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Characteristics of Breakthrough News Brands
by Graeme Newell
gnewell@602communications.com
http://www.602communications.com

Every year my staff analyzes and catalogs thousands of TV station on-air promos from markets all over the world. It is a treat for us when we find that handful of inventive station managers who defy the odds and create breakthrough news marketing campaigns that decisively move the numbers. These special few stations tend to have three things that set them apart:

The station has found a brand identity that moves beyond the Xs & Os of basic news coverage.

They have built a brand that makes you sit up and say, “Wow, that’s different.” Their promos don’t look like promos. Their newscasts tell stories from a very different vantage point.

With breakthrough stations, the primary demonstration of the brand is in the product. The marketing just reinforces what is plainly evident in the show every day. This is very hard to do. Most newscasts are not different. If you have ever had the opportunity to watch all the competitor’s newscasts simultaneously, you know what I mean. TV news brands are some of the most myopic in the business. 80% of all news brands are one of these six brands.

Breaking News
Weather
Advocacy
Coverage
Time & Convenience
Investigative

News ratings are down all over the country and continue to decline. Yet despite our continued fall, we consistently stick with these same decades-old brands with wording that hasn’t changed since we were kids: “Our weather will keep you safe.” “We have lots of breaking news.” Cable got the message and reinvented its brand strategy. Why can’t we break out to more contemporary brands?

We stick with these brands because we are quite practiced at executing them on a daily basis. It’s just easier to do. We know how to showcase breaking news coverage. We understand how to build urgency around weather. The problem is that your competitors are probably pretty good at showcasing these content areas too.

WCCO in Minneapolis has a very non-traditional brand in its “know more” campaign. But most importantly it showcases specific content that continually demonstrates that brand every night. The promos almost make themselves because there is so much content within the show that features the brand:

WCCO's Good Question
WCCO's Reality Check
WCCO's In the Know

These are clearly differentiated content items that other stations don’t have. If you are the “breaking news” station, and your competitors are constantly selling their own breaking news coverage, how much traction can your brand make? If you are involved in a years-long doppler war with your competitor, you’re probably going to fight to a draw. Games of oneupmanship rarely produce breakthrough brands.

While weather, breaking news and investigations will be used to demonstrate your brand, they are not the branding end game. The brand is about the emotional drivers of the audience – not about how many live trucks you have.

Apple’s iPod did not try to play a feature war with other MP3 manufacturers. It invented a new game. Converse refused to play Nike’s game and created its own breakthrough brand. Great branders find new ways to connect with their audiences: Google, Starbucks, Aveda. Disney, Target, Saab, Ben & Jerry’s, Krispy Kreme, Corona.

They have found new ways to get inside their audience’s heads.

Stations with an intimate understanding of the proclivities and weirdness of their own local markets are the ones that break through. They don't just rehash a brand that worked across the country. Great research gives them great insights into the things that catch the emotional wind of their own market and sail them to ratings success. Because their brands don’t play it safe, people sit up and take notice. Their standout product and marketing create a viral buzz that gets new people sampling.

These station’s don’t just research how audiences feel about the news. They research how they feel about themselves. Certain markets are vengeful and want someone to pay. Others are hopeful and looking for heroes. Standard research that asks questions such as “Do you like breaking news?” just doesn't tap these drivers.

Unfortunately, as TV budgets are drastically cut these days, one of the first things to get the ax is audience research. Many stations have not done comprehensive studies in years. Worried managers tell me they now know very little about the true motivations of their viewers. Neilsen data provides a day-to-day tactical guide, but management teams are now being forced to rely on anecdotal feedback to gauge the audience's long-term motivators.

Primarily, this feedback comes from two areas – the daily call sheet and personal interaction. Unfortunately, these groups don’t usually represent the average viewer. Anyone who takes the time and energy to navigate a station’s switchboard and talk to the newsroom, probably has way too much time on their hands. And TV managers tend to move in more upscale circles. Our viewers tend to be much more downscale and financially strapped. The less money they have, the more they rely on TV to entertain their families.

If you don’t have money for research, then you must do it the hard way. You'll need to do it on the cheap. Start holding weekly listening get-togethers in your studios. Invite varying groups of everyday news viewers to come talk while enjoying a few pizzas. Don't talk - just listen. Don't talk about news. Ask them about their lives - what worries them, what makes them mad, and gives them hope. It is important that you make a real commitment to these. Do at least a dozen. Doing too few can give you a distorted view of your audience.

You'll quickly learn the real-life priorities that make them tick. These meetings will help you identify the emotional drivers that your newscast can integrate into the product and promotion.

They have a general manager with a clear plan for transitioning the product and the brand. She obsessively enrolls everyone in her vision.

One department head can rarely do this alone. If you do not have a GM with a clear vision, then it is important that the department heads come together and give her one. That means a department head team that rallies and manages up. You must do whatever it takes to play nicely in the department head sandbox.

Typically, the three people in the best position to create real change are the GM, News Director and GSM. For Creative Services Directors, the best strategy for success is not to blindly push your own agenda, but to merge your plan. Ally yourself with one of these more powerful departments and advocate a shared vision.

