NPR and Sesamee Street Teach Valuable Brand Loyalty Lessons

You know a brand is powerful when it tugs at your emotions and stays with you for years and years.  Not many brands have that kind of distinction.  Sure, lots of brands say that they do and many of them are truly powerful.  Who can argue with the universal appeal of Coke or McDonald’s?  But then a brand does something unexpected.  Something that it didn’t intend, but that grew out of its authentic commitment to its mission.

NPR is a brand like that. 

As I was flipping through the morass of TV banality the other day, my clicking finger stopped, of all places, on C-Span’s coverage of the National Press Club.  There was a woman speaking and the descriptor below said it was Vivian Schiller, CEO of NPR.   She was talking about what the mainstream networks were doing that NPR could learn from and then transitioned into what NPR was doing that mainstream wasn’t.  She had a list of several items, but only two stuck with me; their audience and their brand.

As it turns out NPR’s audience for “Morning Edition” is greater than the audience for all three major network morning shows combined.  The next highest was the “Today” show and that was about 45% less!  Then she said something that really got me thinking and should get you thinking too; “NPR’s brand perception and value runs across all of it’s offerings (shows).  No other network can say that.  People may love and recognize a show, but their love for that show doesn’t correlate to their perception of the network per se. 

Brand value and brand perception or audience driven.  And NPR’s audience (whether they support their station or not) perceived NPR as “theirs.” 

The day after I heard Vivian on C-Span, I was listening to a radio show where they were discussing Michael Davis’ new book “Street Gang: The Complete History of Sesamee Street” where he and the actor that played “Gordon” talked about the emotional connection an entire generation of kids have to the Sesamee Street characters.  I can attest to that because when they played a recent clip of the Cookie Monster debating whether he should have a cookie or a piece of fruit, both my 9-year-old and I got these smiles on our face and said in unison “I love Cookie Monster!”

At one point in the interview, the radio host and guests hypothesized to what degree Barack Obama’s win was influenced and inspired by what an entire generation of young adults learned and saw on Sesamee Street: an integrated neighborhood, people of different colors, monsters, kids with disabilities — all living and learning together.  Resolving conflict by “using your words.”  I thought it was a bit of a stretch.  But I wonder how much of a stretch it was?

Lessons Learned from NPR and Sesamee Street

• You don’t have to plow tens of millions of dollars into advertising to build brand value and loyalty.  But you do have to make a personal and emotional investment.  We all know that no one goes to work in public radio or television to get rich quick.  These people are putting heart and soul into their offering.
• Reach your target audience – not just the lowest common denominator.  NPR is seeking an audience who wants to be informed in detail from different perspectives.  To that end, they sacrifice people who are not news and political junkies.
• Teaching sells.  Educating your audience fosters an emotional bond.  If your audience’s life is improved and changed by what you’ve taught them – this builds loyalty and value.

The one big thing that has stayed with me is this observation that NPR as a “network” produces such a strong Halo Effect.  Listeners tune into NPR and stay tuned in – the shows change, but the station doesn’t.  This makes me wonder what we can do in our business to achieve even a little of that brand value spillover.