CPR Promotional Check-Up - Sep 20, 2011

Expos, Shows & Other NTR Events

I was very very very fortunate to have spent the formative years of my career watching and learning at WLOL in Minneapolis. It was an Emmis station that did so much, so well, that I had to spend the next few years trying not to compare everything to it.

It was probably the first station to ever have a full-time Vendor/Co-op person. She was 20, fresh off the Iron Range of northern Minnesota and is now GM at Power in LA. She helped steer the station towards doing NTR events that brought in large numbers of clients and a massive amount of non-spot revenue.

From a purely Promotion Director viewpoint, I love anytime you can fill a mall with booths and stages and several thousand people. So here are some of things I've seen, heard or done.

Ski One of the now-CBS stations in Sacramento used to do this. You should always know what is the seasonal lifestyle recreational choice of your audience. At this station it was skiing and snowboarding up at Tahoe. So they rented out the expo hall at the fair grounds and sold booth space to ski resorts, makers of equipment, schools, and even ski-related video companies. For activities they had demonstrations and one of those indoor snow-less ski slopes. Again, you need to know the lifestyle of your audience.

Kids Did this as the Kids Care Fair in San Francisco and the Baby Fair in Minneapolis. For parents (and expectant parents), they eat this stuff up. Various contests like diaper crawls. Demonstrations and talks about all sorts of baby care topics. The list of potential clients is almost unimaginable. In the Twin Cities they sold boothspace to Kathy Smith the fitness lady, who came in touted her video on how to get back into shape after being pregnant. Lots of vendor money out there. You just have to go after it.

Women's This is so obvious that something that Radio started, we're now competing against as firms go around the country putting these things on. In Charlotte we geared it towards working women, so there was a hook to it. The Summit stations (now either Radio One of Infinity) did "For Sisters Only" and these were absolutely huge. I went to V-103's in Baltimore about ten years ago. There must have been 10,000 people in the expo hall.

Pets If you are a Pet Person, you are REALLY a Pet Person. I am. And if a station in the Twin Cities did an expo that featured products, games and free stuff (the sampling is what will draw the people), I would be there in a heartbeat. KSFM did this as "The Doggy Dash" and had several thousand people come to get information, buy stuff, participate in contests and load up on the freebies.