CPR Promotional Check-Up - Jan 3, 2013

That Big Vacant Hole Known As "January"

For the nth thousandth time, it's hard to beat a station that is always promotionally "on" and has something cool and compelling happening on the air. Which is why I spent a big part of December helping stations map out, week by week, the 1st quarter. Because you know that on Monday there are going to be a lot of stations that find they have nothing until about January 20th, when they start promoting their Super Bowl event. Yech.

So here are a few things you could do to come out of a really strong series of holiday bits, and keep the momentum going until the Super Bowl, Valentines and all the other Hallmark's kick in. These should cost you little or nothing and could all be on the air by mid-week. This isn't Rocket Science.

Music For A Year I gave my niece a CD from KDWB last year for Christmas and she brought it up again this year. We're desensitized to free music. Your audience sure isn't. This is a Cities 97/Minneapolis bit every January. All on-air winners in January qualify for a weekly prize of one of every CD that gets played on the station in the coming year. Which is a mammoth prize.

Movies For A Year I've done this and it was simple because I was in a market where agencies placed the screenings and had "lists". Asking to stick ten additional names on their list wasn't a big deal. And I think I've heard from about a dozen stations in the last month who have commented that their movie passes are hotter then ever. You think? Going to a movie is a "universal" and not something that people are really happy about cutting from their entertainment budget. However you could pull this off, it would be bigger than big.

Highschool Text Contest As great as it would be to pick up the phone this afternoon and lock down an act for a date-to-be-determined-this-Spring, you don't have that kind of time. Offering to have the station come out and mix at their prom is a good enough carrot to dangle. And I would hope that if you're a CHR, you have a mixer on staff or available. So your cost should be negligible and hopefully you can stick a sponsor on it. A three week text contest would be a good "void filler".

Ski Bus I was trading emails with one of the CC stations and talking about how we used to do a few busses a year. No qualifying. A couple of times a day you take a caller, they're on the bus. You could get two weeks out of this. And except for the Florida, Texas and Alabama stations, most of you are within a 5 or 6 hour drive of a ski hill.