The Six Radio Brands

The Format Radio Brand

Michael Hedges

The Format Radio Brand is a product with a name on it. Function and structure work together to define the benefit. The choice and placement of program elements is systematic and consistent. As competition for audience and ad revenue becomes fierce, producers adopt the Format Radio Brand to separate theirs from the vague General Radio Brands. Brand names and positioning become shorthand for consumers; saving time, effort and minimizing risk.

Searching for competitive advantage, producers attempt to strengthen brand identity and set their brand apart with unique, identifiable features. It’s the classic treatment of traditional marketing: segment the market – target the audience – create a unique selling proposition - position the radio station. Programming and marketing strategies merge with audience profiles.

Europe’s commercial stations are most often identified with the Format Radio Brands. Format concepts – originally borrowed from successful North American radio – stress repetition and an unambiguous presentation of benefits. Listeners are targets salable to advertisers, typically specific demographic segments.

Segmentation and targeting are the currency of the Format Radio Brands. Age groups, locality and, occasionally, social, economic and influential groups simplify targeting for both broadcasters and advertisers. In the most competitive markets every technique known to market research is used to uncover new targets or weaknesses of competitors.

The Six Radio Brands is about the uniquely European development of radio brands. Competition among broadcasters - and certainly between the public and commercial sectors - gives radio in Europe a rich dynamic. As consumers become more media-literate and demand more attachment broadcasters find target markets illusive.
Regulators, advertisers and broadcasters take turns trying to influence radio brands. Culture and technology makes an impact. More and more, the greatest influence comes from consumers.
The Six Radio Brands describes advantages and pit-falls of brand strategies, with illustrations from current radio practice.

100 pages. 2004

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Format Radio Brands typically target audience preferences for specific program content. Surveys ask listeners to rank various functional benefits like music styles and information ingredients. Broadcasters apply these rankings to format structures. In practice, much of this effort is wasted. Surveys designed by producers with their own definitions of product benefits can be confusing to people not equally absorbed. Emotional benefits are even more difficult to measure because people aren’t good at intellectualizing ideas.

The explosion of radio channels in most European markets since the 1980s has left radio consumers to sort them out.  Using the same steps consumers use to choose other products, the first is to identify program content: styles of music, types of information and the mix of the two. Marketing radio channels has also exploded, providing consumers code words and messages about benefits – sometimes new to their ears. Add to that the very significant impact of friends, family, co-workers and neighbors who are processing the same messages and reflect an additional set of values. From those messages the radio product is judged either acceptable, not acceptable or that more information is required. Passing that threshold, listeners look for other clues, more often social, about the acceptability of their potential choice. Listeners also weigh any potential negative aspects of their choice, like discarding another station or channel from their set of choices. Only then is the potential listener enticed to actually search for the stations address. Given the effort listeners go through making this complex decision they expect to hear exactly what those clues told them. Format Radio Brands succeed by delivering the product benefit after effectively communicating a clear and simple message about it.

Setting one brand apart from another is a positioning exercise, the art and science of which often captivates producers. As producers strive to make a radio brand both known to listeners and different from competitors positioning techniques are applied. Success or failure is determined by the effectiveness of communicating functional attributes to listeners. Indeed, in competitive markets the battle is often played out on the field of positioning lines and statements. Format Radio Brands often invest in other media at considerable cost to communicate key attributes. With more messages about radio brands in a marketplace and radio consumers learning the language which tells one apart from another managers practice brand positioning in a contest of each brand against another.

Format structures also deliver a message.  Format Radio Brands – through simple and consistent structures – give clues about both functional and symbolic benefits and also their voice. Accessibility and structure are bound to each other. Audiences can select, change and reject radio brands quickly. Limited and uncomplicated program offerings are then more accessible because listener’s decisions and choices carry few risks. It’s a limitation managers of Format Radio Brands accept. The strategy is to provide a reasonably consistent program-based benefit within a well-understood structure.

Information is the key to marketing the Format Radio Brand. Radio consumers – aware of the medium’s language – recognize key words, interpret the meaning and connect the benefit. Format Radio Brands serve as knowledge reference points. Functions, addresses, names and descriptions - repeated both on-the-air and through external marketing - sets out functional benefits and communicates them. Effective positioning sets out unique differences among competitors.

Establishing an effective brand name is important and setting one brand apart from others is essential.  Clear brand names like HitRadioZ or Info/Radio 101 connect identities to the brand.  Dial positions, place names and references to product benefits are useful as station brand names, all giving listeners information about the benefit to them. Format Radio Brand must reinforce that identity simply, clearly and continuously.

