CPR Promotional Check-Up - Jul 8, 2011

Best Front Row Contest...Ever

Me? I'd stick them in the VIP Club. But that's me.

Honestly? We are so desensitized to great prizes that we tend to dumb them down to nothing ourselves.

I've been in the front row. Once. With a bunch of friends at Bob Seger in 19(something or other) and only because Mike Domke could get us into Southdale five minutes before the doors opened and before the hoarding masses at it's teaming shores could rush in and try to get to Daytons, which is where tickets were sold. It was great. We (the two people who still will speak to me) still talk about it.

After a year of getting someone to do the stairway "running of the balls", Mike McKenzie at KOB-FM did it last week for Rihanna backstage with superballs. Dave Ryan just took it to a higher and harder level with golfballs for Britney front row.

You HAVE to have cameras on every landing or it's wasted. Kudos to the filmography and execution.

If you asked Steve Spielberg or Monty Hall to giveaway front row tickets, they wouldn't do a "friend us on Facebook!". They'd do something that was big, MADE people listen to the Radio (which is kind of the idea) and looked great visually. This gets an "A". http://www.daveryanshow.com/cc-common/news/sections/newsarticle.html?feed=431562&article=8795900

Traffic

The best bits evolve out of random thoughts. Not an initiative or focus group. For no apparent reason, Katie Fitter at KOB-FM used to do Haiku Traffic. Audience loved it.

The Art of Promotions is to stand out. And there are going to be some things that you do that everyone else is doing. So why would you NOT want to differentiate yourself from them. It's free. If you have to deliver traffic, then do it in a way that will stand out. The information is the same. The length is the same. The delivery is different. Read Marshall MacLuhan.

In the mid-90's KQRS used to have their EBS Test read by a seemingly stoned Bill Clinton at a rally. Friends still ask about. That...is the example of Promotions.

Also understand that most of the people at the traffic services are out-of-work DJ's dying for an opportunity to audition, or, at the very least, have some fun. So what else could you do?

• Unemployed Shakespearean Actor Traffic
• Out Of Work Phone Sex Operator Traffic (about to debut "somewhere")
• 6th Grade Gym Teacher Traffic
• Corporate Lawyer Traffic
• Pompous Film Critic Traffic
• Trekkie Traffic
• Anger Management Class Drop Out Traffic
• Outsourced To India Traffic With "John"
• OCD Traffic

Bob Yates used to own afternoons in Minneapolis on 1500 KSTP. When he gave out the studio line number, he did it three times. Once normal, and once "For our friends in Wisconsin" (he nailed the accent) and "for our huge listenership in the crackhouses in St. Paul" (read slowly and mumbled)

Why would you want to do what everyone else does? That's boring.