Demonstrating yet again that SiriusXM's promotions and marketing departments don't know their heads from a hole in the ground, last night's "silver-platter" advertising opportunity on NBC's hit Summer show "America's Got Talent" (AGT) was unsurprisingly squandered.
"Ponderous" is the word that came to mind as I watched last night's season premiere of AGT fearlessly with my 6 year old daughter by my side. For many months now as I have viewed promo after promo for AGT each one heavily featuring SiriusXM's crown jewel, Howard Stern on their T.V. commercials, web-shorts, banner-ads, billboards and twitter mentions, I wondered what exciting new commercial SiriusXM would develop in order to capitalize on the hype generated by NBC's bank-roll.
I sat through the first commercial break... No SiriusXM commercial? "No big deal" I thought "They're probably waiting for the second commercial break to catch the late-comers." Second break, no commercial, "Hmmm, this is a familiar feeling... Something is wrong here." As the third commercial break came and went without a SiriusXM commercial, I thought to myself, "Why am I acting surprised?" SiriusXM has never once promoted their products effectively outside of a car showroom, and even then it's probably just an after thought "Thanks for purchasing your car from our dealership! Here's your keys and please drive careful... SCREEEEECH!! Oh yeah I almost forgot... Your car comes with a free 6 month subscription to... Where did you go? Oh well, yet another successful sale at a dollar over invoice... Good work Johnson."
The night proved to be a huge success for NBC and Howard Stern as millions tuned in to witness what The Parents Television Council had been warning them about. As it turns out, Howard Stern (a veteran broadcasting professional with 35 years of announcing experience) proved to be a heart-warming delight to the surprise of no-one, except possibly a vocal minority of closed-minded "offended-at-birth" types, other elitist obscenity alarmists, and their morally superior sisters of the "Culturally Unsuitable Naughty Thoughts Society."
I am now 100% sure that if SiriusXM continues into the future and remains relatively successful, it will be in spite of themselves. I even had this sobering thought last night, "If SiriusXm isn't interested in gaining new subscribers by informing the public that they indeed exist and scalping some viewers from NBC, and since I subscribed to SiriusXM to be entertained by the "no-longer exclusive" content created by Howard Stern, why don't I cancel my subscriptions and watch Howard on NBC!"
Bottom line: SiriusXM is clue-less, they have a great product, but they just don't care to tell anyone about it. They are not unlike the Dad who takes pride in the awesome Star Wars action figure that remains un-opened and in its original box that he has owned for many years and long before his children were born. Year after year the toy sits motionless in a hermetically sealed display case in his room. Although it occasionally catches the eye of his children passing by his room on their way to the back yard, it no longer beckons to them... "come play with me." The jilted kids simply decide to leave it alone and decide rather to go to the neighbors house where they are encouraged to "play" with "toys" labelled as "action figures." Shame on you Dad... You obstinate fool!
Howard wishes Sirius had gotten involved w/ his America's Got Talent gig. The promotions people should b all over it but they're ignoring it
— Stern Show (@sternshow) May 15, 2012