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Someone pitching the idea to sell radio to 65+ demo

I would be very interested in a critique of this presentation by Messers Edwardo and Big A (among others who routinely shoot down efforts to sell to Boomers).
 
He talks about commercials as being part of programming. He's right, and that's why some advertisers aiming for that demo create program-length commercials aka infomercials. They want their messages to stand out, and in the context of typical music programming, such as oldies or classic hits, their :30 messages simply become part of the stop-set. That's why that kind of programming isn't the right environment for the messages he's talking about. The right environment is talk programming. That's where those messages will fit with the environment. That's why talk radio programming can make more money for radio than oldies.

Imagine listening to an oldies radio station, and hearing all those great songs from your youth. All of a sudden the music stops, and commercials come on talking about funeral homes and drugs for prostate health. Talk about a rude awakening. Does that get you in the mood for buying something? Probably not.

But the real issue here, and Holland doesn't address it at all, is that the demo he's talking about HATES commercials. They HATE being sold products. When the phone rings and it's a sales pitch, they hang up. When the music stops and commercials start, they turn off the radio. They're not influenced by advertising. They prefer self-discovery. They prefer word of mouth. They prefer to have people they trust share information with them. That process works better in talk radio than it does in music radio. And the TIME it takes to deliver that message works better in talk radio.
 
That is an interesting point. The audience tuned to talk radio is more prone to think an advertiser, even in a basic stopset is 'endorsing' the programming. Literally it is somewhat like the 'Halo Effect" touted by public radio. Because the listener likes the host, the advertiser must be on the program because they like the host too. The talk show commercial conveys more 'trust' than on a music station.
 
I have never said there's anything wrong with selling boomers. Everything Holland says is correct. They have lots of disposable income, they're empty nesters with few expenses, and they're looking for ways to spend their money on things they want. All of that is great. The problem is trying to sell them stuff on the radio in music programming. It's very tough, and very expensive. For most advertisers, it's ineffective, and therefore they choose not to do it. The ads and the programming simply don't work well together.
 
landtuna said:
I would be very interested in a critique of this presentation by Messers Edwardo and Big A (among others who routinely shoot down efforts to sell to Boomers).
Click to expand...

The biggest objection to the argument is that the older a consumer, the more difficult they are to sell. It takes more ads, more often, to convince the older consumer to make a purchasing decision.

The number of ads needed to make a sales can cost more than the profit on the sale.

In any case, in the larger markets where agency business is key to making a profit, the decision comes from higher up... the ad buyer does not determine the target. If we are dealing with a local agency and a big local account, the target is determined by management and the agency execs, and the media buyer can not change it. If the account is national, we know that significant product usage and purchasing research was done and the client dictated the target to the agency.

So in the case of agency business, if a seller finds that there is no "over 55" in the target, there is nothing you can do.

CBS has been working for years on the TV side to encourage not just agencies but clients to include 50-64 in they buying decisions. They have done extensive presentations at the client level where individual radio stations would have no access... and nothing much has changed.

Radio can talk about the value of older consumers all day long, but if agencies are being told by their clients to buy 18-49 or 25-54 or even 18-34 your station that plays Chubby Checker and Jerry Lee Lewis is SOL.
 
TheBigA said:
But the real issue here, and Holland doesn't address it at all, is that the demo he's talking about HATES commercials. They HATE being sold products. When the phone rings and it's a sales pitch, they hang up. When the music stops and commercials start, they turn off the radio. They're not influenced by advertising. They prefer self-discovery. They prefer word of mouth. They prefer to have people they trust share information with them.
Click to expand...

Exactly. Time and experience have shown the older listener that the advertiser is often exaggerating, sometimes to the brink of lying. Fortunately, there are always younger, more gullible listeners available and they are always Madison Avenue's prime target. When today's CHR listener is 60 and listening to Taylor and Arianna on his/her storage device and wondering why he can't hear their music on radio anymore instead of whatever "garbage" the current 18-34 crowd is listening to, Big A Jr. or David Eduardo Jr. will probably be there to tell him/her why. And he/she won't believe it and argue that the radio suits are wrong. And FrankBerry Jr. will close the thread, citing circular argument ... :)
 
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Mr. Holland referred to "55-70" while using famous 70 year olds as examples, thus putting them nearly out of the demo! I suppose that the only hope for "News/Talk" is for Generation X to get interested when THEY reach 55!
 
There are stations that advertise to the demo being referred to in this thread, and they do quite well for themselves. But then they are selling something useful to the demographic instead of telling them what they should buy for someone else who should be rolling up his or her sleeves and buying it for himself/herself. But then, whatever is expedient....
 
