and marketing, I have a team of professionals who know how to ask the right questions to help partner with you to create both a strategic plan and the tactics to make it happen.

Reach out to me, Scott@WOWO.com and we’ll help.