Six words
This morning I rediscovered a TalkSPORT keyfob given to me by the station’s Head of Creative, Peter Gee. It was left rattling around my desk at work and I really should have taken better care of it.
You see, this keyfob is not just what Ideal Home TV might call “a personal security management solution” but is a lesson in brevity.
Unlike a lot of radio station merchandise it boasts no promotional strapline nor unsubstantiated claim. Just the TalkSPORT logo and six nouns that act as a frame of reference for the brand.
They are:
- Football
- Beer
- Women
- Cars
- Dogs
- Sheds
and they say all you need to know about TalkSPORT’s brand personality and the passions it shares with its listeners. Taking this approach the station has no need to live off the virtues of its personalities or the number of live Premier League matches it has secured rights for this season.
And ‘sheds’. That genius word neutralises all the lads-mag baggage of the previous five.
So what six words best describe your station?
It’s useful to have a clear idea of your brand’s frame of reference that’s separate from the functional detail of your content, especially if today’s Rajars weren’t exactly what you were hoping for.
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“Unlike a lot of radio station merchandise it boasts no promotional strapline nor unsubstantiated claim”
… or anything that might actually betray that talkSPORT is a… you know… radio station.
When you’ve only got 2.3 million listeners against your nearest competitor’s 6.4 million, isn’t that small fact just ever so slightly important?
What a churlish fellow! It’s a keyring – not the Treaty Of Arbroath.
btw – Our audience is 2.5 million
Your audience was 2.3 million yesterday. Do keep up at the back there.
So is the purpose of the keyring only to remind people who already know what talkSPORT is, what talkSPORT is?
But of course talkSPORT isn’t just a radio station is it? They have a magazine and a good website as well.
And it’s a keyring. Let’s get some perspective here!
“Music, Fun, Life” anybody? Arrgghh… NO!
So what six words best describe your station?
Interesting question. Is this kind of categorising supposed to describe the output of TalkSport, or supposed to encapsulate what goes on in the headspace of the typical listener? I mean, what’s being branded here? The station or the audience? And if the former, how can ‘sheds’ have a single meaning – unless the output comes from a couple of sheds, perhaps? Are these six words defining the essence of TalkSport, or the aspiration?
I think the ‘six words’ concept is a clever one, but have TalkSport used the wrong six words, and thereby fired a shot at an empty goal and missed? ‘Football, Beer, Women’? I mean… what is this? An attempt to go straight for the Sun-readership?