Creating a bond of trust, authenticity and competence is one of the most important ways creative service directors and local TV station marketers can drive viewers to their newscasts, said Graeme Newell and Greg Derkowski of 602 Communications at Wednesday’s Station Summit in Las Vegas.

602 Communications looked at thousands of local TV news promos to determine what made certain ones stand out from the crowd. From there, Newell and Derkowski offered 11 takeaways that promo producers could put immediately into practice:

1) Build ads from the music up and not from the message down.

“When you are putting your spots together, start your writing with the music, add your video and finally the words,” said Newell.

2) Use amazingly simple messaging.

“Never make more than one point in a spot and then hammer on that point over and over,” said Derkowski.

“Clutter kills effective messaging. If you have more than one spot to make, do another spot,” said Newell.

3) If there isn’t a big difference between the feature you are promoting and your competitor’s feature, invent another feature.

Otherwise, it just becomes an arms race of features—in which everyone one ups each other with their respective features—right to the bottom.

4) The best news promos don’t look like news promos.

“We saw amazingly amounts of tired imagery and when you use this stuff, it brands you as just another member of the herd,” said Newell.

5) Stop shooting your promos inside your station.

“The news isn’t located inside our buildings, it’s out there with the people. Viewers have become numb to watching us standing around the newsrooms,” said Newell.

6) Entertain while you inform.

“Engagement is the key. What you are doing is renting your customers’ attention. They agree to listen to your sales pitch but only if you thoroughly entertain them,” said Newell.

“Dazzling special effects are another great way to rent your viewers’ attention,” said Derkowski.

7) Don’t use hate, anger and fear as the primary branding angle.

”Go from fear and take viewers to a place of hope,” said Newell. “Brands that are primarily built on anger, hate and fear are not going to prosper in the long run.”

8) Humanize your talent and remove them from the journalistic pedestal.

“Is your talent a guy I’d like to have a beer with?” said Newell. “Turn them into real people, not these protectors of journalism.”

9) Let real world results do the talking.

“If your promo doesn’t provide demonstrative proof in the promo that you are better, viewers are just going to see it as a lot of marketing hooey,” said Newell.

10) Transition from a point of view of egotism into a genuine mission to improve viewers’ lives. Take things to a whole new level of honesty and authenticity.

“This is what allows strong brands to gain incredible loyalty,” said Newell. “People want to take back people who are honest and have our best interests at heart. This trust is everything.”

As an example of this, Newell and Derkowski showed a video on how Domino’s Pizza recreated its brand by first admitting that it’s pizza was bad and then rebuilding the brand from the ground up. During the relaunch of the product, Dominos created a Twitter feed where it allowed people to say whatever they felt about the new pizza recipe – good, bad or indifferent.

That authenticity was so powerful that Domino’s revenues have skyrocketed in recent years.

“Our customers demand more,” said Newell. “They want us to deal with them as equals and not as ratings points to be exploited. That’s so not in the DNA of so many TV stations.”

And finally, 11) to win consumer loyalty, you must also demonstrate warmth and competence.

That also means putting your viewer first and thinking like your viewer.

“What’s the secret to building a truly customer focused brand? You have to flip your branding process. What’s that about? Don’t start your brand with your coverage, start with the viewers’ problems. Build your coverage around those problems,” said Newell.

For example, Newell said, several stations have studied what issues are at the forefront of their viewers’ minds—topics such as education, taxes, health care and immigration—and have created compelling editorial around those concerns.

“You must achieve a personal connection between viewers and your news values,” said Newell. “Watching your news needs to align with your customers’ highest values.”

Newell and Derkowski left the audience with three immediately applicable takeaways:

1) Don’t just research how your viewers feel about news, research their biggest worries.

2) Ask yourself: “What big problem can I help my viewers understand?”

3) Know what issues your newsroom’s customers are obsessed with.

Newell’s entire presentation is available in the video above or at 602communications.com/mission.

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