Program directors are usually good at creating imaging and production pieces for a radio station, but what about personality imaging? Whether it’s a simple personality positioning campaign or a series of promos, stations should use every opportunity to spotlight character traits. Personalities can be stars if they’re positioned and promoted to increase their profile.
Most programmers schedule recorded elements that say the show’s name. Some even produce introductions for talk breaks. But let’s take that one step further. The best imaging acts as an identifier and a marketing message to position character traits so listeners get to know the personalities.
This is important because listeners become fans because of likable personalities that inspire loyalty. That’s far more reliable than counting on listeners to become devoted to a station because of the collection of songs.
Personality-based imaging that spotlights character can accelerate the process by showcasing traits that support desired personality attributes.
Here’s how imaging that spotlights character and personality can sound on the air.
How To Do It
Traits: Identify character traits you want the audience to recognize and appreciate. This will usually be found in the Character Profile. Each promo should be designed to emphasize the desired traits.
Theme: Find a theme for the campaign to make it more memorable and familiar. It’s also easier to produce new elements. Below are several examples.
Shell: Create a produced shell with work parts. Assign one person the responsibility of regularly updating the campaign with fresh content.
Awareness: Pay attention to what’s said on the air. When a funny or interesting comment is made, isolate the audio and insert it into the shell. The clips can be comments taken out of context as long as they complement desired character traits.
Set Up A Campaign: Start with a library of at least 10 produced pieces for each campaign.
Update: Make a commitment to add at least one new element daily and retire the oldest element. With a library of 10 tracks and adding just one new element per day, the library will turn over every two weeks (10 weekdays).
Recycle: Keep expired elements to recycle later. Most of the produced pieces will be evergreen.
Program It: For best results, rotate produced elements the way a music director would program music. Make sure each element rotates through hours and quarter hours before repeating at the same time. For example, if you have 10 tracks and play two per hour, each track would repeat every 5 hours. That’s a great rotation for a four hour show.
Rotate: Create a “rotator” cut in the automation system or the music scheduling software, depending on how promos and recorded elements are managed.
Scheduling And Programming
Here are three ideas for fitting the imaging into a programming clock:
Transition out of content into commercials: In this case, produce them with a quick start to end a segment. Reinforcing the names puts an exclamation point in the content. For example: “Peppy And Zippy…(Insert audio)…Peppy and Zippy, mornings on WXXX.”
Transition out of music into a talk break. start with a very short music bed that transitions out of music. The bed sustains past the end of the produced elements as a transition into the talk segment.
A stand-alone promo for the show: The series could be used as a promo that runs during the show out of commercials, between songs, and even outside the morning show. The outro would be produced to drive tune-in for the next day’s show.
Conclusion
Enhancing personalities as a primary reason to listen should be an ongoing goal for every show and station and that can be achieved with a creative approach that goes beyond simply mentioning a name.
There are many tools to achieve this, including name-tagging in conversations, re-imagining the programming clock to allow more frequent and consistent personality presence, and using produced assets to reinforce character traits of the personalities.
Consider every opportunity to support character branding. Then apply some of these principles to help the audience fall in love with the personalities.
Pic by mstandret for Envato Elements.
Tracy Johnson is a talent coach and programming consultant. He’s the President/CEO of Tracy Johnson Media Group. His book Morning Radio has been described as The Bible of Personality Radio and has been used by personalities worldwide.