To Donald Derheim, Executive Vice President for Marketing and Communications, KQED, San Francisco:

Dear Mr. Derheim,

First let me say that I am a devoted listener of KQED Radio (I also watch your TV station, although a lot less these days now that MSNBC has Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow). Like many people in the Bay Area, I enjoy listening to NPR during my drive time to and from work (in the city), and on weekends as well. I really enjoy the in-depth, intelligent reporting of NPR and the great programs like "Fresh Air," featuring the best interviewer anywhere, Terry Gross.

But, I am writing today to inform you that I am a profoundly disenchanted KQED customer. And, I am sure I am not alone in this regard. For the past nearly two months, I literally have not been able to listen to your radio station — or enjoy any of my favorite NPR shows — because of your incredibly intrusive, incessant and over bearing pledge drive.

I really don’t know how anyone can bear to listen to your station during these seasonal, seemingly interminable pledge drives. I certainly can’t. Every time I turn on your radio station, hoping to get the news and information I crave, all I hear is your announcers blathering on about what I can do to donate money to your station. What do I do? I immediately switch channels or turn on a CD. I cannot continue to listen to your fundraising pitches that go on forever. Who can??

Now, I realize you have to raise money. I also understand that funding is tighter than ever, and that the New Depression is putting an even bigger squeeze on your operating expenses. I have been donating to public broadcasting stations for years, including your operation, so I am quite aware of how important donations are from viewers or listeners like me. While I don’t give to KQED every year, I am usually able to donate something most of the time.

But, here is what I truly don’t understand. How can you, as an experienced marketing professional, continue to condone antagonizing and generally turning off your customers (your listeners) every few months during the KQED pledge drives? How can a business — even a public broadcasting business — survive if it continues to drive its customers away? As a marketing executive myself, I just scratch my head at that. It just makes no sense to me.

It would be like Starbucks, a once powerful consumer brand that is now struggling to remain relevant in a very different economic environment, trying to win over and win back customers by screaming at them every time they walk by a Starbucks store. "Hey you there, yeah the guy with the PC case and the harried look on his face, you could use some piping hot Starbucks coffee. And how about a delicious cinnamon scone to accompany that? Come on in now and we’ll throw in an extra shot of espresso in your Venti latte. COME IN RIGHT NOW…WE NEED YOUR BUSINESS!! PLEASE!!"

If Starbucks, or any other brand, was so ham-handed and marketing tone-deaf to scare away customers like that, they would really be in big trouble. In fact, they would be out of business pretty quickly. But that is exactly what you and KQED are doing every quarter with your fundraising drives. You are just turning people like me completely off, and driving us away from your brand. We’re not strangers or non-believers. We’re your true brand advocates.

Let me reiterate that I am well aware that you badly need to raise the money. And, having suffered through your and other public stations’ pledge drives over the years, I know you have tried various things to ameliorate the negative impact of those drives (like shortening the duration if a certain target amount is raised in a certain time). However, it looks like those efforts have not worked, as your fundraising extravaganzas have gotten worse and longer, in my view.

Have you thought of inviting your public to help you co-create an all new fundraising model that won’t have the unintended consequence of killing your brand and driving away your customers?

Wouldn’t that be a novel idea for KQED?!

How about holding a contest to help KQED develop a fresh new approach to raising funds? Heaven knows, there has to be a better way than what you are doing now, which is to blast people in the face and ears with a pledge drive Howitzer every hour on the hour (or more frequently).

Open up the contest to everyone. The Bay Area is full of smart, innovative, creative and entrepreneurial types who would relish this kind of economic challenge. There are also a lot of good progressives here who want to support public broadcasting. I would bet that a Stanford professor or two might even make this a class project — how to devise a smarter, more effective and less intruvise fundraising mechanism for the local public radio enterprise.

Have you ever thought of tapping into the deep pool of innovative thinking right in your back yard, Mr. Derheim? If not, you should start doing it now. Because if you keep doing business the way you have been doing it, you wil not survive.

I would make the contest real, which means making the prize substanial. How about giving your KQED fundraising model contest winner $20,000? Believe me, in this economy, you’d get a lot of very interesting, and potentially profitable, submissions. Believe me, it would be the best $20,000 ever invested by KQED. It just might save your public broadcasting brand for the future.

As we still marvel at Barack Obama’s revolutionary campaign fundraising juggernaut on the web, surely there is a better revenue generating model out there for KQED — and all public stations, for that matter.

In the new world of social media, amidst the rapidly expanding consumer choices for obtaining the news, information and entertainment that we all want and need, entities like KQED cannot afford to antagonze thousands of customers every few months. There are just too many other media alternatives out there these days.

KQED is not the only game in town any more (remember, I mentioned MSNBC and its strong progressive brand?). So, you are going to have to start being smarter in how you run the business, and how you interact and enage with your most important stakeholders: your customers.

Respectfully.

Patrick Di Chiro

A loyal, but suffering, KQED customer

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