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Egocasting
What Is It? And How Can Your Marketing Take Advantage Of It?

Even though radio had evolved and proliferated to targeted niche formats decades before, it wasn’t until cable channels like MTV, CNN and the Weather Channel began to emerge in the 1980's, that a new type of broadcasting term, called "narrowcasting," was coined.

"Now, however", says New Atlantis: Journal of Technology chief editor, Christine Rosen, "with the advent of TiVo and iPod, we have moved beyond narrowcasting into 'egocasting' - a world where we exercise an unparalleled degree of control over what we watch and what we hear. We can consciously avoid ideas, sounds and images that we don't agree with or don't enjoy."	Click here to read the article. Click here to hear the interview.

"As consumers, we expect our television, our music, our movies and our books 'on demand'. We have created and embraced technologies that enable us to make a fetish of our preferences."

Even though this concept feels relatively new to the TV and media world, radio has faced a form of "egocasting" from the first time there were format competitors on the car radio. With the dozens of station choices and the ease by which a button can be pushed, listeners have been able to avoid ideas, sounds, songs, and words for years. And of course, there’s always the off button. Radio's early experience with egocasting-like technologies have taught that there’s more to success than music alone. Skillful personalities can bring a unique friendship to a listener. Creative promotions can entertain with theater-of-the-mind unmatched by any reality TV show. Personal marketing can touch a listener at home or at work with a tangible and personal benefit in exchange for their loyalty.
"We have embraced technologies that enable us to make a fetish of our preferences" -Christine Rosen, Editor, New Atlantis
Still today, radio competes with an entirely new host of competitors, which provide near-perfect individual choice true "egocasting." How do we address that? Tell them "you heard it on radio first?" Tell them "we’re local?" Maybe, but that may not be enough. According to strategic marketing expert Al Reis, we want to focus on the WEAKNESS in the competitors’ STRENGTHS. In this case, what’s the strength of the iPod? Personal control. So, then, what is the weakness? According to Rosen, "by providing the illusion of perfect control, these technologies risk making us incapable of ever being surprised. They encourage not the cultivation of taste, but the numbing repetition of fetish." Unlike the iPod or TiVo, (or the CD player, or the TV), radio brings the element of unpredictability, the surprise! The "oh-wow" song or the "I can’t believe she said that" bit, or the "they just called me with a free CD" promotion.
In fact, in a 1997 landmark study of TV remote control users, Lawrence Wenner and Maryann Dennehy found that a basic human impulse played the primary role in people’s use of the remote control: novelty-seeking. The remote control becomes the tool by which viewers reinsert the element of surprise in their TV viewing! But in many cases we fail to apply and exploit the element of surprise. Song lists are short and predictable, jocks that are canned and bland, and promotions that fail to connect with the vast majority who would never try to be the 9th caller in for the all-too-predictable (fill-in-the-blank) -Of-The-Day contest.
At the same time, there are certain principles that need to be served. First is listener expectations. We know that listeners turn us on to serve a purpose. We don’t want to break that trust. Similarly, we know that Arbitron still measures listening by direct marketing with the phone and the mail every single book. We still want to use tools that impact that methodology. At the same time, we need our product and our marketing communications to go beyond the expected to reach out to the individual one-to-one with a surprise call, a personal letter or a free CD.
For example, what if you provided a To-Go version of your station available via download or through a requested CD? Then your listeners can "listen to your station," in addition to the times they listen to you on the air, just like how TiVo users watch more TV. The research shows that TiVo seduces viewers with more TV by making television a more perfectly self-driven experience.
The STATION-TO GO can provide a host of surprises to inspire and connect to the listener’s loyalty and ego all while presenting another dimension of the element of surprise.
For more information on taking advantage of egocasting in your marketing, please contact Tripp Eldredge at dmr: 859-655-9200, ext. 103. dmr regularly updates our site with important new ideas and applications for marketing. Be sure to check back each month to get our latest insights and how they apply to the broadcast industry.