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Welcome to the October issue of Key Notes - Marketing Keys' monthly newsletter. We hope everyone's fall season is off to a great start! Our goal is for you to be informed and entertained with the latest media and marketing happenings quickly and efficiently. Enjoy!

Recently, digital marketers have been so focused on display, better ad-tech and creating experiences on the ever-expanding list of social platforms that they've managed to largely ignore a traditional medium that's becoming increasingly sophisticated right under our noses (well, our ears): radio.

 

Radio is ripe for a renaissance. In the early 2000s, radio's significance as a leading advertising channel started to wane -- or at least the perception of it did -- as attention, and then dollars, shifted to digital.

 

The result? Many bad jingles and poorly executed direct marketing. And while TV and digital may be advertisers' media of choice when it comes to branding, it's worth mentioning that radio retains its place as the most widely used mass-communication channel in the world. The 13,000 radio stations (about 8,800 FM, 5,000 AM) broadcasting across the U.S. together reach over 94% of the U.S. population 12 years and older each week.

 

As much as we talk about the phone being the second screen to TV and how our audience is multitasking, it's more plausible to think about looking at your phone and listening to the radio at the same time. It's also a lot more interactive than TV. You can call in to shows, do shout-outs, make requests -- pretty interactive!

 

As formats like Vine, Instagram Video and Cinemagram show, even with zero time restraints, people still are attracted to digestible nibbles of content, a fact that should only make 10, 15 and 30-second radio spots more enticing.

 

A recent example was Little Caesars' "Do Not Call," an integrated radio and online campaign by Barton F. Graf 9000 that explored customer curiosity and reverse psychology, relying on radio to do a lot of the awareness legwork in the beginning.

 

And of course there was the popular "Dumb Ways to Die" campaign by McCann Australia, a cause-marketing effort -- for preventing injuries on the country's rail system -- at the root of which was an original and catchy song. The success of that campaign, which won McCann Melbourne a Grand Prix Radio Lion at Cannes, was proof positive that creatives need to reconsider radio as a medium for their clients, too.

 

Instead of radio being an advertising afterthought, it can be a pretty great source of inspiration. In the age of social media and composing tweets and six-second Vines, radio doesn't seem quite so limiting.

And contrary to the production costs and time associated with TV, radio creative can be executed for a fraction of the cost and in a significantly faster timeframe, giving advertisers the flexibility and agility to adapt campaigns on the fly.

 

Similar to the best digital campaigns, marketers are now able to tie metadata with GPS, enabling customized, targeted radio ads and content. And while this is obviously easier in digital radio, terrestrial radio is coming along.

 

We're in the business of investing in new ways of storytelling, so let's reconsider the value of radio in the marketing mix.

  

This weekend, Hooters, the original chain with hot wings and even hotter servers, will begin pushing its 30th birthday campaign that includes inviting back 300,000 former waitresses to celebrate on Oct. 4. Maybe the women who show up will be scantily clad in their old work uniforms, maybe they won't. Either way, the brand hopes they snap Instagram photos and post them with the hashtag #stepintoawesome.

 

Hooters and the photo-sharing site seems like a natural fit - just as other male-focused brands that promote female sex appeal like Esquire are embracing Instagram. Hooters has garnered 29,000 Instagram followers in only the last few months by leveraging the aforementioned #stepintoawesome.

 

Hooter's birthday TV spots will appear during Fox broadcasts of college and pro football games throughout today and Sunday.

Marketing Keys has placed ESPN and NFL Network :30s for Monday Night Football and Thursday Night Football respectively on Comcast locally in the Chicago market.The brand also rolled out a new logo and wants to reshape public perception, though other rebranding details are few. 

 

For months, Hooters has teased out the idea that it's going to change its waitresses' well-known white-low-cut-tanktop-orange-shorts ensemble.  It's still unclear what direction the brand is going.

 

On Oct. 4, it will give away free wings for a year to one consumer on the East Coast and another on the West Coast. In the meantime, to promote its 30th birthday, its ads will highlight 30 percent off merchandise and menu items all through next week.

Did you see that ad in Chapter 3?

 

You know what would really improve books? Ads on every page! Classics likeWuthering Heights, War and Peace and A Tale of Two Cities tend to drag in the middle. Coupons for Quaker Chewy S'Mores Granola Bars would really brighten up those dull chapters.

 

Which brings us to the latest self-promotional marketing stunt from Jason Sadler. He's best known for building a business based largely on wearing corporate T-shirts, and was last spotted selling his last name for a year to Headsets.com in exchange for $45,000. Now, he's writing a book called "Creativity for Sale" and selling ads on each of its 200 pages.

 

An ad on page 1 costs $600. Each successive page is $3 less (page 2 costs $597, page 3 is $594, etc.). Also, the front and back covers are going for $20,000 and $10,000, respectively, and the front and back inside flaps are $5,000 each. The author is aiming for a pre-order date of May 15, 2014 (his 32nd birthday). The hardcover will retail for between $14 and $18, with the e-book version priced around $9.99.

 

Thirty pages were sold in the first 30 minutes after the project site launched today, along with the inside front flap, purchased by GoStats.com.

 

The book will contain Sadler's stories, lessons, struggles, mistakes, and successes he went through while building his innovative businesses, like IWearYourShirt.com. Sadler also writes about creative people who are doing things they love and making money doing them, and, of course, the SponsorMyBook project and how he looked at the process of writing and marketing a book in a completely unique way.

Until next month, may all of your marketing dreams and goals
come true! And - if they don't - we are here to help.