CPR Promotional Check-Up - Aug 22, 2012

Will It Melt?

In case we get one more heat wave this Summer....

Clay with The Wolf in Greensboro called me one morning. He was sitting on the (seemingly) four last pairs of tickets to the next night's Toby Keith show. The bit we came up with? "Will It Melt?"

During the first break of PM drive you go to the Sales cubes and steal five items. A bobblehead. A candyheart from Valentines. Whatever.

You then take one caller for each item and they need to say whether it will melt in the next four hours. You take the items, lay them on the sidewalk in front of the station and report on their status throughout the show. Bobblehead is getting soft but not melting. Candyheart? A puddle.

If the callers were correct, they get the prizes that are being offered.

"Local" Contests

There are so many VT'ed and other-wise chlorinated radio stations that you can listen to for an hour and NOT know what market they're in. Cities 97 in Minneapolis is the opposite. They ooze "Twin Cities" in everything they do. I have a bunch of other examples from pretty much every company but to list them would tick other people off. But they're out there.

A great local promotion is so specific to the market that it would be hard to explain it to someone 100 or 1000 miles away.

Excellent example; Pittsburgh. Large spread out market with rivers and hills and LOTS of highway and road tunnels.

So...I was trading emails with Y-108 about a promotion opp and they mentioned Tunnel Tunes. I replied, "What are Tunnel Tunes?" Mark Anderson explained that because of all the tunnels, locals are used to driving and having to miss large chunks of their songs. Thus a contest where they start a song, it suddenly goes to static and the designated caller has to finish the lyric.

Simple. Local. And it nails Pittsburgh.

What would it be in your market that is so freaking local that I would have to ask what it is because I'd never seen it on a prep sheet or heard it done by every morning show in a major company?