Imponderables

Or should I say rhetorical?

Pledge - Least favorite time if the year!

Lifeline for Public Broadcasting

Why are Public TV pledge breaks so long? 

Any ideas?

Missionminded.com offers what might be the reasoning behind 15 to 20 minute pledge breaks.

Some say repeating a message three times will work, while many believe the “Rule of 7″ applies. There was a study from Microsoft investigating the optimal number of exposures required for audio messages. They concluded between 6 and 20 was best.

But I'm not sure they mean all at once.

I went to another site, asemblo.com, that confirms repetition is the key to getting the audience to act. 

FREQUENCY AND TIME GO HAND IN HAND

"Obviously, to get people to see or hear your marketing message multiple times, you can’t just put it out in the ether for a day or a week. You need to give your marketing time to work.

While repetition of your message is important, so too is the length of time it runs for. Combine the two and you might even, like the Got Milk? campaign, have your message remembered twenty years on.

Likewise, the phrase “Just Do It” immediately brings to mind the brand Nike – a campaign that is still running strong nearly thirty years after it launched.

And even though it was created before some of us were born, American Express: Don’t Leave Home Without It was one of the most successful marketing campaigns of all time (and we still remember the tagline). Why? Frequency and time have played a huge part in the campaign’s success.

These campaigns demonstrate how frequency paired with giving the campaign time has led to an effective marketing strategy.

So, the next time you post your message once or twice and move on because you haven’t seen results, give the ‘frequency + time’ formula a go. You may be pleasantly surprised."

What to do?

We're talking abut messaging over months and years, not crammed into a 15 to 20 minute time block. For pledge use case and close. One talent makes the case. One talent makes the close. Get to the point. Move to the next case and close. Rinse and repeat three times. The maximum effective time for a talking head is about 45 seconds. One person talking for two or three minutes in counter productive.

Locally, the breaks are well-planned. 15 minutes into the break it still seems excessive. Heck, after five minutes I'm ready to move on. The longer the talent goes on with the appeal will not move me any further. When your station has hundreds of thousands potential viewers at any one time and 10 people pledge, something is not right.