The Return Of Buzz

There are moments in life that shatter what little self-esteem you may have and, in my case, be one of those wakeup calls that shakes you to the core. Like 10,000 USA Todays going "thwap"outside my hotel room door at 4 am. I may be 47, but I'm a very, very immature 47. Mentally I stopped maturing about the same time as Kerry Brown sprouted her boobies -- ie: somewhere in mid-6th grade.

I'm not afraid of growing old, but I fight it by holding on to my stunted emotional growth with a death grip. So when I was at one of the stations that I work with, standing in as a judge at their "Idol" event, and two drunk young women who'd been flirting with us at the judges table said, "You're cute. My mom would like you," no court in the world would have conv ... I digress. Or when I got booked into a hotel hosting a convention of sorority sisters and called the front desk at 10 p to get them to force the girls in the next room to "SHUT UP. GEEZ. I'm trying to sleep here..." I called Clifton and told him, "I think I just became my dad." That was pretty depressing.

And when I try to explain the concept of Buzz Marketing to programmers under, say, the age of 35, and I'm met with a blank stare, I feel like that old dude who used to hang around the college station years after graduating, telling us how we were all fucking idiots.

2008, in terms of radio promotions, was a pretty sucky year. It wasn't a sudden thing. It had been getting worse over time.

(This is spoken to the U.S. stations, not the Canadians. One of the PDs asked me what the difference was and what was so great about Canadian stations? He said this in the kind of sneering tone one uses when they hear their ex is dating again and is frankly way, way happier then they were, say, just a year ago. I replied, "Hmmm ... listenership is steady if not growing; they're fun and entertaining; I've yet to hear ONE of the BS excuses for being lame that I get down here; they don't have some VP sending out new initiatives and filters every three months; product comes first; they are making lots of money; I've yet to see one budgetary personnel cut, and they still 'get' that we're in the Entertainment Industry and what's between the music is still the key ingredient in the battle." He shut up.)

In 2008, I remember radio in the U.S. doing two things promotionally that I recall. And even that isn't entirely true. B-94 in Pittsburgh did something that I remember thinking "Damn, that was cool. That should have been my idea." John Jay and Rich did something cool, but I forget what it was.

That's about it. (On the other hand, the Canucks did so many cool things that they all blur together. But I can tell you that I got a lot of e-mails from U.S. PDs who were startled that this kind of stuff is allowed, "I mean, you can't start a station by playing Christmas music in April" or "Losing the 9 from 99.1 Hits FM? You can't mess with the way you identify the station!")

So, to sound like an old dude, what radio used to do before it over-thought stuff, was to make noise. Or, be loud. I once went around a station and put up posters that said, "Be Loud!" Because we're in a shouting match with every other station in town. Whoever makes the most noise, wins. That's the essence of promotions. And everything is an opportunity to be loud and make noise.

Valentine's Day is coming up? How can we be loud with that? Well, as I heard Tommy Kramer say, "If everyone is doing something, don't do it." Being different is a way to be loud.

Radio used to be about buzz. We didn't have the resources and funds to put up an outdoor campaign that supported a $100,000 Free Money Birthday Game. We did stuff; we seized every chance to create buzz. Buzz is unbeatable. Buzz is viral. Buzz is punishing when you are on the receiving end of it.

I went from a station that spent $200,000 a book to a station that had $1,100 a month, was the #1 FM in town usually, and had a Promotion Department of one. Me. We did amazing, spectacular, historic, often f'ed up stuff. Because we had to.

When you launch a new format or morning show, your goal, I'd assume, would be to be the center of attention in the market. In the past year my clients, at the cost of ZERO money, destroyed, emasculated, gutted and eviscerated no less then four launches. How? With buzz.

The day of the launch, we threw a curveball. After a steady diet of fastballs, we hung a breaking ball and the audience, en masse, swung. And buzzed.

I entered '09 dispirited. Like all of you I'm sure. This industry had become so sterile, so chlorinated and tight, that such basic stuff as call-ins from the beaches in the summer seemed an extravagant gesture that needed to pass a corporate-dictated filter.

And then, over the past couple of weeks, from deep in the frigid soil, little seeds of buzz have begun to bloom. It's almost staggering. One of the stations reached out to me and they had something as simple as a trip for two to Orlando. Could have done some lame "January Jetaway," but he surprised me; he asked for an idea that would, and these were his words "Create some buzz for the station."

Last year's Super Bowl promotions were a blur of boring viewing parties, or worse ... nothing. This year? There were half-dozen bits that were better then anything I'd seen in the past 16 years on this job. Ditto with Valentine's. Cool, out-of-the-box, buzz-generating, water cooler-talking bits. The thought of what April Fool's (an official holiday for me) will bring makes me physically excited.

Radio has re-discovered buzz. Why? Because it doesn't cost anything. Because it's the basic core value for what a member of the esteemed Entertainment Industry should be doing.

Think like Monty Hall. Think like Steve Spielberg. If the two of them were called into a radio station conference room and asked to create a Valentine's promotion for the morning show that involves a diamond from a jeweler, do you think they'd have people register on the website? Please...

Buzz can be as simple as a creative nuance with how you end the show on a Friday: "And before we leave, obviously, like everyone, our thoughts and prayers are with the family of Miley Cyrus." That's it. Try it.

Buzz can be created by doing the opposite. Everyone is doing green beer at a bar for St. Patricks Day, do pink beer as a fundraiser for Breast Cancer at a St. Boobies Day event.

The competition is going to trot out an Easter Egg Hunt for Easter? Do a theater-of-the-mind remote from a restaurant (the latest of over 300 franchises nationwide) that serves only meals prepared from rabbit. The other other white meat. McBunnies. Cost? Nothing.

Theater-of-the-mind is free. Radio operates without a visual (unless we want to include web elements) so we can get deep into the drama and excitement and fun of making this sound larger then life.

There's no doubt that this is a horrible, near-apocalyptic time for the industry. And one of the lifeboats we have is making noise and creating buzz and being heard. Because that's what we used to be good at. And necessity has returned it to us.

Another way to look at it is D.E.B.B.I.E. ... I was at one of our stations and their regional guy was in with some new initiative. It somehow used "Integrity," "Platform" and "Brand" ... in one mind-numbing mission statement that I think he stole off an insurance company's HR website.

So I wrote 'D.E.B.B.I.E." on sheets of paper and placed them all around the station. He looked befuddled. "What does that mean?"

"Don't Ever Be Boring. It's Evil."

And it's true. We can get through this with the resources we have. We need to be creative. We need to work differently than we have before, or at least haven't for years.

And you need to be loud.