The good ship Trader Joe's, sailing the (air)waves

The local NPR affiliate here in Kansas City, KCUR, shot me an email yesterday saying, "We had a last-minute cancelation for our 11 a.m. show Up To Date. Can you come in and talk about your book for an hour?" I had a great chat with journalist/host Steve Kraske, which you can listen to by clicking the player below (or, if you want to listen on KCUR's own page, follow this link.)

 I was surprised when callers were more or less evenly split between rapturous fans of the brand and Kansas Citians who were left cold. The lesson in this is, if try to ensure that no one hates you, you'll also be ensuring that no one really loves you. One of the real examples of Trader Joe's genius is that the brand doesn't try to be all things to all people.

As I was leaving the station, Steve Kraske, producer Stephen Steigman, Mary and I chatted for a couple of minutes and it occurred to me that the closest Trader Joe's gets to what we in the ad business call 'brand advertising' is the radio ads the company runs in some markets.

Trader Joe's says that it carefully chooses radio stations that emphasize news, talk, classical and jazz music -- stations that appeal to customers with better-than-average educations. That made me wonder, why doesn't Trader Joe's sponsor NPR programs? NPR delivers that demographic/psychographic profile in spades.

If you're an NPR listener, and have heard local programming sponsored by Trader Joe's, please let me know when and where.