“Did you call out my daughter’s name?  A friend told me to call.  I’ve never listened to your station before.”

I’m told there is a newspaper with a remarkable circulation rate – 100%.  Yep!  Everyone in town reads it.  The country wisdom of the publisher describes it in three words:

Names, Names, Names

He says that every Tom, Dick, and Harry, and every Donald and Hillary read his newspaper because they want to see if their name was in it. (“Made to Stick”, by Chip and Dean Heath)

What if your station was littered with the names and voices of your listeners?  A community of sounds, maybe introducing traffic, weather, birthdays, anniversaries, or lost dogs, and ultimately creating word-of-mouth.

What if the very design of your station revealed your listeners?

The power of a name was evident in social media when Starbucks recently offered a $5 eGift card to those who would “@tweetacoffee to” the Twitter handle of a friend.  “This can be between the closest of friends, the most distant of colleagues, or even between people who have not even had the chance to meet yet in person, but have connected in some way on Twitter.  We love the possibilities that the Twitter community can unlock to share acts of kindness with one another.”

What if…

…in a world of cookie cutter formats programmed remotely by people who couldn’t even locate your city on a map, the most effective viral marketing tool was simply the power of a name.

Interesting, isn’t it?

Five million fans lined the streets of Chicago to celebrate the Cubs’ World Series championship!  That’s almost double the number that actually attended a Cubs’ game at Wrigley Field this season.  What’s that about?

It seems that the idea of being a Cubs’ fan actually transcends being a Cubs’ fan.

“When you have a story that’s larger and more interesting than your product or service – or you – other people and companies will want to incorporate your story into theirs to share the halo effect.  Supporters beat customers every time.  But gaining supporters starts with having a story worth supporting.”
~Blake Mycoskie, “Start Something that Matters”

Too often, however, our radio stations are more like versions of the game day accounts that dissect OPS (on base plus slugging percentage), WAR (wins above replacement), and BAFM (batting average during a full moon).

But that is not what motivated 5 million to line the streets of Chicago to honor their Cubbies!

On the brick wall at Wrigley Field fans wrote tributes to family members that didn’t live to see the Cubs win the World Series.

“My grandpa was a Cubs’ fan, my dad was too, and me and my brother…”

Last I checked no one wrote anything on that wall about Dexter Fowler’s stolen base percentage, Jon Lester’s strikeout to walk ratio, or Aroldis Chapman’s velocity.

Why then do we insist on diminishing our stations to nothing more than a Christian music version of Spotify, stripping our stations of the very values worthy of creating five millions fans willing to line the streets of Chicago?  My friend Mike looks out his office window to bemoan a parking lot void of any car with a station bumper sticker.  I regularly walk through stations where I hear no employee, supposedly the most passionate of fans, actually listening to the station.

Here’s my challenge to you…

Listen to your station for the next thirty minutes.

What do you hear that transcends batting average and on base percentage?

What do you hear that is a mirror reflecting back the very identity of your listener?

What do you hear that could motivate millions to line the streets and write tributes in chalk to the ones they love?

It’s baseball’s biggest stage.  These games mean it all.  The dream of every kid who’s ever hit a baseball in his back yard.  And yet, at this penultimate moment in a millionaire player’s career they are willing to stop the game.  And hold a cheap handwritten cardboard sign.

What’s going on here?

“Major League Baseball, Stand Up To Cancer and MasterCard conducted a special in-game moment, with players, umpires, coaches and fans all pausing to hold up placards with the names of loved ones affected by cancer.”
~MLB.com

If we view it through the filter of what is has to do with baseball it makes absolutely no sense.  But if we view it through the filter of who were are as a community – as a family, we see that it is more important than just a game.

This campaign’s viral marketing taps into beliefs and values that just so happens to be at the heart of your radio station: celebrating family and friends, and reaching out to help others.  Beliefs and Values is not about sounding religious, it’s about connecting to things that really matter.

While the other radio stations are talking about what matters to them, maybe we can be talking about what matters to our listeners.

“There’s singing at people,
There’s singing to people,

There’s singing about how you feel…
Then, there’s singing about how THEY feel”
~Tim McGraw

This week’s Frost Advisory is authored by my colleague T.J. Holland, a very smart fellow indeed.

“When nobody is effectively ‘in charge’, you’re bound to get more people arguing over how things should be done.”
~Dean Burnett PhD.

You may have come to expect (and accept) that every election cycle will bring more and more mudslinging.  Yet this cycle, it seems the slung mud is inside the parties nearly as much as at the opposition party.  This sort of circular firing squad mentality is becoming part of the process as well.  Almost everyday there is a series of leaked documents that expose the internal espionage inside the parties.

Thankfully, WikiLeaks hasn’t released private messages within our own organizations.

Does your workplace suffer from your own form of infighting?  This is more than a programming versus sales discussion.

It’s about separate camps forming within because of lack of vision and leaders that unite.

Infighting is part of a larger type of group psychology.  Dean Burnett commented on political infighting in his recent article in The Guardian, “Why Political Parties Fall Apart:  the Psychology of Infighting.”

Are the current crop of politicians sufficiently capable “leaders”? A reliance on presentation and spin may mean they have an easier ride from most voters, but these qualities don’t automatically make you a strong leader.  In times of uncertainty (which seems to be 24/7 at the moment) a strong leader is very important for group unity.

It’s not surprising that curbing disunity comes down to leadership that is engaged.

How often do we spin poor ratings or a lackluster fundraising effort with spin instead of addressing the underlying issues behind the results?   The conversations after the explanation usually aren’t about how everyone bought into it.

Do we accept the results of a poor internal employee survey as a need for more self-awareness and change, or do simply send out a memo to the team letting them know “they’ve been heard” (or worse, conducting a “witch hunt” to find the dissenters)?  Does this lack of directness bring unity or division from those who are targeted?

After hearing breaks that consistently miss the opportunity to connect emotionally, do we take the time to coach up talent or do we shoulder shrug and complain about not having enough hours in a day to get the job done?  Your talent ends up alienated and silos are built.  It’s better to catch them doing something right and point that out.  That’s an easy first step.

It’s so easy to throw the word around, yet it’s really a challenge to a lead.  Be in charge, as your strong leadership will be the difference between a united workplace, or overseeing a group even Julian Assange would shake his head at.