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How to Dress on Your Live Video
I recently spotted an article from my friend Sam Ovens pop up in my feed titled
Decision Fatigue: Why Successful People Wear The Same Clothes Everyday
This is a great article from Sam about how great minds wear the same thing over and over to reduce decision fatigue – and the thought process behind it.
It reminded me of a post of mine from way back…where I detail how wearing the same signature outfit or uniform can help you establish your identity in live video. This has been done since TV began, from Mickey Mouse to Pee Wee Herman. Here’s how:
PEE WEE HERMAN, Steve JOBS, and Mickey MOUSE….
(originally posted on my Facebook Page March 18, 2015)
What can Pee Wee Herman, Steve Jobs, Mickey Mouse and Arthur Fonzarelli (when’s the last time you read that name!) teach us about sales, psychology and positioning?
It’s so simple, it might surprise you.
Most of those mentioned and pictured are fictional characters, but Steve Jobs, Donald Trump, and even Adolf Hitler all emulated these characters in one simple way…
They all wear the same “outfit” or don the same “look” every day. They have a costume that tells you who they are.
Or at least it APPEARS that way to their audience.
Really what they do is ENSURE when the public is watching, they ALWAYS look the same so they can build on the momentum of anchoring their character and persona to their LOOK.
This is done with cartoon characters for 2 main reasons.
#1 The first reason, is to simply and easily reinforce and remind the audience of the character’s identity without having to start from scratch each time. Eventually you get to know this CHARACTER so well, you feel like you know them, right? That’s the anchoring and the snowball effect of doing it consistently.
#2 The second reason this is done, is for CONTINUITY. In cartoons, it makes things real easy to manage porduction. For TV shows even more so. Watch Shark Tank and when you see a change in clothes from one of the Sharks, it’s because they shot scenes on another day, and/or the continuity person messed up!
Some theatrical outlets will take it a step further and assign certain music to a character when he enters the scene. This is often done on radio and during sporting events. #32 steps up to bat and they play the same Pitbull song every time.
The TV Show Breaking Bad even took it a step further and if you watch closely, they had groups of characters wearing the same colors depending on character alignments etc. They got DEEP into the psychology of the viewer.
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So WTF does this have to do with you, sales, marketing, and positioning?
Besides simplifying your life by wearing the same thing as this article suggests: http://elitedaily.com/…/science-simplicity-successf…/849141/
The HUGE take away for us is this:
When you’re doing online video, or get called for that TV appearance on the local news, or perhaps something bigger….PUT YOUR COSTUME ON.
You’ve got to have a look and have it ready, and then be DISCIPLINED about flawlessly executing it….when and where people will see you. EVERY TIME.
If it’s always the same look, you will build up momentum anchoring your character to your look and over time that will have a HUGE snowball effect on your positioning and your income.
Later, you can reposition if you’d like and doing so with a NEW LOOK is how that is done. A great example of this in the online space is a surfer dude with long hair and a beard who now dons a suit and a short cropped haircut. He’s still the same guy, but he’s transition his audience and anchoring it to his NEW look.
This will also fix LOTS of continuity issues for you when it comes to your online video, pictures etc.
The good news is, this doesn’t mean you have to be dressed like Pee Wee Herman ALL THE TIME….but if you are Steve Jobs and it’s that time of year for the Apple Keynote, you’ll be prepared to put on your black mock turtle neck and your blue jeans wink emoticon
The inevitable nature of sticking to a set of rules and a framework for the WAY you do things is that later, when you’ve done the work and followed YOUR rules, you can break character and wear something that will get everyone snapping out of their trance and notice the change….when the time is right.
If for 10 years we see Steve Jobs in his self chosen uniform, and then he comes out on stage dressed as Woody from Toy Story to announce the final Toy Story Movie, people will notice…and talk. Mission accomplished.
If you do nothing else, find YOUR look…and then be consistent on your videos with that look….keep that continuity as you develop your following and all your special personality quirks, language, other unique traits….AND value will be anchored to THAT look…which will help you build momentum like never before 
10 Tips for NTR Radio Success
Radio: 10 Tips for Interactive & NTR Success in 2009
Interactive isn’t about technology. Some people think better interactive is providing the advertiser with a platform that incorporates the web even though the audience isn’t interested in the content. Podcasting little league games comes to mind. No one wants to listen to podcasts of little league games, so why would someone want to sponsor that? Great interactive and NTR should be about connecting the audience and advertisers in new ways that create win/wins for all parties involved, including the conduit (radio). It doesn’t have to cost a mint, or confuse everyone. It just needs to work.
Here are 10 things you can do to make your Interactive & NTR Initiatives more profitable and relevant to your audience in 2009:
- Drop your current bandwidth provider. Save $200/month or more per station. If you have more than 10 stations, think of the savings per year. If you have 20 stations…that’s $48,000 a YEAR!!!!
- Sign up for a free UStream, justintv or StickAM account and get UNLIMITED audio bandwidth with video bandwidth FREE. A funny thing happens when video is added to your audio….the audience gets bigger!
