Wawa Radio Spots

Why? Because it's Hoagiefest that's why!

Today Wawa exemplifies regional advertising. Even though Forbes lists them as one of the 100 largest privately held companies they've deftly targets their growth in concentric rings around Eastern Pennsylvania. The chain reaches south to Norfolk and north to New Jersey. They have no stores outside NJ, PA, DE, VA, and MD.

This focus begets regional advertising which I find requires more cleverness than national advertising. If you're going to break up America into a set of radio campaigns Arbitron has already done the footwork. Nike and Budweiser break it down my major metro. If you are focusing on a smaller area you have to do a little thinking for yourself. If the area is small, your listeners may in fact hear your spots on multiple stations. How varied do you want them to be and so on.

In this set Wawa used different voices for different metro areas with similar scripts. Each one has identity but the theme is constant for optimum recognition. It's simple and clever which is how you know it works.
Jake from Philly
Linda from Dover
Pam from Philly
Travis from Trenton
Doug

Spot Loads

Everybody knows that as soon as your station starts an ad break, you start to lose listeners. This is a fact that every sales guy has had to contend with. Bridge ratings did a study they released earlier this year on this very phenomena. The study was not well received. But nobody likes bad news.

The study was limited to a listeners singular "favorite" radio station.

They calculated the actual pace of audience degredation. This estimates how many listeners a radio station had at the end of each ad. Everyone already knew that it dropped off. But nobody knew exactly how fast. This data Exerpted below.

Spot Audience
1..............33,600
2..............26,208
3..............19,656
4..............14,742
5..............11,057
6................8,182

By the end of the commercial break this station was left with 19% of the audience it brought into the break. remember this was their "favorite" radio station. The secondary listeners probably fade even faster. In similar studies they conducted in eight markets listener attrition occurs at the following rates:

Spot Percent Listener Attrition
1..........................20%
2..........................22%
3..........................24 %
4..........................25%
5..........................26%
6..........................25%

That's only a 6 spot ad break. I have heard a station's break run 15 or 20 solid minutes of ads! After 15 minutes there cant be anything left but crickets chirping. What's left at 20?