A sea of red, it has been described. For the past 25 years in my other life I’ve served as the public address announcer for the St. Louis Cardinals’ spring training. That means for the month of March I’m surrounded by visitors from the Midwest and beyond that embrace the identify of Cardinal Nation. I know many of their names. And yes, they wear red.

A brand is much more than just a combination of attributes.

Attributes are the elements that any station can do. Songs, deejays, contests, information elements like traffic and weather. A brand is bigger than that.

I was driving along minding my own business when the announcement came on the radio for “The National Bereavement Conference 2024.”

“Egad!” I thought. Were they talking about an amazing get together of caring people that come alongside those whose lives are forever changed due to the loss of a loving spouse? You’d never know it by what sounded like the label to a file folder.

There is no promotion so brilliant that it can’t be made utterly ineffective through the presentation of data, such as a list of dates and times.

Don’t worry! I’m not going to ask how many times you play “Easter Parade” by Judy Garland and Fred Astaire.

Easter, from a programming perspective, is not like Christmas with 27 different versions of “Mary, Did You Know?” that we can play.

But the principle is the same.

A brown-eyed five-year-old looked in my eyes and said, “I don’t want to be alone.”

This wasn’t in response to being left in aisle 7 at Costco for less than ten seconds. This wasn’t a response to some other recent event in his life. This was a reaction to the human condition: we don’t want to be alone.

The people in the white coats have a name for it. It’s called “monophobia.”

Remember chemistry class? Memorizing the table of elements. Learning about atoms.

A peek through the microscope at the periodic table of your radio station would reveal only two elements. MUSIC and WORDS.

Our format can be either…

…a bunch of songs that people don’t know by artists they’ve never heard of…

or…

… stories and songs about the most important things in our lives.

The former results in a station with a one share. The latter results in a station that has the potential to be a market leader.

Have you ever wondered why health clubs, weight loss products, or stop smoking schemes seem to advertise most at the beginning of a new year?

Folks in white lab coats say there is a psychological reason for it. (Perhaps you’d like to take notes)

“When we enter a new time period our relationship with our past self is weakened and it becomes a little bit easier to change our behaviour … If you want to disrupt a habit , target your messaging to the start of new time periods.”

Richard Shotton, “The Illusion of Choice”

On last week’s show, I shared that the beginning of a new year is a good time to review the basics.

At my church, the pastor takes the first two Sundays of each year to restate the purpose and vision of the church. Fitness clubs and diet plans often base their marketing on people’s desire to return to the basics and embrace new habits.

So… let’s go back to the basics.

The beginning of a new year is a good time to review the basics. At my church the pastor takes the first two Sundays of each year to restate the purpose and vision of the church. Fitness clubs and diet plans often base their marketing on people’s desire to return to the basics and embrace new habits.

Legendary football coach Vince Lombardi began every training camp with the words, “Gentlemen, this is a football.”

Those are the candid words of a top talent I was attempting to lure into the Christian music format.

I reckon he knew how to get my attention.

“If your station can be transformative in someone’s life as you claim, then why do you spend 99% of your time focusing on the nuts and bolts, the songs, the artists, the deejays, and features any radio station in any format can do.

Why don’t you focus on what matters most?” he says from an outsider’s perspective.