Marketing communication for King Soy, a vegetarian delivery service opening in a college town. Audience: Radio listeners, online radio listeners Strategy: Though slipping, radio advertising, particularly in the online footprint, still has a large potential audience to which retailers and restaurants advertise. As a local restaurant, we are in good position to capture ears and drive stomachs into our store with a few basic communications principles: 1. With standard radio, listeners are choosier than ever before. Local businesses are expected to have the same advertising savvy as national or international counterparts. We have hired a local marketing firm to write us a number of short, funny vignettes revolving around the vegetarian lifestyle that we think will match those larger companies’ offerings, and we will be playing them on all local stations with space to spare. 2. With online radio, we’ve found that, quizzically, listeners are more likely to be impressed by the fact that a local company has an online audio ad. While the edge will surely diminish as more competitors enter the sphere, we will strike while the proverbial iron’s hot by playing our same vignette on services like Slacker Radio and Pandora. Possible Difficulties: Most potential issues with this plan are those that plague every radio advertiser. First, it’s quite difficult to tell what station traditional listeners heard our business-winning ad on. Surveys are generally very inaccurate when it comes to things like that. However, we fully anticipate online radio listeners to make the brunt of business. Until research indicates otherwise, we’ll be using that methodology moving forward. Projected Effectiveness: Middling to moderate. With text-based advertising online making the brunt of local businesses’ money, we will need to monitor this communication closely to make sure our dollars are getting a significant return on the investment. Script writers and voice actors, even at the local level, do not come cheap. Closing Statements: We believe that, as with all forms of advertising, nothing will help unless it’s well-crafted and relevant. If our ads are good, they will help, no matter what the format. The opposite is true as well. Keep that under consideration when crafting communications under our brand, and we’ll most certainly be a huge success!