CPR Promotional Check-Up - Jan 18, 2012

The Millionth Request

You know how theme parks, malls, grocery stores and other high traffic clients will sometimes honor the "millionth customer" with a big surprise on the unsuspecting customer? B-103.9 in Ft. Myers did The Millionth Request. They'd been tracking the calls and eventually the millionth came through. With the prescribed balloon drop, bells, whistles and other accoutrements. That person got picked up, brought to the station and loaded down with prizes including a trip to see Christina in London.

A New Mindset On Bumperstickers

If you drive around the Twin Cities for a day, you might, maybe, see one or two radio station bumperstickers. But more then likely you will see three or four stickers for a place called Sven & Olies. Huh? This is a pizza place in Grand Marais, Minnesota. Five hours north of here in the shadow of Canada. It's a popular town on Lake Superior that caters to the "city folk" who head up to swim, boat, ski, hunt, snowmobile and generally get away from the madding crowds in the metro.

Sven & Olies is a little pizza joint off the main drag in Grand Marais. And they give every customer who comes in a bumpersticker. Every one. And they end up on cars. How many stickers do you hand out at your events? Setting them on a table? Accomplishes little. Greeting people and handing them a sticker? Surges(tm) the "put on cars" ratio about 4%. As witnessed by a pizza place 250 miles from here having more stickers on cars then radio stations.

That's why massive sticker stops work. The first 500 cars all get prizes. They all get stickers on their bumpers. Drive around Tampa or San Francisco and count the stickers. 90% of the Wild stickers were put on at "stops".

Or you can explore new territory. Not entirely new. Because I saw this being done in the Wisconsin Dells in the 70's. The Tommy Bartlett Water Show was the Disney-ish attraction there. (Still is). While the thousand or so families filled the lakeside bleachers to see fetes of waterskiing acrobatics, teams of Bartlett employees worked the lines of cars in the parking lot, wiring cardboard stickers onto people's bumpers. These were a little bigger then the average station sticker, printed on cardboard and wired on over the top and bottom of the bumper. You could take it off in about ten seconds, but most people left them on for their drives home to Chicago and Minneapolis.

Terrific, guerilla sticker marketing.