Red Zone

Viral marketing and search is helping Internet radio station MyREDLounge.com find an audience for its jazz, swing and blues format.

The station debuted in early 2004 as Red 104.4 FM, a terrestrial radio station in St. Louis. When the frequency was sold to another company, Emmis Interactive kept the rights to the format. “We felt it had more mass appeal than just a single-market signal,” says Emmis vice president Deborah Esayian.

So far about 8,500 “REDheads” have registered with the site. Esayian estimates that 40,000 to 70,0000 listeners stream the station monthly. The target audience skews age 30 to 50 and is about 60% to 65% female. Listeners tend to be upscale consumers who have an epicurean bent and enjoy wine and eating out, she adds.

Contests have been used to help refer people to the site. And offline, a sampler CD was distributed by street teams in the St. Louis area, to get the word out that the once-local format is now available worldwide on the Web. Esayian says the promotion may be expanded to other markets.

Emmis only recently began marketing the site to potential advertisers. The company has spent the last year getting the product right, doing viral marketing and experimenting with both paid and viral search, working with vendors like Oneupweb. The most successful terms are names of artists like Tony Bennett and Michael Bublé.