Interep's 7th "Power of Urban Radio" draws heavy-hitters
Interep hosted its 7th "Power of Urban Radio" yesterday in NYC under the theme, "The Emergence of the Urban Market as the New General Market," focusing on the integral role of African-American consumers in today's economic and cultural landscape, and marketers' rush to secure relationships with Urban consumers.
The symposium, attended by some 350 media professionals, featured co-hosts Wendy Williams, on-air personality for Superadio and WBLS-FM New York and ABC Radio Networks' Michael Baisden. Zemira Jones, VP/Ops, Radio One, Barry Mayo, SVP/Emmis Communications, and Charles Warfield, President/COO of Inner City Broadcasting were co-chairs of the event. Sherman Kizart, SVP, President/ Director of Urban Marketing for Interep, opened the event by restating Interep's commitment to Urban marketing and its quest to increase the share of advertising dollars for its Urban Radio clients.
A panel moderated by Ed Rutland, EVP/Matlock Advertising, brought together representatives from six Urban agencies to discuss effective strategies for delivering their clients' messages to multicultural customers. Sharilyn Franklin, EVP/COO of the Fuse Agency in St. Louis, was an outspoken advocate for radio saying, "Radio is the best way to reach the Urban consumer, even though advertisers are often enamored with television...radio is target marketing's secret weapon. Local Urban Radio hits the consumer where they work and play...clients need to change their perspective regarding radio, taking it more seriously and doing a better job of budgeting for the Urban consumer."
Other panelists included Aretta Baldon, Media Supervisor, RET Media Atlanta; Roy Brannon, VP/Multicultural Marketing, Camelot Communications Dallas; Ella Britton, VP/Account Management Director of Burrell Communications Group Chicago; Greg Smith, Group Account Director, Vigilante Advertising NY; Deborah Gray-Young, Media Director, E. Morris Agency Chicago.
A panel entitled "It Ain't Your Father's Customer Base: Building Revenue by Effectively Embracing Multicultural Strategies," explored how some of the nation's largest brands recognize and actively pursue the consumer power of African-Americans. The panel's moderator was Yvette Moyo, president and founder of MOBE and Real Men Cook. Panelists included Trey Hall/Quiznos, Gwen Kelly/ American Family Insurance, Larry Robinson/ St. Jude Children's Research Hospital and Carol Sagers/McDonald's and Clark Sanford, Sanford Marketing Consultants.
The liveliest of the day's sessions was a luncheon panel. Event co-chairs Zemira Jones, Barry Mayo and Charles Warfield took the hot seats, with Rich Russo, SVP/Director of Broadcast Services at JL Media, serving as moderator. Russo began, "I actually remember the first power of urban radio seminar - that seminar was informative and thought provoking and dealt with issues relating to our ability to reach the urban marketplace. So here we are today - 8 years later...Urban is mainstream, but marketers still struggle with how to embrace it. In most cases this represents nothing more than a myopic view of the urban marketplace, but in some cases it represents a gross miscalculation on the marketers' front due to more fragmented choices in markets...the fact that all stations can't be bought and there is the potential of over-delivering one segment of a market while actually neglecting a bigger one."
Russo's panel questions included: (1) Do you think this is an ethical way of doing business? And do you feel that it diminishes the credibility of the format and urban market itself which we are trying to build here? (2) What about some training for your sales people, so they can be educated enough to then educate clients about format nuances and markets and the African American consumer etc. There is not enough of that going on. (3) How about you broadcasters stop promoting mayhem and devote your energies to the plethora of the great non-violent product that is out there? What's the problem? (4) The division of our country into the red states and the blue states have spawned the Air Americas, but urban has seemingly avoided a true talk format, but with the success of the praise on the FM dials which I will cover next, do you see the potential of the some of the am signals becoming that? Such as radio one's buzz in Cincinnati which is an AM talk format geared towards the AA community. (5) Let's praise the praise, I feel this is the most long overdue and creative format to come along in a long time, but what do you feel the longevity of this is? (6) Do you believe you have a community responsibility that should take precedence over ratings? What are you doing to fix this mess?
Russo tells RBR it was a supercharged session in which the participants handled some tough questions with flying colors: "The three guys were as good as you can expect in a panel like that. It got confrontational at times, but never uncomfortably confrontational. I just received a head on slam piece from Hot97 station blatantly slamming WBLS. That came up at the panel, and that got some fire going. And during the Q&A the new GM of WBLS called Barry Mayo out on it, 'How could you send out a piece like that?!' These guys literally stood up there and took the difficult questions and handled them as professionally and honestly as possible. A couple times I was put on the spot as well! I think the biggest issue really came down to the tactics of selling and what these guys are up against in getting marketers to buy Urban."
Addressing question #2, Jones said, "I believe that we're training better today. We have better managers and I believe that we have better leadership. A lot of our sales people, especially our African-American salespeople, didn't have jobs in the industry [like today]. We ended up taking them through that learning curve. But I'll put our sales people up against any format, or any team of salespeople. I say that because it's been a hard sell and our people have to be better and they have to come with more information to explain the obvious."
Are you reading this from a forwarded email?
