Name your Whales

No. The two whales lost in the wrong place at the right time had names: “Delta” and “Dawn.”

Says the Contra Costa Times:

Media outlets across the region had been clamoring for the public’s input in naming two humpback whales stranded in the Port of Sacramento in an effort to be the first to bestow beloved monikers on the mother and her calf.

Thereafter, we weren’t worrying about the fates of two whales, we were sweating the survival of “Delta” and “Dawn.”

So what, you ask?

Giving something a name bestows on it a personality. It lends a sense of humanity to that which isn’t human (animal, perhaps, human, no). It makes people care more.

That’s not to suggest that your station should receive a human name in order to automatically possess human qualities – those qualities need to be earned.

It does, however, mean that human qualities are exactly what your station – your brand – should aspire to.

You shouldn’t be dressing up a dummy as a typical listener and propping her in a control room. You should be dressing up a dummy as your radio station and then do the propping.

Listeners have relationships with people, not with things.

Unless those things have names and personalities that are characteristically human.