The Media Audit Contest Entry

One month.

Five presentations.

$150,000 new, net cash.

And it's a public radio station with a classical format.

Our sales staff had ignored KBYU-FM for more than a decade. We thought of it as a weak player - a little sister radio station cuming 80,000 listeners vying for the attention of two sales reps who also have a local TV station cuming 750,000 and a national TV network serving 45 million households. As a sales staff, we had always focused on TV. TV contracts were much larger.

In August 2007 we decided to sell Classical 89 in a radically different way. Instead of relying on a series of one-on-one presentations, we decided to invite groups of business owners to lunchtime presentations. And instead of selling brief, small dollar flights, we decided to sell relatively expensive annual sponsorships.

The concept is simple and wonderfully enticing. We invite business owners to sponsor Classical 89 for an entire year. We guarantee every daypart. We guarantee tremendous frequency. In short, we guarantee that every Classical 89 listener will hear every sponsor an almost unquantifiable number of times.

We also guarantee that our annual sponsors will receive all of our unsold inventory throughout the year.

Worst case scenario: for $833.33 per month, a business gets to make 277,000 impressions on one of the most affluent, best educated audiences in Utah. Over the course of a year, the package generates 3,325,000 impressions. And costs $10,000. That's the worst case scenario.

The best case scenario yields 554,000 impressions per month or 6,650,000 impressions per year. And it still costs just $833.33 per month.

The determinant between 3,325,000 impressions and 6,650,000 impressions is the number of annual sponsors and the number of spot buys throughout the year.

Once we established the offer, we started digging into The Media Audit for prospects.

The Media Audit revealed that Classical 89 listeners are 147 percent more likely to have an advanced college degree. They're 85 percent more likely to be business owners, partners or corporate officers. Their education translates into great jobs and great jobs mean lots and lots of money.

How much money? Twenty percent of Classical 89 listeners enjoy household incomes of $100,000 or more. They're 85 percent more likely to have $250,000 in liquid assets. They are 500 percent more likely to own a home worth a million dollars or more.

The Media Audit made prospecting easy. We made lists of real estate developers, luxury car dealers, arts organizations, bookstores, music stores, travel agencies and a number of other categories that appeal to a well-educated, affluent clientele. Then we started calling.

The calls were terribly simple. And they were terribly effective. Even the voice mails we left generated results.

"Hello, this is Ron Cook with Classical 89. Did you know that Classical 89 listeners are more than twice as likely to own a Mercedes as the average adult in Utah? Did you know that they're two and half times as likely to plan to spend more than $30,000 on their next car? Next week we're hosting a series of lunchtime presentations to introduce potential new sponsors to our station. And lunch is on us. Can I talk you into a free lunch?"

We followed up all of our calls - even the voicemails we left - with an email invitation to lunch. We attached a chart or two from The Media Audit showing how well the Classical 89 audience matched the business' target audience. And the replies started rolling in.

Over the course of a few weeks, we made a couple of hundred phone calls. About 50 business owners accepted our invitation to lunch. The vast majority had never been on our air before. Most had never even heard of Classical 89 before.

The luncheon presentations utilized The Media Audit heavily. After beginning the presentation with a very brief introduction to our station and its format, we dived into charts from The Media Audit. We tailored the charts for each presentation to reflect the business owners in the room.

Luxury car dealer? "The Media Audit shows that Classical 89 listeners are 50 - 400% more likely to drive a luxury car, depending on the brand. For example, about 2,500 of our listeners currently drive Audis, and their average household income is $125,000. If you sell two cars because of your Classical 89 sponsorship, you'll get your $10,000 back - and anything more than that is gravy."

Real estate developer? "The Media Audit tells us that 3,500 of our listeners currently live in homes worth $1,000,000 or more. Their average household income is $175,000. Classical 89 listeners are 500 percent as likely to live in a million dollar home as the average adult in Utah. Would it be worth $10,000 to you to make a minimum of 3.3 million impressions on that audience? "

Of the 50 business owners who attended our presentations, 15 bought sponsorship packages, resulting in a total of $150,000 in new business. That's not a lot, I suppose, by commercial radio standards. But in that one month, we quadrupled the amount of sponsorship revenue that Classical 89 generated in all of the previous year.

And we can hardly wait to do it again next year. We expect to double Classical 89 revenue again in 2008.

It would be nice to win $300 in the monthly contest. It would be nicer still to win $1,000. But the prize money is dwarfed by the money in our paychecks because of The Media Audit.

Thanks to Bob Jordan, to our terrific rep Rick Gardner, and to each of the rest of you who makes The Media Audit the best sales tool in all of broadcasting!

I'm attaching a copy of the PowerPoint presentation that we gave at the luncheons.

Sincerely and most appreciatively,

Ron Cook
Corporate Support Director
BYU Broadcasting
2000 Ironton Blvd.
Provo, UT 84606
801-422-8412 (office)
801-369-4330 (cell)
801-422-8478 (fax)
ron.cook@byu.edu