The “Radio Heard Here” spots – fruit of the bone-headed “Radio Heard Here” repositioning campaign – are finally available, and just in time for the holidays.
They’re the perfect gift for that radio station in your family that is already running a slew of free HD Radio spots and is hungry for more. Because after all, listeners love hearing advertising so why not air it for free! At this rate, radio will be “all pro bono, all the time.”
Not content to let radio have all the fun, the newspaper industry has announced that they will run full page head-scratchers “Newspapers read here” and the new NBC “bug” will read “The Office watched here.” Because a good idea is defined as one everyone adopts and nobody considers first.
To prove to you that the “Radio Heard Here” campaign is sheer genius, a summary of research results is provided, thanks to a “world-class research organization” that evidently wishes to remain anonymous, and who can blame them. Also anonymous is the research methodology and any indication of what the actual questions were. Not that this matters!
Now listen, Mr. Rehr over at the NAB, you may think the tone of this post is negative. And from your perspective, no doubt it is. But my interest is that we as an industry focus on our opportunities to grow and thrive in the future, not fritter away our attention and energy on ridiculous and distracting black holes which are designed less to propel radio forward and more to justify NAB’s role as the industry’s symbolic leader of last resort.
I’ll take real progress over vacant and wasteful PR manipulation that serves no useful purpose whatsoever, especially when it is ultimately destined to fail while distracting an entire industry from what it really needs to do to win.
Maybe you call that negative.
I call it smart.