A legendary broadcaster recently asked me, “If you claim that your format can be so transformational, why are the stations so ordinary?”

Gulp.

Ken and Barbie in the morning, who replaced Ken and Barbie before them and few even noticed.* Nice Christian people talking about nice Christian things to nice Christian people.

Nice, indeed. But clearly not transformational to a listener’s life.

The recent campaign from Edward Jones is a great example how an industry known for marketing its gobbledygook of charts and graphs and financial lingo can reach deeper to communicate to the values of its customer.

“Find your rich.” focuses on what is of value to people rather than a word salad of stockbroker terms.

“What does it mean to be rich? It could mean spending time with the ones you love or just living life on your own terms. The key to being rich is knowing what counts.”

Click link to view:

https://www.ispot.tv/ad/6w3n/edward-jones-rich

Our format is about what people care about most. And they would care about it even if we weren’t around. (That’s the litmus test, in fact).

It doesn’t matter what you do if what you do doesn’t matter.

*I’ve seen research where listeners didn’t notice that a talent left the station years ago. But that’s a Frost Advisory for another day.