Where Are Your "Exceptionals"?

So the recent Super Bowl scored almost 128 million viewers, and did it across numerous platforms, including Fox, Fox Deportes, Tubi, Telemundo and NFL digital properties. The streaming numbers alone were up 27% year over year.

That's a new record - the event's largest audience in history.

Now, would you call that the best game in Superbowl history?

Of course not (with all apologies to the Eagles, who were certainly my sentimental favorites).

Set aside the hugely expensive and spectacular ads and the love-it-or-hate-it halftime show, how do we comprehend that the content of the game itself was mediocre while the attention it delivered was world-record strong?

I thought you needed to have great content to garner great attention, right?

Wrong, my friends.

It's not at all unusual for the "best content" to take a back seat to the rest. Popularity in the marketplace is a function of many factors, including history and habit, buzz, personal interest, promotion, anticipation, and more. Being "the best" is only one ingredient to success and it's often not even the most important.

For any radio station, the first entrant into a format is almost always the most successful, no matter how many johnny-come-latelys appear down the road. It's rare for a follower to unseat the followed.

So does that mean there's no value in being "better"? Sure there is, because better brands do better than worse brands, all other things equal.

As long as all other things are equal.

Here's the key thing you need to grasp: People are attracted to what everyone is talking about. And that is called "buzz."

You don't buy buzz through marketing. You create it by being worth talking about. And no, it's not easy.

In my experience too many of our stations work very hard on the fundamentals while ignoring the "exceptionals."

The "exceptionals" are the things that stand out such that one person will tell another and give you the chance for two listeners rather than one. That's what generates buzz.

This is why stations need benchmarks.

This is why they need personalities who must be much more than kind, good-natured Christians.

This is why they need events.

This is why they need to do things in the community that go well beyond a tent at a music festival or flower show.

This is why billboards are less important than the "exceptional" message that's on them.

This is why you do Christmas music every December.

So ask yourself: What are my station's "exceptionals?"

And if you lack them, start building some now.

Mark Ramsey Media does audience research for Christian Media - Perceptual research, digital studies, donor studies, music studies, etc. Learn more here. Call Mark at 858-414-4191 or email markramsey@mac.com.

And if you want a strategy to solicit major donors to pay for your research, look here and download this Listener Impact Study solicitation for donors from WAKW-FM.

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