The bridge that connects artists and consumers is music, or to be more accurate, the love for their music. Despite much nonsense spoken to the contrary, building this bridge with artists still relies primarily on traditional media such as Radio and TV. Sure, there are many opportunities for familiarisation online because online can bypass the playlist gatekeepers and generate awareness for artists that are ignored by traditional media. However, mass market familiarisation through an internet-only strategy is not yet a viable strategic alternative to Radio and prime-time TV which can generate huge levels of familiarity within a very short time span. For this article we will therefore focus on Radio.

Music testing for radio has been around since the early 80’s and radio programmers are highly adept at knowing when to back the song and when to support the artist. We make this point because there are artists around that manage to build a bridge with a single song and there are those that go almost unnoticed despite numerous hits.

Let’s take the winner in this month PopScores – Katy Perry. Her familiarity just increased by 14% and her PopScore by 19 points in the female teen market. She’s grown on average across all demos by a stunning 4 points. These scores are driven largely by her increased familiarity and overall likeability. However, her Love score is still low at just 2%. This compares to the 28% Love score for her song “I Kissed A Girl” which has put her on the consumer map. Which goes to show it takes more than just a song to generate that emotional connection that is a precursor to album selling success..

At its peak Gnarls Barkley’s “Crazy” scored around 35% Love and familiarity climbed incredibly quickly. Today, however, his Love score is just 5% despite nearly 90% familiarity which begs the question, how much do we really know about Gnarls Barkley?

Compare this situation to Snow Patrol, who also had a massive hit with love scores around 35% but today manage a handsome19% Love, which is more than 3 times the UK average.

If you just look at the five most loved artists in the UK , they have two things in common.

They all have at least one song that still scores 30% or more love with consumers
They all possess a compelling and highly differentiated story

The Beatles, The Red Hot Chili Peppers, REM, Kaiser Chiefs and Snow Patrol have managed to build incredibly strong relationships with consumers through their music and their stories.

Conversely, there is P Diddy, whose song “I’ll Be Missing You” scored well above 30% Love in song tests, yet himself manages only 4% Love despite 96% Name Awareness.

Jay Z had a number of hits with Hard Knock Life also achieving record-breaking research scores, yet his Love score is a lowly 6%. Even Joss Stone has a below average Love score (5%) despite a 96% Name Awareness.

What this highlights is simple: it’s not as easy as just having a great song, a song that receives saturation playlisting and people fall in love with. That’s difficult enough and happens only too rarely (just look at the amount of new music on commercial radio). What success also demands, and is non-negotiable, is a unique and truly engaging story. No wonder the US presidential elections are so much about each candidate’s life. They draw from the same well as artists although often unknowingly. So if you sell a government airplane on Ebay, make sure you tell the world!