What Three Things Does Your Personality Brand Stand For?

• Every radio personality should know three things their personality brand stands for.
• The three things are at the intersection of your audience persona and personality brand profile.
• Once established, each piece of content should filter through at least one of the three things.

When an audience has a hard time figuring out what you’re for, you’re in trouble. Understanding how you fit into their lives is one of the key, fundamental things every personality and every radio station must address, and the sooner you identify it, the more effective you’ll be in carving out your place in their lives.

When working with clients, we usually ask ourselves, “What three things does your personality brand stand for?”

Until you can answer this question, your content may be terrific, but it still won’t get traction. It’s like being a general store that stocks everything but specializes in nothing. You may get some cume, but will have a hard time building a large fan base.

In our webinar Be an Audience Magnet, we show how to build an audience persona and throw down the challenge of developing a strategy to use the persona by inserting your personality brand.

The best way to do this is identifying three key things important to the audience persona, then directing everything through those characteristics as an entry point.

Three Things Example #1

The three things that define your personality should live at the intersection of your personality traits and audience interest. If you’re locked on your audience persona, you don’t have to worry about format, competition or other distractions that typically affect the creative process. Those are factors, of course, but they’re already baked into the persona!

Here are some real-life examples of stations and personalities that we work with:
A high-profile personality-oriented show on a Hot AC/Adult Top 40 format:

• Pop culture
• Relationships
• Escape from grind of everyday life

By insisting that every single element pass through at least one of these three traits, we can talk about any topic. However, the way we talk about it must not violate any of these three things.

Three Things Example #2

Another client, a Contemporary Christian station, has a very different role in the lives of their audience. Our three goals are:

• Family & Safety: Protecting the nest
• Community: Being deeply involved locally
• Heart: Showing we care emotionally

The execution of this show is quite different, though many of the topics may be the same.

Three Things Example #3

A third station has a very different audience persona. The talk-heavy, Rock-oriented morning show attracts males with a different mindset:

• Laugh: We find the humor in almost everything
• Girls: Obsessed with the mystery of women, and the pursuit
• Rock and Roll: Immersed in the music and lifestyle

All three of these shows are wildly successful because they know who they are and who they appeal to, but more importantly, they’ve defined it. This keeps the show simple to execute and leads to listeners understanding what they’re for.

Applying the Three Things To Your Show

Each day, there are a limited number of relevant topics the public truly cares about. Those topics are available to every personality in every market.

You already know that it’s important to reflect their interest as much as possible. So how does a personality stand out by filtering topics through their three things?

Here’s a hypothetical example of how it might sound on the three stations:

Topic: Release of a new Star Wars Movie over the weekend

Station 1: Adult Top 40: Saw it three times over the weekend. And loved it. And then went home and watched the other Star Wars movies. But it caused a fight because girlfriend of one of the cast members hates Star Wars, and was upset because she felt ignored all weekend. Leads to a relationship story probing what to do when she feels hurt to make it up to her.

Station 2: Contemporary Christian: Went out to see it over the weekend for Date Night. We both loved it, but we couldn’t agree on whether we should take our kids to it. It has a great storyline and there are lessons about the battle of good vs. evil, but it’s also violent. But all their friends are going to go. So we can’t decide how old the kiddos should be before being allowed to see it.

Station 3: The movie was good, but those Star Wars geeks who came out are freaks. Talking about the spectacle of those dressing up, going over the top. Then looking for the biggest Star Wars freak to explain details in the story, during which they rip on that geek for being a nerd.

Conclusion

It may seem like common sense that these very different stations would approach the topic quite differently, and admittedly, the example is pretty straightforward.

But don’t miss the bigger point. When you direct every element of your show through the three traits, it makes your show much easier to execute while creating a more clearly-defined show. And when the audience knows what you’re for, they’ll be able to use you much more often.

What are your three things? And how do you use them each day? I’d love to showcase your case study for others. Send your three things and an mp3 of a break that demonstrates it to tracy@tjohnsonmediagroup.com 

What Three Things Does Your Personality Brand Stand For?
By Tracy Johnson