Brandcasting with Snapple and WFNX
Jay Coleman, EMCI President, organized a deal that took WFNX-FM Boston commercial free for six weeks this summer, with Snapple as sole sponsor. He calls the promotion "brandcasting," and it's gotten quite a bit of interest from broadcasters.
Yesterday, Jay talked about the Brandcasting model (8/28/06 RBR #167).
How did you put Snapple/Cadbury together with WFNX?
Well it was a combination of a lot of people. We brought in Bo Phillips who acted as our radio consultant and he worked with FNX's program people and the Snapple team to really create the on-air sound. It was first and foremost what do they want to do with their own programming mix? For 'FNX they tweaked it a little bit and went more towards the greatest hits of Alternative during that period so there is a little bit of a tweaking on their side. The rest of it was the station working with Snapple in designing and on-air sound and some promotional elements that could run through the whole campaign so there's a consistency to it and Bo and his people worked with the station programming people to really help develop that sound. Particularly the commercial, the Snapple branding aspects.
What sort of feedback have you gotten so far from the station?
It's a little early for getting exact ratings, so a lot of it has been very, very qualitative. The station had scores and scores of emails from consumers applauding the idea. I think the biggest disappointment that the consumers seem to have all the way through this was why is it only six weeks? Initially when this program was designed it was for the whole summer and due to budgetary considerations we just couldn't make that happen. I think if there's one thing we've learned from this is that in planning ahead I would recommend if anybody were to do this in the future that I believe six weeks is probably a little short. I think a whole season is what you really want to do-whether it's the fall or the summer, but 100-days.
In retrospect, assuming you could budget for this and plan it out in advance, I would recommend that people do this definitely for a minimum of one quarter whereby the consumer has a chance to hear about it, to build some affinity with it, to sample the sound, to kind of become engaged with the station and the brand.
Is this something that a station could consider doing 365, 24/7, brand after brand?
It depends on their metrics. I think it depends on a lot of things. I've taken a lot of looks at this and as radio starts to move into this hi-definition format and you have a lot more fragmentation...
Like the extra HD-2 formats?
Exactly, if you take a look at where we're going in the future with commercial radio where there will be more stations and more choices for the consumer, with new hardware out there I believe it could be done on an ongoing basis. We're taking a hard look at that very model ourselves whereby it could be a 24/7 brandcasting platform on an ongoing basis, meaning a full year or more.
What about inquiries you've received from other stations?
I think this thing opened up some people's eyes. I think a lot of radio stations who in the past had talked to advertisers about "commercial free" blocks or weekends really applauded the fact that someone stood up and said we're going to do this for six weeks. We got a lot of calls from station groups and managers trying to get a little more of a handle on what we did and trying to pull the covers back and get a chance to take a look at the details, particularly some of the economic metrics on the dollar side as well as the on-air sound and a lot about the integration.
It's not just what happens on air, a lot of what made this interesting in Boston was what Snapple did off-air from a PR standpoint, from an off-air media perspective whether it be print or outdoor. In order for this to really work and make it a win-win I believe it can't just be what's on the air. It has to be a multifaceted communication strategy in that city because you're trying to gain share, you're trying to bring in new listeners and at the same time you're trying to create something, a buzz, with consumers and give them to say, "Hey that's cool. Wow that's interesting." I think you're trying to build word of mouth out there and as you know word or mouth takes a little bit of time to get going and that's one of the reasons why I believe you need to do this thing for a full season and not just for several weeks.
Tomorrow: What stations might be a good target for this?
