Think about it.  TV stations spend literally millions of dollars in advertising exposure for their newscast brand statements.   You find them in most every station ID, all over the newscasts, on remote vehicles, billboards, newspaper ads etc.   Yet these brand statements remain invisible to local TV news viewers.

I have been researching brand statements for a couple of decades now - and the usual reaction I continue to see from viewers when we ask them to name a station’s brand statement is a blank stare.   We even try to help them with phrases like “Coke is it,”  “Avis tries harder,” etc.   And then ask, so what do the local TV stations use - you guessed it - more blank stares.

I saw it again last week when we talked to TV viewers in a western state.   One station in the market has used the same brand statement for nearly 20 years.  Not one person could tell us what it was!   My client has used the same brand statement for about 7 years - and one person correctly blurted out the slogan.

We have also tested brand statements in thousands of telephone studies where we tell them the brand - and ask them to link it with the correct TV station in the market.   Usually less than 40 percent can put the brand statements we give them with the correct station.

So now spin forward to today with the myriad of ways people can get your news stories.   My question is this:  Are brand statements really something you should be spending so much air time and effort  on at your station?

I am thinking no.  I am thinking it could be more powerful to research what viewers desire from your newscast and then spend all that air time  driving home how your newscast delivers on those desirable attributes.  

The point is this - would you rather be named as the station that has Coverage You Can Count On, or Local, Late Breaking News- or would you rather be the station with an emotional attachment to viewers - who say “they watch out for me,”  “they go after the powerful people and get answers” etc.  Why not spend your marketing time driving home those valuable attributes instead of trying (futilely it seems) to get viewers to remember some slogan?

Let me know what you think.   Let’s kick around this quandry.

Jim

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 14th, 2009 at 1:34 pm and is filed under Willi. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.