- Hook up a webcam at a point of interest for your audience and include it in your stream. You can buy a camera for less than $100. Here’s a hint, do not put the camera in your studio unless you have something truly of interest for your audience. If you don’t (and most stations truly do not), see if you can get camera placement at a neighborhood hotspot or common traffic spot. At less than $100 a camera, you can get more than one and provide video information as well as your audio.
- Stream your regular station on 1 feed but entice listeners to watch your video and listen to new versions of your station. Create these side channels without an HD signal…and with internet listening and viewing in mind. PCs are cheap (Under $500)….and you can buy SAM Broadcaster software for under $500 to run your songs, audio entertainment, and spots.
- Don’t waste time, creativity and energy devising ways to exchange analog dollars for digital dimes. Make the web sales upsells to regular packages at the station. 10% to be on the main stream channel, and $250 a month to be on all additional streams combined. Make it simple for sales and their support team to succeed. Use TargetSpot or Affiliate services to fill the rest of the avails.
- Be selective in the clients you choose to do business with. I know…”you can’t be choosy because you have budgets”…but you need to be. You need success stories. You need clients that can benefit from radio. Look at the top 10 national radio advertisers for 2008. Cross off the one that completely flopped, which is the HD Alliance. What you have left is: #1 Geico, Home Depot, Macy’s, AT&T, Verizon, McDonalds and John Commuta’s Bankruptcy Info Tapes. What do they all have in common? They’re average things for average people and/or direct response oriented. Geico and Commuta are direct response. Radio sales people should only accept business from clients who sell regular things for regular people. Those are the clients that have the best chance to return month after month. These clients also fall under basic life needs: food, clothing, shelter, finance….things people must have to survive in good economic times and bad.
- Get every member of your sales staff and airstaff a weblog and show them how they can turn it into profits and exposure. Blogs are free. How can anyone expect your sales rep with a bad necktie to represent himself as a marketing expert if he has no clue how to market himself and the radio station? How can he speak to the client about CPM, Adwords, SEO, CPC and every other buzz word if he doesn’t know how they work? He can’t. Now if he’s blogging about the successful advertising campaigns he’s building for the Organic Coffee Company in town and showing examples and posting audio of the spots, video of the breakfast broadcasts, and pictures of smiling customers….business owners will catch on. They might even call the station or post a comment on his blog asking how they can get in on the action! Cat blogs (your boring diary) are not what the staff should be engaging in. The airstaff needs to write about the audience’s interests, the sales reps need to write about the client’s interests, and the promotions/public service person should be blogging about what the audience/community/clients care about. That’s the way to grow the stations digital foot print and that’s path to revenue success.
- If you have a cluster in Anytown, USA build a social network for your town. Don’t have that sort of IT Muscle? No problem. Go to Ning.com and get one for free. It works just like Facebook or MySpace except you can customize Ning for your needs. Make it look the way you want. If you have 3 stations or more and your staff can work on the blogs and content together, you can also pool the collective cume of multiple stations into one social network! Imagine the power of mobilizing this community! Brittany Spears has a Ning Network. T. Boone Pickens has one too. So should you. When you have audio, video, interactive, and community news….you’re not just a radio station anymore. You are the community.
- Use texting to extend TSL and grow revenue. Place produced teases at the beginning of each commercial break with a trivia, music, community, or current events question: “Do you know which band boasts the bragging rights to White Out, text the answer to 99229 and you could win a pair of tickets to see Slumdog Millionaire at the Mark 6 Theatre…the answer’s coming up in 4 minutes on Oldies 104.7″. Play the spots then play: “If you guessed the Monkeys…..HEY HEY you’re right! Mike Nesmith’s mom invented White Out….blah blah blah…now text Monkeys to 99229 for your Mark 6 movie tickets from Oldies 104.7!” The alternative is allowing jocks to give a laundry list of upcoming bands and telegraph a commercial break. I’d rather increase chances for extended listening, grow the SMS database, and make some money. After 1 week, 1 texter wins tickets and all the others get 10% their next movie ticket pruchase or free popcorn when they show their text to the theatre. Radio works if we work it. Don’t have enough production help? Have your jocks do it live or in voicetracks.
- Use texting to administer community information that is better left off the air. During the school closing season it’s a great community service to keep people updated on school closings, but reading off the list of schools on the air doesn’t help the listener, the sponsor or the station. Use your SMS powers to sign up parents for your SMS School Closing Updates. They don’t have to call anyone, and they don’t have to go online. They simply need to check their cell phone where a message stating classes at their school is closed appears. Now an enterprising radio station might even sell that feature ahead of time to the mall for instance or to a pizza place. The message would present the school closing info and offer 10% off of pizza that day knowing that parents would need to feed their kids lunch while home from school on a cold day. The possibilities are endless with the right tools and some creative thinking. The key is to remember that this opt in list is only for school closings. You don’t want to be the radio station that cried wolf. By the way, there’s even a way to send SMS blasts for less than $100 a month…
I know….Twitter wasn’t in there…neither was facebook or linked in…..but I think is enough for now. Feel free to add yours.