What are you planning?

The two most powerful words in marketing and promotion are “new” and “improved”.

I’ve posted before about the “we love new” mantra in former days at GCap, but this ins’t about that. There is some similarity I suppose because for established brands, individuals or products, evolving and trumpeting that renewal is important.

There is a key time coming up very soon. SEPTEMBER is huge for the lifestyle reset of consumers and your listeners. Is the time of the year, then listening patterns get back to some semblance of normal after the upheaval of summer. Schools go back, university goes back, traffic increases in the rush hour and the mindset changes back to the regular routine.

This is a powerful time to introduce change, to refresh and renew. The lifestyle of listeners matches it, and so its an ideal time. There are also some risks to just sounding the same as you always have done. Think about it- the last time the ‘feeling’ was the same would have been at the other end of the summer and so tuning back in again in September and finding “the same old, same old” can be a bit of a damp squib. True there is some comfort too in the recognisable and familiar, but up against something which might be familiar and refreshed, you might be on at a disadvantage.

If you have not thought about where you might refresh- then now is kind of the last chance you have to do something worthwhile and get the planning sorted. I always used to like the Tracy Johnson concept of going through everything you might have in a show and putting them all into one of 3 folders- Repeat, refresh, refuse/replace. What are you doing that you can absolutely keep? What are you doing that could do with a refresh and renewal? What are you doing that you can file in bin (to be replaced with something new). The idea is that your content sounds familiar and good, but with enough “new and improved” for existing, lapsed and new listeners.

Spend the time NOW, combing through your show if you are on air, your station if you are a programmer, and your portfolio if you are a senior manager. The timeline is very tight for September, but you might just about make it happen in time of you start right now.