If you check Wikipedia, which has become the font of all knowledge, you’ll see that the term “Eat Your Own Dog Food” may have come from the Lorne Greene Alpo spots of the ‘70s, or perhaps Microsoft. I picked it up from Fred Jacobs of Jacobs Media and he used it to refer to listening to your station, especially the streams, which were often pretty bad. Not audio quality, but the presentation.
When I was at Cumulus, I used to listen to a few of the company outlets online, and at one point, I would hear the same PSAs running five and six times in a row in a stop set. The issue was duly reported to corporate engineering and to their credit, the problem was fixed. It’s always a good maxim for programmers to listen to their stations and make sure that what’s going out, whether on-air or online, sounds as good as it can.
That brings me to the video streaming experience. I’m a hockey fan and have a subscription to ESPN+, which gives me access to most of the out-of-market NHL games that aren’t on a national platform. It’s great to have access to the games, as well as some of the more esoteric sports options that you can watch. Where else would you get to see Northwoods League baseball? How about lower-level college football, basketball, baseball, soccer, and volleyball, men’s and women’s, among other sports?
After last week’s column, you know that I’m a student at Western Kentucky University and most of their football games were on ESPN+. Who could miss the epic battle between WKU and Sam Houston State? And then, there’s cricket. I’m still trying to figure out the rules, but it’s entertaining to watch. One of these days I’ll try the Hindi version…maybe that will help!
Here’s the rub: ESPN, apparently, doesn’t eat their own dog food, or if they do, they don’t care. When I started in the business many years ago, it used to be that you wanted to get a three-frequency for an ad campaign. During one recent cricket match, I scored at least a twelve frequency for a particular Hyundai vehicle. The spot was in every break!
Recently, I watched the Washington Capitals/Arizona Coyotes game and as a Caps fan, it was a complete disaster with Arizona scoring five goals in the first period! Beyond the awful result, my frequency for Target ads was at least ten times and probably more (I wasn’t counting). And I’m now glad to know that we may be in the NHL’s golden age having seen this message over and over as well as being intimately aware of what the Geico gecko has been up to recently.
Some spots would start, but didn’t time out correctly for the break, so they were dropped partway through to put the game back on. Having watched the Capitals version of the game for many years while living in the DC area, ESPN+ would start a spot at the end of the period, when it had perhaps 5-10 seconds before the intermission show would begin. Of course, the spot was cut.
I’m not writing this to shame ESPN+ as they’re not the only culprit although other ad-supported streaming services are good enough to put a countdown timer on-screen, so I know how long I have before unmuting the spots. And live sports from disparate sources posses different challenges than prerecorded programming.
Still, as a consumer, can’t I be offered something better? And for the advertiser, is showing me the same spot or even multiple executions 10-15 times over a few hours the best use of advertising dollars?
If this is the promise of programmatic, maybe we need more Herb Tarleks after all.
You probably don’t have an operation the size of ESPN, but you can eat your own dog food. Most PDs are fanatics about doing that, but if you’re not, get with the plan now. Your audience is unlikely to be as fanatic as this Caps fan and the PPM will not forgive your mistakes.
Let’s meet again next week
