Our Story | Cardigan Audio

Most of the businesses your reps pass every day have not been prospects.

On the way to work, through every intersection, the businesses your sales team drives by are not prospects and have not been prospects in years. By most estimates, 80%.

Since August 22, 1922, when a fifteen minute ad for apartments in Queens aired on one of the earliest local stations, carving airtime into ever smaller slices has been radio's primary business model.

Seconds

:60

:30

:15

:10

:05

the "blink"

The commercial shrank while the model around it barely moved. And meanwhile, the buyer changed completely.

80% of the businesses your reps pass daily have not bought radio in years.

1995

A commercial sparks interest. The listener checks the Yellow Pages or calls the business directly. The station keeps the credit.

2005

Dialup. Jeeves. The search engine starts appearing between the commercial and the business.

2015

Fully mobile. One search and the interest lands anywhere, none of it tied to the station.

Today

The search engine takes the credit for the interest radio created. The station, the client and the consumer all lose.

Better, more, now.

When iPhone changed the media market forever, radio and television stations struggled to deliver our brands to app-based mobile. Every form of content, in every genre, is now instantly available. The challenge to our business model is not subsiding. Ever.

The 35 year old media buyer of today graduated high school around 2010 and got a touchscreen in college. She is wired online, and her professional life requires a fiduciary view toward investing ad dollars. She is bombarded with digital options, all of them offering more concise metrics than broadcast audience estimates.

We know the value of our product remains exceptionally strong. We also know our marketplace is changing. The ability to reach a particular listener with creative at reliable frequency targets is harder, in some cases arguably impossible. We must change our tactics so every audience member, even those with occasional consumption habits, remains a reachable prospect for our advertisers.

The "what if" ladder.

1

What if we had a stronger method to deliver our advertisers' message on mobile devices?

2

What if we could tell more of their message than we ever could with ordinary commercial rotation?

3

What if their message was always available when our audience member needed it, not just during a stopset?

4

What if we owned our own platform, showing vital business details in an attractive format, always ready when needed?

5

What if we had an offering every small business could actually afford?

6

What if we started today?

Founder's Story

Why Cardigan

A few years back, I sat with friends in Seattle who build technology for a living. The conversation turned to local radio, and I wanted their view of the industry I'd worked in since I was 18. They gave it to me straight.

I'd spent many years in radio, and alongside it I'd worked as CIO for a biotech manufacturer and owned and managed hotels. The contrast was hard to ignore. A hotel room serves the same purpose it always has, yet the way guests book it and the technology around it constantly evolves. Radio's core business model barely moved from what I learned as a teenager. We just sliced the commercial into smaller pieces.

"Radio and TV were always regulatory scarcity plays, and people like us exist to eliminate that scarcity," offered one friend, going straight for the jugular.

"Observation noted. But most of the market still uses our products every week, many for hours. I lived the 4 AM morning show alarm clock for years, and know radio's value. We still provide localism and a reflection of every community where we operate, which is every community." My answer was that radio's audio commercial deserves digital support and our surface area needs to expand. I explained that stopsets carry too much of the heavy lifting, and our product has to resonate with digital-native buyers.

"It's comforting to go home and that station is still there. Been around all our lives. It's like well-worn clothing you can never toss, the cardigan you can't let go of."

A friend, when asked what radio means

Nailed it. Cardigan it is.

Input from talented friends helped refine the themes behind everything we build:

1
Tell more of the advertiser's message than audio alone can carry, and support the commercial with digital resources. Short-form mobile video and geolocation tools are part of that answer.
2
Reinforce the one-to-one relationship between the account executive and the buyer, and deliver products smaller advertisers buy and manage on their own.
3
Build the analytics radio never had, for a delivery method that is genuinely hard to measure. Go for engagement, show that radio's end game is prompted actions which can be measured.

Every business is equal.

Host is local business discovery, built for the broadcast model. Results are sorted primarily by distance from the user's device, not by who paid the most. No one can buy a higher ranking.

Enterprise search engines long ago traded partial relevance for money. Host does not use a paid ranking model. It is a community search model, powered by broadcast, which displays results in a broadly fair way, exclusively by distance. Keyword search, accurate open/close and clever features like "I'm Hungry" deliver relevant results. And there's more to come.

Our aim is to generate many organic searches throughout the region every day. The combination of all those searches enables businesses to be found by new customers, even as all other methods of social outreach are maximized.

Host on a mobile device. The closest businesses rise to the top.

Paid search highest bidder wins

Typing a business name often surfaces competing products at the top, even when that is not what the searching consumer wanted. The biggest budget wins, not the closest or the best match.

Host distance only

Every search shows the businesses closest to the user, in a broadly fair way. No one can buy a better position. "You" always appears first at your own address.

