In addition to being a source of entertainment or information or companionship, a radio station is a community.
If lots of people want to be identified as members of your community, that’s a good thing for your station.
Not everyone who ever listens to your radio station, however, feels like a member of your community.
Even being a regular, faithful listener isn’t necessarily enough to make someone a member of your community.
In personality testing — for example, the long-established MMPI (Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory) — researchers long have been aware of the danger of a test taker’s results being skewed by the individual’s desire not to “look bad” to…well, to the computer that scores the results.
For example, one of the “yes/no” questions is, “At times I feel like smashing things.”
Perhaps that’s true for the person taking the test, but that person doesn’t want to be seen as having violent tendencies. So the test subject deliberately misreports his feelings, urges or behaviors.
That testing trap is called “Social Desirability.” That person doesn’t want to be identified with the group of people labelled “violent tendencies,” so he disavows any association with “those people.”
So what?
Originally I planned to play a radio commercial for you to point out that, if I guess correctly, violates Federal Trade Commission regulations.
My “guess” — and I’m willing to back it up with a large wager — is that “Jane” isn’t real. It’s someone who is being paid to read a commercial script, not someone who lost 25 pounds in four weeks as a result of patronizing the “medical spa.”
If I’m right, then Millennium Medical Spa had better hope their advertising doesn’t come to the attention of the FTC.
If Jane is a real patient success story, then it’s simply a poor commercial. Making reality sound fake really isn’t a smart strategy.
But as the radio commercial came to an end, another began. And my jaw dropped.
Give it a listen. How many people do you know who gladly would want to be identified as a member of this music radio station’s apparent community?
If that’s the image of that radio station’s community, it’s possible that “Social Desirability” will discourage some people to “forget” that they listen to that station.
That wouldn’t do much for the station’s word of mouth.
And if the station is in a rated market that relies on self-report rather than on Portable People Meters, it wouldn’t help the radio station’s ratings, etc.
(Lest anyone misunderstand: I’m not suggesting those advertisers should be banned from the station. But playing them back-to-back cheats those two advertisers and damages the radio station.)
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I once heard an ad for Pizza Place followed immediately by a similar spot for a medspa, followed immediately by a spot for KFC and in market 30 to boot.. sad isn’t it
I’d be surprised if anyone takes you up on your wager, Dan. Still, it appears that many radio advertising folks are unaware of the FTC’s recent Truth in Advertising requirements as they apply to “testimonials” and so forth.
So you’re saying that radio station probably doesn’t carry much weight with the community?
I’m guessing that part of the problem is the traffic director has neglected to make use of the feature in the traffic software that allows you to set up categories for advertisers so they are not scheduled back to back. Couple that with commercial breaks which are loaded in the on-air computer without human interaction and you’ll get this sort of thing happening all the time.
In the old days, the air personality could pull all of his or her commercials at the beginning of the hour and re-arrange the spot breaks if needed (and allowed). If this was a live air shift, there’s no excuse for the air talent not catching things and trying to seperate the ads.
On the other hand, back when I was a youngster on the air in Bismarck, ND, I had a lot of fun when the Monster Truck show came to town at the same time the local CBS affiliate was running some listener testimonial ads. The Monster Truck ad ended with the tag line “And the roof of the Civic Center is coming off!” and the first line of one of the TV station’s ads was a listener saying “That’s what I like to see in a newscast”. Of course I played those two ads back to back everytime they were scheduled. LOL