CPR Promotional Check-Up - Jan 14, 2013

Are You The Cashman?

Possibly one of the most successful campaigns was something that I inherited when I started at Kiss 102 in Charlotte in '89. It was a Clifton idea that he instituted when he started that sucker. It was called The Cashman and it was basically a maintenance promotion; no matter what other insanity we were perpetrating, The Cashman was always running.

Pretty simple concept: at any given time or place, the Kiss Cashman could walk up and ask what station you jam to. If you responded, "I jam to Kiss 102!" you won $102 on the spot. We only did this three times a week, but we got audio on every winner and it was turned into a promo, and with 20 promos running at any given time, it SOUNDED like we were giving away $1000's every week.

It was literally impossible to go anywhere in Charlotte in a station vehicle without people shouting "I jam to Kiss 102!" at us. What were we doing? We were training people how to respond when queried: "What station do you listen to?"

This gave us an "in" at every concert and event in town; "If you're at Spring Fest, keep your eyes open for the Cashman!" And sales was not allowed to get involved, though I can't tell you the number of times that an AE would ask me if the Cashman could do a hit at a client.

Great bit. And one of the reasons that station was #1 for years.

The Free Money Dog

Back when people listened to KTFM in San Antonio, this was one of their "book" promotions. The promotion started with Drex from the morning show begging like a little kid to be allowed to have a dog. He promised to feed it, walk it and take care of it. So management relented. There was a contest to name the dog with $1000 up for grabs for the best name. But, as anyone who knows Drex can attest, he was soon slacking and the dog ran away every day. Whoever returned it got $1000.

Obviously this was all theater-of-the-mind and finding the dog involved tracking clues. Great bit and far more entertaining then some "Phrase That Pays" cliché contest.