TheBigA said:
But the real issue here, and Holland doesn't address it at all, is that the demo he's talking about HATES commercials. They HATE being sold products. When the phone rings and it's a sales pitch, they hang up. When the music stops and commercials start, they turn off the radio. They're not influenced by advertising. They prefer self-discovery. They prefer word of mouth. They prefer to have people they trust share information with them. That process works better in talk radio than it does in music radio. And the TIME it takes to deliver that message works better in talk radio.
Click to expand...

This is probably the most prejudiced comment I've seen on a message board. Much as I dislike PC terms, the best word to describe it is "ageism." To be fair, most stereotypes have some basis in fact. This one does not. It's not Baby Boomers - at least not only Baby Boomers - who use ad blocking software online. Or who buy DVRs with increasingly sophisticated ad skipping software. Or who have abandoned rusty tower radio and its stop-sets for on-demand media.

If anything, many Baby Boomers do remember when advertising was written to be attention-getting and entertaining. Many can still sing the words to "You deserve a break today" and any number of other commercial jingles. Many can still complete the sentence "Winston tastes good like ...." And most can recall when the NAB did not allow more than three spots in a row, or more than 18 minutes of commercial time.

I call the attention of the anti-Boomer crowd here to Zoomer Radio in Toronto (and its associated media properties) which make a healthy business out of targeting active seniors.

There are dozens of cable channels and HD sub-channels targeting seniors and apparently doing well at it. It's radio that is hobbled by prejudice being passed off as expertise.
 
Oscar Madison said:
This is probably the most prejudiced comment I've seen on a message board. Much as I dislike PC terms, the best word to describe it is "ageism."
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You can call it whatever you want. The courts have ruled that this is business, not discrimination.

Once again, I'm not saying there isn't money in targeting seniors. There is. The problem is advertisers are using other forms of media to reach them.

If that's a problem, complain to the advertisers. Tell them radio would love their business.
 
Oscar Madison said:
This is probably the most prejudiced comment I've seen on a message board. Much as I dislike PC terms, the best word to describe it is "ageism."
Click to expand...

No, this is an issue of pragmatism, not ageism. Transactional radio buyers essentially buy no radio against 55+, so there is no money there for stations that program to the demo.

Where a few stations prosper despite having a very old audience is among heritage AM news and talkers that are traditional market buys. Examples are WLW and WBEN. But there is no equal prosperity rule; stations like WGN are off by a third to half in revenue over the last decade.

The reason why advertisers don't buy 55+ is that their extensive internal research shows that older consumers do not provide the necessary ROI for successful ad buys.

And most can recall when the NAB did not allow more than three spots in a row, or more than 18 minutes of commercial time.
Click to expand...

The NAB code did not specify stopset length. It did stop at 18 minutes of spots per hour, but so did the FCC renewal process at the time.

I ran stopsets of 5 to 6 spots four times an hour in the 70's and on license renewal stated "NAB code except as applies to liquor advertising" because in my market hard liquor advertising was a standard practice on radio and TV. But we kept to every other provision of the code, and in fact limited ourselves to 10 minutes of spots an hour. Of course, the NAB dropped the code when it was determined to be anti-competitive and de facto collusion.

I call the attention of the anti-Boomer crowd here to Zoomer Radio in Toronto (and its associated media properties) which make a healthy business out of targeting active seniors.
Click to expand...

They survive, but there have been quite a number of occasions when the operation was reported to be in financial crisis state. And the station has had to make considerable adjustment to lower the average age. Still, they are only minimally viable... in a different country.

There are dozens of cable channels and HD sub-channels targeting seniors and apparently doing well at it. It's radio that is hobbled by prejudice being passed off as expertise.
Click to expand...

Most of the senior-targeted advertising on TV is there... or in the AARP magazine... because the client feels they need the visual "appetite appeal" that TV or print gives. Riverboat cruises or stair lifts or lifestyle enhancing medications sell the look and appeal of the product or service.

In any case, the issue is not with radio. It is with the advertisers who direct their agency to buy specific ad targets. And as I said, there is essentially no money against 55+ to be had in radio.

Several years ago, CBS TV, which has become the oldest network in terms of average viewer age, wanted to do something about the network and major cable buying that specified 18-49 or some subset. They went to the agencies and their clients to push including 50-64 in the buy specs. After about three years, they keep trying but there are no major success stories and CBS cancels shows that deliver a predominance of 50+ viewers.
 
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That's been my point forever. Playing the music of my youth, reminding me of when my biggest problem was zits, peppered by stopsets with ads reminding me I'm older and my parts don't work as well as they used to, and if I tried to "Dance To The Music" my knees would hurt. Mmmmm, no.



