STORY TELLING (Module 2) – Reflection

CHALLENGE

Working on the marketing area of a popular salsa radio station, we realized that the brand  were losing audience increasingly, the situation turns critical because of the audience ratings  report and also by the churn from the advertisers.

The radio was the first salsa radio station in Peru, and in that time have more than 30 years  leading the ratings with a great advantage over the competitors. It´s regular audience were  young adult people, from 20 to 45 years, both genders but with a preponderacy of male, and  medium to small GSE. The playlist was focus on the actual music of artists like Marc Anthony,  Victor Manuelle, Gente de Zona, etc. It didn´t consider music form classics or other music  gender related to salsa.

SELECTION

The first time I Heard about the tool was in a global market research agency being an Account  Client Director, and it grab my attention instantly. The Story telling is a toll which allows you to  create some kind of a little movie, I mean it because you need a structure, a screenplay in  order to grab the attention of your listeners and to get them into the discussion to improve it  and to develop more insights over the available data. Also, the tool helps you to be more clear  in what you want to transmite to the audience.

Making the research about the current situation of the radio (What is? phase), we realized 2  issues. The first one was about the poor situation of the radio on the audience ratings, the  image on the mind of our listeners and those who leaved us to change and hear a new one,  how other salsa stations created newer mixes in their playlist to attract more listeners, how  distant was our relationship was with the local artists, etc.

To make more difficult the situation, while we were delivering information (insights in  advance, sum reports, etc.), we discovered that the CEO were not agree that the brand needed  some changes at least. To be clear, he understand there was a non good situation, but were  really afraid to make changes, he just was talking about to change the logo design.

APLICATION

The data brougth us the alerts, the situation required deep changes in order to make more  interesting the radio station, to make it newer, and to attract again the listeners.

So, we knew we had to work with storytelling to show the information with a consistent and  lineal screenplay; showing the previous situation of the radio, when it was the favorite; then  showing how the industry changed, and how our audience changed, and finally where we were  in the moment. That would gave us more effectiveness and make meaningful impact.

INSIGHT & APPROACH

After the meeting where we exposed the information, we gave the audience just an  infographic with the main points we talked about and the insights. Then we asked them how  they think we could improve the situation.

Then we realized that we made it great, because people, including our CEO, understood the  whole situation, and instantly were involved trying to give ideas and asking for another  meeting to continue work and start the actions.

How we could have done it better?, I´ll like to say that maybe a video of our meetings with  interviewed people talking about the radio, how they used to love it, why they left it, etc.  would be more effective. And also, if after the presentation results meeting we would have  used mind mapping tools the meeting could were more productive.