Brand names for radio stations and channels follow several informal rules. Old fashioned call-signs were retired long ago in Europe, though still used in North America. Most make reference to radio, as in Radio Lac (Switzerland) or Sveriges Radio (Sweden), or FM, as in FM104 (Ireland) or Mega FM (Portugal) or  antenna, as in Antenne Bayren (Germany). Local and regional landmarks, locations and geography are widely used in radio brand names, often with regional meanings; Thollon FM, Radio Chablais.

Public broadcasters identify individual services by number, like BBC 4 (UK) or Eins Live (Germany) or La Premiere (Belgium and Switzerland), emphasizing the producer as the brand rather than any individual channel. Broadcasters with single frequencies telegraph their address to listeners by including it in the name; 88.4 FM or FM 100. As radio brands become more multi-platform this rule is dying out.

Product descriptions are also popular in brand names. Talk oriented stations and channels use the brand name to set themselves apart; Info Radio, Sport Talk, France Info, NewsRadio (Denmark). France Culture

The new rules for radio brand names introduce appeals to consumers’ subconscious. Brand name specialists report the studies of psychologists about word forms and their impact. Words in English and other Western languages beginning with k’s, p’s and t’s are easy to recognize and remember. Certain words carry feminine or masculine connotations. Some evoke independence and others warmth.

One recent study suggests that brand names may specifically reside in the right side of the brain with emotions and symbols.53 Proper names and common nouns are part of the left side. Brand name choice allows broadcasters to establish a context for the radio brand – functional or emotional – depending on the attachment required to sustain the brand.

KISS is one of the most widely used radio brand names. Originally popularised by American stations, the name can be found in over thirty countries. Almost every European country has at least one radio station using the KISS brand name in some form. Many of these stations are dance music Format Radio Brands that also use logos adopted from one of the popular American KISS radio brands. Program content at the various European KISS stations may vary but the brand names symbolizes youth and fun and passion.

Other radio brands effectively use symbolic references. The French radio brand NRJ, pronounced “energy”, effectively reflects its style in the brand name. And the NRJ brand is one of the few European radio brands to take on pan-European value.  Heart FM (UK) stretches the emotional symbolism further.

Effective radio brand names convey information, hopefully enhancing the brand. Brand names are essential in setting apart radio brands. But there’s always a risk. Once chosen and used a brand name is difficult to replace and remove from the consumers’ memory. New rules for radio brand names are being adopted and applied. Radio brand names must have an appealing sound, creative structure, clear meaning and reflect symbolic values attractive to the target audience.

Public service broadcasters and supporters have openly criticized format radio. As radio broadcasting split into the binary – public and private – worlds, early private, commercial broadcasters largely copied the dominant styles of State broadcasters; broad, general interest programs. As Format Radio Brands became associated with private, commercial broadcasting, public service broadcasters criticized format radio as demeaning to the audience or somehow less creative. The last argument was that format radio was somehow evil. At root is the lasting competition between the public and private sectors over which definition will succeed.

Resistance to Format Radio Brand development has largely subsided. Commercial operators quickly found rapidly increasing audience shares. Public service broadcasters have developed Format Radio Brands, such as the highly successful France Info. The professional debate over format radio in Europe has been reduced to one by academics influenced by the public sector and proponents of community radio. This criticism misses two important points: structured format radio is easier for listeners to understand and audiences are increasingly defining the medium. The Format Radio Brand is a necessary step for giving consumers easy tools to articulate product benefits they understand.

The Format Radio Brand is functional and utilitarian, simple and easily recognized. Producers design and deliver a program to fit an easily defined target market. Most interaction with consumers is unnecessary. Sustaining a market share based on channel grazing listeners requires considerable marketing resources. Competitive advantage is at risk whenever a competitor simply matches the basic benefit. The audience, indifferent to low-involvement brands, moves quickly. Their tastes change quickly and are difficult for programmers to follow and impossible to lead. Even the structures of the Format Radio Brand – its most useful advantage - limit growth as consumers learn the language. Brand positioning - More music, all classic hits, weather five times each hour  - loses impact among consumers exposed to the marketing of many brands and freely able to compare. Competitors merely shove each other from side to side, often through positioning tactics. Commercial broadcasters find ad rates difficult to sustain. Station managers then shift strategies attempting to follow the audience. Brands cannot sustainably compete on the functional level and the short-term advantages of Format Radio Brands give way to definite long-term disadvantage.

"Format Radio Brands" is an excerpt from The Six Radio Brands