CPR Promotional Check-Up - Aug 9, 2012

Food & A Flick

This was 95.7 Jamz Fall Book promotion a couple of year ago. It's simple and for the average schmo out there: a helluva prize. The station did hundreds of giveaways of dinner for two at Tony Romas and two movie tickets. That's a date. That's a night out. That's a great prize.

Speaking Of Flicks

One of the things that we get totally desensitized to are movie screenings. At one point when I was in Charlotte, we were doing three or four screenings a month. The jocks got burned out on them. They became as exciting as giving away CD's. zzzz...

What can you do to make your screenings or ticket giveaways, if not special, at least better than the other stations in town? Because, in a weak economy movie tickets are GOLD.

• 99% of your listeners will never ride in a limo. Add a limo to the theater as a grand prize.
• Have as many of your jocks there as possible. Have them standing at the tops of the aisles, greeting the listeners. What a great opportunity to press-the-flesh. Most stations don't even HAVE a jock go. What a waste.
• One of the Newcap stations in Canada created a slideshow of station images to play on the screen before the movie started. As opposed to that awful movie trivia thing that usually runs.
• Find an alternative place to show the movie. In a park. At a wavepool. At a block party. At a drive in. On the ceiling at the IMAX.
• Send tickets to highschool papers. Ray Wong at Wild in San Francisco does that and the station gets massive love in the papers when they review the movie.
• Is there a theme you can play off of with the movie? I did a screening once for some awful stupid-crooks film. I had cops come in and arrest the DJ who was introing the movie in the midst of her spiel.
• Award whole workplaces tickets to the screening. Tickets for everyone from a winning office. PPM LOVES at-work listening. (Just shoot me now for saying that; as if we didn't want people sitting and listening for nine hours at a time in Diary)
• Movies are a visual. Websites are a visual. Glasses are a vi...nevermind. If you're doing "Hawaii 5-0" then maybe you have a visual of the morning guy asleep under a palm tree. When the cocoanut drops and bops his head, that's the cue to open the phones. You can take just "regular tickets" and dress them up with a web contest.
• One winner of tickets should be the reviewer the next morning.
• Movie Lines are a hobby for a lot of people. I'd do a Quote Off. The College Of Celluloid Knowledge. Ten people in the studio. Whittle 'em down. One gets tickets to every movie you're doing for the rest of the year.
• Can you do after-parties at clubs? Keep the party going so-to-speak? With enough advance time, the agency can usually get the client/club/restaurant on the ticket.
• If the movie is scary, give out adult diapers. If it's romantic, let some listeners watch it from a bed in the front row.

Have fun with them. People love movies. These are great prizes.