Background
A few months ago, CBA Vice President Brooke Coneys wrote an article entitled: “What’s in a Name? I Should Know,” in which she described the testing we conducted for Tucson’s KUAT television and radio properties as they incorporate their stations into a new entity called Arizona Public Media or AZPM.

In the summer of 2008, we tested using the original station name and logos against the new AZPM brand in acquisition, add gift and lapsed fundraising campaigns.  We’d like to bring you up to date on the test results and progress in incorporating the change of brand into the membership fundraising program.

Results
The original station identification did better than the new media branding in all three campaigns, but the difference was less significant for acquisition (+13% in response) than for add gift  (+34% ) and lapsed (+29%).  A large number of nonmembers may have thought they were receiving mail from a new organization, although the connection between all KUAT stations and the new media company was explained clearly in the fundraising letters.

In add gift and lapsed mail, current and recent members responded much better to the recognizable logo and station call letters.  Of course after the fact, this makes a lot of sense; they didn’t identify with what appeared to be an unknown organization – not the one they wrote their checks out to in the past.  For nonmembers it didn’t make that much difference who was writing to them as long as it could be identified as the source of the content and programming they love.

Interestingly, all the AZPM packages drew significantly higher average gifts than the KUAT packages.  Respondents may have had the sense that they were giving to a larger, more substantial organization that requires more support than a single broadcast entity.  Speculation, but probably close to the truth.

That taught us that the ideal name change, with minimal loss of income, would be somewhere
between the old ID and the new one management wanted to install as part of their modernization of the institution.  It was necessary to hold onto a piece of their past identity as they went forward.

Next came the tricky incorporation of the new brand into the renewal series without creating confusion. We wanted to avoid jeopardizing the retention of members and revenue in this critical area.

Since they also combined their membership programs, it was a delicate challenge to ask joint members of TV and radio stations (sometimes more than one radio station) with different expiration dates to become a single member of AZPM.

While CBA was testing in the mail, the station did its own research.  One interesting finding concerned their logo “KUAT 6,” the most important part of which was the number “6.”  Their current channel position is the key to recognition, not their call letters.  The number 6 will continue to be printed with KUAT and Arizona Public Media on all new fundraising materials going forward.

A bit of praise
Pat Callahan, (Director of Membership) generously passed along General Manager Jack Gibson’s
comments on CBA’s role in handling the delicate transition:

“First, plaudits from Jack [Gibson] on the entire renewal test series.  He suggested that we give a presentation at DevCon as an example of the right way to go about changing a corporation name and the testing to make sure that the money continues to come in.

As you can imagine, I was beaming on your behalf.

Second, he was also delighted with the dual membership letters, especially the language in the letters and the branding banners on the envelopes.  He said that this is AZPM’s ultimate goal: to have one membership that encompasses all our stations.  And, he indicated great awareness and “sympathy/empathy” about the difficult task that we asked you to tackle.

Pat Callahan”

We thank Pat and Jack for their kind words and look forward to a rewarding renewal program.  We’ll share these results with you over the next few months.

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