Business search, sorted by distance

The platform's primary purpose is to demonstrate the businesses nearest the mobile device user.

A new form of drive-by outreach

Thousands of people drive by business locations every day without knowing their specific capabilities, products or services.

Trust is a built-in feature

Our core audience trusts us. That makes us an even stronger delivery point for local business messaging.

The question that opens every door

"What are three things you wish everyone knew when they passed by your business?" That question reveals the real purpose of the platform.

Branded locally, any name you choose

The Host platform can be branded locally by any name and design scheme you choose. It lives as an extension of your current web and mobile app resources at launch, leveraging your installed base of unique visitors, app installs and launches.

Google and Facebook do a great job, if the search happens

It is very easy with traditional search and social media to find the wrong businesses, competitors of the business you are looking for, or similarly named businesses in another city. Using Host, consumers can explore their surroundings no matter where they are. Host is free for the consumer and affordable for every small business.

The expansion pack, product by product.

Three products, one model. Radio creates the interest. Cardigan makes sure it lands, gets measured, and grows into revenue.

The marketplace

Host

Every business in town becomes a prospect again. Host is your station's mobile search platform, branded to your market, sorted by distance. Video tours, coupons, deals, jobs and vital information drive consumer exploration, geolocated to any device.

1

2

3

4

5

Self-serve reach

Boost

Radio's instant reach, buyable like a social ad. The digital-native owner picks a date, picks a slot, types their message and done. No phone call, no contract. Five mentions a day, guaranteed, on a station their customers trust.

TBES 62

Live proof

Active

A full-screen live map of your market showing every listener interaction happening right now. Contest entries, poll votes, Host views, Boost clicks. Every touchpoint geolocated and archived, distilled into one engagement score. Proof you can carry into any sales meeting.

A short sales cycle, and every business is a prospect.

Host is designed to have a short sales cycle. Because results are sorted by distance, when you demonstrate at the decision-maker's street address, their business always appears first. That is more than clever logistics. It displays the core benefit that has stopped many businesses from buying traditional media.

14 counties "Our 100,000 watt station reaches 14 counties"

The old pitch: reach the whole region. The business hears waste.

vs

5 miles their prospect base

The Host pitch: the closer, the higher. The business hears customers.

1

Pre-load the address

Before the client visit, the business address and general information are input into the system.

2

Demonstrate live

At their address, their business appears first. They see exactly what their customers will see.

3

They decide

Knowing the platform is promoted to a large audience, the business can choose to stay or be removed.

Reps sell first

No product is sold at potential unless the reps responsible for generating sales buy into the concept themselves. A modest annual buy for a clever digital product is not a big ask. It places hundreds of businesses on the prospect list who previously would not have considered purchasing anything from a traditional media company. Reps now have something to do. Always. A low cost-of-entry product also assists retention for new reps who might otherwise leave prematurely at high cost.

The closer: distance

"We're making every small business easily accessible to our audience for the first time, using a platform available on every device which we'll be promoting every day." "We want you to always be more available to our user base of (x) listeners and viewers each week." The closer someone is to their business, the higher they appear in the results. That is the whole pitch.

More of the message. Where we lost before, we can now reinforce.

By driving traffic to our own platform, we preserve the value of our product and our clients' investment in us. A listener who hears a mattress special, then finds a competing offer online, which happens every day, is the line loss we are built to capture.

Where we lost before, we can now reinforce: a video tour or video coupon, static coupon, business contact information, links to the business' social profiles. Everything our audience member needs to advance their interest into a visit and transaction.

The listener or viewer who wants more information about one of our advertisers must be able to get that from us. They trust us, and that matters.

Work with Facebook, not against it

The call to "Find us on Facebook" has become absolutely generic. Arguing competitively against Facebook is not a credible position when most traditional media outlets have lavish Facebook presence while selling Facebook digital packages. By adding our own unique value, we can finally integrate with social competitors.

Who benefits, and how.

Everyone in the broadcast business model gains when radio tells more of the message and keeps the credit it creates.

Listeners and viewers

Reliable, additional resources to engage with excellent local businesses.

Stations

A digital product that can reach and maintain strong margin after all costs and commission, plus the chance to grow numerous new relationships.

Reps and stations

A vastly improved prospect base, a short sales cycle, no inventory pressure and new, organic revenue.

Businesses

Their messaging offered on a reliable forum by leading broadcasters at low cost, with an annual buy.

Talent

Increased opportunity for production, endorsement and other fee-based work that did not exist before.

Your web and app

Launching Host from your home page and station app strengthens both, and more of your original local content gets consumed.

Local radio's revenue expansion pack.