In situations like this, it is important that the News Director and the Creative Services Director be joined at the hip. Put any petty squabbles behind you. Somehow, some way, both of you must bend so you are in lock step. It also means that the department head may be executing tactics that he or she personally disagrees with. Get over it and move forward. Although the plan may not be their own personal plan of choice, it still has a better chance of success than a brilliant strategy that never gets out of the gates. There is strength in numbers.

This may mean slower progress in the beginning, but the power of a shared mission will eventually quicken the pace. Dwight Eisenhower was not the most capable field general, but he won World War Two by masterfully getting the titanic egos of Churchill, Montgomery, Patton, Stalin and Roosevelt to work together.

You must be one voice. Only then can you enroll your boss in your vision for the station. Stations without a zealous mission don’t break through.

Graeme Newell is a broadcast and web marketing specialist. His teasing seminars immediately raise news ratings, and he guarantees you will get results or his workshop is free.

A good tease will contain as few words as possible, getting to the point immediately. When attributing facts in a tease, make sure that attribution is absolutely necessary. For example, look at the phrase, "she says she's mad at the government." Do you believe her? Can we take that information as fact? If you truly believe a fact is true, consider leaving the attribution out of the tease. "She's mad at the government." There is no need to include "she says" if you are sure that fact is true.

Research budget get slashed this year? Well some good news is on the way. There are huge companies out there that are more than willing to give you their multi-million dollar research findings for free.

Each year Fortune 500 titans such as Unilever, Proctor and Gamble, and Ford spend tens of millions of dollars researching the precise emotional buttons their advertising must push to motivate a sale. Before they spend a dime on an on-air schedule, they test and re-test the effectiveness of each ad. These advertising pros use this info to mold spots for specialty cable channels. They tailor-make the ads to target the niche audiences these channels attract. In essence, these channels have become little behavior labs for marketers.

Every year the 602 Communications editors record and categorize thousands of ads from Madison Avenue, cable, and local TV stations. We analyze these ads and come up with specific visuals and messages that stimulate the emotional triggers that motivate TV viewing. Let me give you an example. After analyzing a few thousand ads, all aimed at mothers in their 30’s with children in the home, you will find four consistent emotional themes that show up.

In the past, most of our news products could easily be confined to one brand position.  We had a morning, noon, five, six and eleven news.  Although they were different shows with different styles, they all fit nicely into the basic product category of "newscast."  The standard branding routine has been to identify the exemplary features of your show, then tell the world why your product is superior.

As revenue from traditional broadcast channels continues to shrink,  product expansion is the order of the day.  New media, new channels and diversification are at the top of a marketing director's challenges. There is a desperation in the air.  The charge -  to develop new products and new revenue streams.  The trend is clear - traditional 5, 6 & 11 newscasts are slowly losing altitude and could be headed for a financial crash.

Death is a sad but omnipresent part of most newscasts.  Whether it is by natural causes or a grisly murder, all producers have faced the challenge of writing a tease for this obviously depressing topic.  Teases about death tend to be some of the strangest you will find in a newscast.  When facing the grim reaper, most writers instantly abandon any form of creative writing, falling back on hackneyed phrases with little meaning.  Many feel that any sort of creativity in this situation smacks of disrespect.

Most of us can spot a phony claim in a commercial from a mile off. You've probably seen the airline web site ads that promise "lower fares 'may' be available at our site." Right. I "might" be a millionaire in the future too. We've seen the weight loss products that claim "you could lose 'up to' 30 pounds." Those two little words clue into the fact that the product is probably a fake. You invite a friend to your party. She tells you "I just might be there." You know she is not coming. All of us have learned to sniff out conditional words in advertising. Most of us assume these hedging words hide some sleazy Madison Avenue tactics. These words clue us into the fact that the manufacturer may be trying to weasel out of committing to a product's real performance.

If you ask a typical newsroom staffer the target age of their news viewer, most will tell you they're after 18-54 year old viewers.  The truth is you just can't create a show that would appeal to such a wildly divergent group of people.  There is no such thing as a newscast that appeals to a college kid, a stay-at-home dad and a woman planning her retirement years.  The truth is that most news producers create a newscast they themselves would enjoy watching.  That means that by default, many newscasts are created by 20-something producers who know little about the desires or lifestyles of most of their audience, the older viewer.

For those of us who grew up in the 70s and 80's, great advertising was often synonymous with great cleverness.  The pun ruled the day.  On the old television series "Bewitched," the bumbling husband worked at an ad agency, and his clever witch wife Samantha was constantly saving the day by coming up with a magical advertising slogan that always included a pun:
"You'll flip over our pancakes."
"The best dog-gone vet in town."

This antiquated tradition of advertising puns still continues in television promos and teases today.  For some news writers, great teases are all about a continual string of witty antics. They'll jam two or three of them in a sentence.  For example, they will promote a dog show story with lines like, "This next story will leave you panting with anticipation, and hoping for a tasty treat when we return from the break, in two shakes of a dog's tail."  They see the tease as an unimportant whimsical outlet for humor.  It is a break from the more serious news topics - a place for a little journalistic horseplay.

Many producers find that beginning a tease with a statistic helps bolster the importance of their tease.  "Nine hundred children were put into foster care in the city."  The first sentence of a tease should always be an attention grabber.  It should exclaim, not explain.  Anything that requires analysis or critical thinking should be used sparingly.  Statistics can take a long time to convey and are often confusing.