TheBigA said:
He talks about commercials as being part of programming. He's right, and that's why some advertisers aiming for that demo create program-length commercials aka infomercials. They want their messages to stand out, and in the context of typical music programming, such as oldies or classic hits, their :30 messages simply become part of the stop-set. That's why that kind of programming isn't the right environment for the messages he's talking about. The right environment is talk programming. That's where those messages will fit with the environment. That's why talk radio programming can make more money for radio than oldies.

Imagine listening to an oldies radio station, and hearing all those great songs from your youth. All of a sudden the music stops, and commercials come on talking about funeral homes and drugs for prostate health. Talk about a rude awakening. Does that get you in the mood for buying something? Probably not.

But the real issue here, and Holland doesn't address it at all, is that the demo he's talking about HATES commercials. They HATE being sold products. When the phone rings and it's a sales pitch, they hang up. When the music stops and commercials start, they turn off the radio. They're not influenced by advertising. They prefer self-discovery. They prefer word of mouth. They prefer to have people they trust share information with them. That process works better in talk radio than it does in music radio. And the TIME it takes to deliver that message works better in talk radio.
Click to expand...
 
DavidEduardo said:


Several years ago, CBS TV, which has become the oldest network in terms of average viewer age, wanted to do something about the network and major cable buying that specified 18-49 or some subset. They went to the agencies and their clients to push including 50-64 in the buy specs. After about three years, they keep trying but there are no major success stories and CBS cancels shows that deliver a predominance of 50+ viewers.
Click to expand...

Except for "60 Minutes," and just about all the ads on that show target 65-to-dead.Do those advertisers pay a premium for the network's one consistent winner, or does "60 Minutes" billing still underperform more youth-oriented CBS fare?
 
It's not a matter of being "gullible". If I need furniture, the ad for the furniture sale might catch my attention. If I'm not, I ignore it. A 30 year old is more likely to be buying furniture than a 60 year old.


CTListener said:
Exactly. Time and experience have shown the older listener that the advertiser is often exaggerating, sometimes to the brink of lying. Fortunately, there are always younger, more gullible listeners available and they are always Madison Avenue's prime target. When today's CHR listener is 60 and listening to Taylor and Arianna on his/her storage device and wondering why he can't hear their music on radio anymore instead of whatever "garbage" the current 18-34 crowd is listening to, Big A Jr. or David Eduardo Jr. will probably be there to tell him/her why. And he/she won't believe it and argue that the radio suits are wrong. And FrankBerry Jr. will close the thread, citing circular argument ... :)
Click to expand...
 
gr8oldies said:
A 30 year old is more likely to be buying furniture than a 60 year old.
Click to expand...

Very true...I go to estate sales, and just about all the furniture I see was bought 40 or more years ago. Nothing new. It's all considered "antique," which is often the attraction these days.
 
It could also be instructive to listen to some of those old 60s and 70s airchecks and check out what was being advertised to our younger selves and our older siblings.


TheBigA said:
Very true...I go to estate sales, and just about all the furniture I see was bought 40 or more years ago. Nothing new. It's all considered "antique," which is often the attraction these days.
Click to expand...
 
CTListener said:
Except for "60 Minutes," and just about all the ads on that show target 65-to-dead.Do those advertisers pay a premium for the network's one consistent winner, or does "60 Minutes" billing still underperform more youth-oriented CBS fare?
Click to expand...

There are plenty of TV advertisers with products primarily directed at over-50 viewers. So they pick the shows that deliver them best. You won't see them on the shows on CW, because they would be paying for a lot of audience they don't want.

But those advertisers don't buy the CBS shows that skew younger, either.

Think of the Viagra and Cialis ads. They do not talk about erections. They talk about romantic moments and paint visual pictures of contented intimacy, something hard to do with words alone. Or how about the drug for stronger bones and joints that shows people getting up off the porch and walking with the playful dog down the beach. Try doing that with words alone.

And before a comment of "copy used to be better" is posted, products that sold based on visual appeal ranging from many food products to cleaning products to apparel have never used radio unless as frequency building support for TV ads.

CBS is the consistent ratings winner in TV. NBC, ABC and FOX have all been beaten in the last season by Univision... but not CBS.
 
davideduardo said:


and before a comment of "copy used to be better" is posted, products that sold based on visual appeal ranging from many food products to cleaning products to apparel have never used radio unless as frequency building support for tv ads.

Click to expand...

J-e-l-l-o :)
 
DavidEduardo said:
Think of the Viagra and Cialis ads. They do not talk about erections.
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Except in the legal at the end, where they talk about "erections lasting more than 5 hours." That's not the kind of ad you want to see with your young daughter in the room. Definitely don't want to hear that on the radio on my way to church Sunday morning. Or after they play "high on the mountain of love."
 
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