Stick With Me Here

Cheap, efficient, mobile, able to go where no billboard or banner ad can go. Why are there fewer radio station bumper stickers and window clings?

While I’ve been fortunate to be in broadcasting for 20+ years, witnessing “the good old days” briefly before the current state of the industry unfolded, I’m not one to hang on those past memories that so many others do. The industry changed, listener habits changed, and if you’re not moving forward you’re left in the dust. But with that said, I’ve wondered about an old radio station staple that has vanished in recent years– the bumper sticker.

Growing up in Tampa in the 80s and 90s, I recall when there was a Q-105 balloon bumper sticker on practically every other car. Pulling unheard of 60 shares can do that I suppose. But there were also the upside-down 95ynf stickers, and later Power Pig stickers during their epic battle and takedown of Q-105. Of course there were many other stations represented on the thousands of cars around town, as  stations used to have entire contest campaigns built around the application of a little 3-inch by 8-inch piece of sticky-backed vinyl to an automobile. Driving home one day, it dawned on me that there weren’t too many stickers on cars, or window clings for that matter. I’m not the first to ponder this question. Last summer, media strategist Mark Ramsey asked the same question. I wanted to find out myself how few stickers were on the roads, and even I was surprised with my little experiment.

I decided to actually count the number of radio station bumper stickers and window clings I saw on a normal day of commuting. My commute from home to work is 17 miles, and outside of morning rush hour (in this case 9:15 a.m.), takes 27 minutes to complete. My daily route takes me through my residential neighborhood, on to a major state highway, an interstate highway, then the downtown streets of Tampa. I set up some parameters to get an accurate sample size:

1. I counted only cars that I could see the back of, which is typically the location of most bumper stickers and window clings.

2. I counted cars that I also could see in parking lots, making the sample size larger, and representing quite a bit of the car population in the residential and downtown areas.

3. I drove the speed limit on all roads, not only to obey the law, but also to allow for cars to pass by me so I could see the back of the car.

4. I did not count any heavy machinery (garbage trucks, car carriers, etc.), public transportation vehicles, or marked city, county, or state vehicles.

My total car count on this journey was 318. Knowing that I may have inadvertently double-counted some cars, I trimmed the final count by 5% for an official car count (sample size) of 302. So in 27 minutes, 17 miles, four different settings on an average work day, how many radio station bumper stickers or window clings did I see?

One

Let me state that again. Out of a sample size of 302 vehicles, I saw ONE bumper sticker for a radio station. The station was a local non-commercial Christian music/talk station, which in this market has actually been pretty active in handing out stickers. It is also the 27th-ranked station, out of 27, in the latest Nielsen PPM report for the market. This means that local radio stations were represented on a mere 0.33% of the sample size.

Now in a market with a population of 2,584,300 people, 302 vehicles represents a small slice of the 19th-largest radio market in America. However, 302 also represents roughly ? of the market in-tab goal for Nielsen, so it’s not a number to sneeze at. If we’re going to make programming decisions based on reports from about 1,200 panelists, we should at least think about the results of this test with ? of that sample size. Thinking maybe I just happened to get caught up in a pocket of 301 cars that just didn’t bother to put on their stickers, I decided to run the same test on the way home from work. The same journey in rush hour traffic over about 45 minutes saw 340 vehicles, and after the 5% reduction our official sample size is 323. Total number of stickers: THREE. Two stickers were on the same car (for two different stations), while the car with one sticker amazingly had the sticker of the 27th-ranked non-commercial Christian station. A whopping 0.93% of the sample size had some kind of station sticker on it. Hey! We’re getting closer to 1% of the sample size!

I’m sure I’ll hear some people suggest that car owners don’t want to sully their pricier cars with a sticker, to which I counter– not so fast. While I didn’t count them, I saw plenty of bumper stickers or window decals promoting military service, a sports team, NRA membership, how their child was an honor roll student, and on and on. During my morning test, I saw twice as many stickers that were just giant lipstick impressions (2) than I saw radio station stickers (1). So what happened here?

It’s a rhetorical question, really, as those of us in the business already know the answer. Budgets have been cut, people have been let go, and now one person is in charge of promotions for 5, 6, 7, or 8 stations as opposed to each station having a promotions coordinator. The promotions director for the building may have an assistant, who also doubles as a morning show producer, weekend voice-tracker, and whatever other work adds to the rare full-time job description. If the director is lucky, there may be an intern involved, although that intern is pretty much relegated to setting up the station-branded pop-up tent at the next remote, which is being engineered by the promotions assistant or promotions director because we can’t hire engineers to do that stuff.

In today’s business world, and especially in broadcasting, we OBSESS with our brand. What does our brand stand for? How does it represent our station? How does it look on social media? Our brand is so powerful, the company is using it for all of its stations that air the same format. So why is there a lack of your brand on the backs of vehicles?

For all the noise being made by the industry about 93% penetration, and how radio still rules the dashboard, how is there not a concerted effort to hand your brand in sticker form to the people who still use it? Bought in bulk, bumper stickers cost literally fractions of a penny each, and cost a fraction of that pop-up tent that shows up once every other week. Why is this not still part of on an annual budget? And if it is part of an annual budget, why aren’t they seeing the light of day more? This is a cheap, mobile, convenient way for the listeners you fight for to brand their personal property with your brand!

And I know in an increasingly digital world, bumper stickers seem soooooooo old-fashioned. But there is something to be said about receiving something that you can hold, as opposed to all of the electronic mail and social media we’re endlessly exposed to every day. That little sticker or window decal will get put to use, and if it’s not on a car it’s on another piece of property like a laptop that a smaller population will see.

Of course every market is different, and I suspect smaller markets with more locally-owned stations still do the tried-and-true bumper sticker promotions. And maybe Tampa-St. Pete is a weird outlier, but do the same exercise I did. On your way to or from work, or wherever your next somewhat lengthy travels bring you, count the number of radio station logos you see on the road. If you can still keep one hand at 10 while the other hand counts stickers, your station has a pretty big opportunity to allow your listeners to brand their property with your brand… and without breaking whatever limited marketing budget you already have.