Tue, Feb 04, 2003 page5

• Sellers of satellite radio plan creative advertising

  • NY TIMES NEWS SERVICE
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  It is easy to love the concept of satellite radio and its 100 channels of crystal-clear digital music, news and audio entertainment. But are there millions of consumers willing to pay a monthly fee of US$10 or more for such a service in a nation used to free radio?

  This challenge faces both Sirius Satellite Radio and XM Satellite Radio Holdings, the two startup companies behind the technology. But Sirius -- hampered by rollout delays, short of cash and scrambling to avoid bankruptcy -- finds itself with less than one-tenth the number of subscribers that XM Satellite has signed up. Against such a backdrop, Sirius' first major national branding effort, a wide-ranging campaign created by Crispin Porter & Bogusky in Miami, appears critical to the company's future.

  The drive to ignite rapid subscriber growth, which begins on Monday night with television advertisements on late-night talk shows, aims to remind music lovers of the annoying things they can turn off by turning Sirius on.

  The turnoffs include just about everything associated with conventional radio. Sirius attacks annoyances like advertising, the limited reach of AM and FM signals, and, most of all, playlists confined to a small number of heavily promoted singers and groups.

  The turn-ons Sirius emphasizes include the chance to hear unsigned bands, live music, seldom-heard cuts from well-known artists and genres of music that have no home today on the AM and FM radio dials, like the electronica that shows up only in clubs and car commercials.

  "People use music to sell products because they understand the emotional connection, but we are music," said Mary Pat Ryan, executive vice president for marketing at Sirius. "We are bringing that to life in the campaign."

  Actually, satellite radio is more than music. Sirius, for instance, carries 14 news channels, including three regional weather channels and BBC broadcasts in English and Spanish. Sirius also has six sports channels and a variety of talk show, religious and comedy channels.

  But Ryan said that the 60 music channels available from Sirius were the main attraction for potential subscribers, who each pay US$12.95 a month.

  Unlike XM Satellite, Sirius has kept all of its music channels commercial-free. The new campaign drives that home in a lengthy "manifesto" that Sirius will distribute at events like rock concerts and draw on in its other advertising.

  "Music shouldn't be brought to you by a double espresso in a can, or jeans that ride amazingly low," the manifesto warns at the beginning of a diatribe against commercial radio.

  The copy builds up to a plea to let "struggling artists yearning to break through" be heard. In other words, you do not subscribe to Sirius to hear the Beatles or Elvis, even if they can be found on some of its rock channels.

  Sirius sees music as not just entertainment but as "social currency" that is shared among people, said Alex Bogusky, a partner and creative director at Crispin Porter, which is 49 percent owned by the Maxxcom unit of the MDC Corp.

  "We all have that feeling that we've fallen off our game, that we used to know more about what was going on," Bogusky said. "Sirius as a product is a shortcut to listening to an enormous cross section of what's out there." The anti-establishment appeal of the campaign may seem a little odd.

  After all, the satellite companies are unlikely to find many subscribers among the disenfranchised, who tend to be short on money, even if they have a car.
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