SUSTAINED IDENTITY MARKETING

Got a brand building mission?  Need to generate leads? 
Looking for away to cut through the clutter, and make sure your message stands out? Sustained Identity Marketing could be the solution.

Omnipoint, a leading wireless phone company, sponsors the Omnipoint Business Minute, a daily feature that is aimed at business people and airs each day adjacent to a stock market report on news and talk radio stations in New York, Boston, Miami and Philadelphia.  For the past three years AIM Funds, a division of the $208 billion financial services provider AMVESCAP, GT Global Capital and other advertisers have sponsored the Millenium Minute Report on the CBS Radio Network.  Teligent, a fast-growing telecommunications provider, linked up with Fast Company magazine, a 3-year-old business monthly that could have been produced by a merger of Forbes  and Wired;  their radio feature, called "Insights from the Fast Lane", airs daily on news and talk stations in a dozen top markets.

Other examples abound:  The Mindspring Minute takes the
concept to Gen X with a host named Lazlow, who presents a news story with an internet angle and tags it with an invitation to try Mindspring's internet services;  the Key Financial Report presents daily "real time" market and economic reports from Key Corp's Chief Economist, delivered by satellite to radio stations and listeners across the country, presenting commodity and other market tips, linked to a brief message about Key Corp.'s services to investors; and maximum homemaker Martha Stewart just signed a $50 million deal with Ford, including sponsorship of her daily radio feature on the CBS stations.

This new wave of information-oriented branded content
coupled with a call-to-action has been dubbed "Sustained
Identity Marketing".  Inspired by an article by high-tech PR whiz Ed Niehaus, the term is was used to contrast this kind of relationship- building communication with traditional ìhard- sellî brand-building advertising efforts.

"That's it--that's what we're doing--it's Sustained
Identity Marketing!" exclaimed Rocky Cosgrove, Director of Radio Marketing for the 1800 U.S. radio stations
represented by Interep,  the nation's largest radio sales
and marketing rep firm. "Sustained Identity Marketing is
one of the most exciting new developments we've seen in a long time in the way radio is used to communicate with the consumer.  And best of all, it works!"

As executive producer of the Omnipoint Business Minute,  I've been working closely with Cosgrove to spread the word about this effective new radio concept to stations and marketers alike.