CPR Promotional Check-Up - Sep 4, 2013

Ticket Upgrades

Mike Culotta when he was at 'QYK in Tampa may have stumbled on a way to take a pair of 5th row floor seats and get some mileage out of them. First, anytime you can flood a venue with people wearing your shirts, it's great. His station does neon shirts that often show up on the radar at the airport, ie: you can see them from a mile away. His morning show will go down with the 4th or 5th row seats and find someone, say, in the 10th row, and will switch tickets do they can sit closer. I mean, who doesn't want that?

They then take the 10th row seats and find someone in the 20th row, and take THOSE seats and find someone in the back on the floor and then someone middle-up on the side and then someone in the back row. For the average person, moving closer is great. And they can get 6 or 7 winners starting with one pair of tickets.

In lieu of shirts, having people do booty patches also works, as does what K-102 in Minny does and tell them to "Just wear K-102 on yourself". People do and they get creative and a LOT of them do it. We're so desensitized to good seats that we forget what great incentives they are for people to market your station.

Top Ten Back To School Bits

Based solely on my personal opinion (mileage may vary) and as applicable to highschools and colleges, and not just the first week, but throughout September.

#1 "Back To School Bunker"

As done by Wild in Tampa where they relocated the station to on-campus housing for the night show for the month of September. You could listen to the competition and hear nice, succinct breaks from a hermetically sealed studio, cut off from the world except for the request line...or you could hear Wild live at the quad pool, doing beer bongs and belly flop contests. Zactly.

#2 "Spodcasters"

Which is what you get when you mix sportscasting and podcasts. Done at Hot in Houston and Jamz in Birmingham last year. A student or pair of students was recruited from each local school and they covered that Friday evening's game, created a podcast of audio and video, submitted by 6 am the next morning, screened for content and posted. 50 or 100 or 200 fresh podcasts on the site every Saturday. It taught teens how to use station websites.

#3 "Team Of The Week"

As done by Rick Gillette at 'HYT in Detroit. Like every other CHR, they had highschool cheerleaders in during football season on Thursday nights. I mean, why wouldn't you? But 99% of stations drop it as soon as the season is over. 'HYT had a different school team in-studio every Thursday night. Girls Volleyball.Boys Basketball. Track. Whatever. And they were able to, eventually, find an excuse to host just about every major school in the market.

#4 "Campus Craze"

As done by The Beat in Vancouver, it's a week of events, parties and a smothering presence on the local campuses start to fill up. KZIA in Cedar Rapids has done something similar when they had the airstaff out to greet arriving students and their parents and help them to move in.

#5 "Trading Greeks"

Jo Jo Wright and I started out at Kiss in Charlotte on the same day and in the same month both of us moved to San Francisco to start Wild. One day he was lounging in my office and joked "You know, you really have slacked off. You used to be good and coming up with great promotions that would allow me to hang out with hot girls." So I said, "Then let's have you rush a sorority over at USF." And he did. Became the only male member (grow up) and had instant content for the next eight months. Plus he had the most smokin' phone screeners in Radio at Night.

#6 "Back To School Botox"

As done by Hot 89.8 in Ottawa. One woman got the opportunity to have all the lines that magically appeared over the Summer, buffed out. Also done as "The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year" at KSFM where the week that school returned to session, they gave out oodles of spa packages whenever the Christmas jingle played.

#7 "Dream Dorm"

Probably too late to sell, but it's still the best mall promotion I know of. Building a fake dorm room filled with items from retailers in the center court of the mall. Guess the total value of everything in the room to win it. Idiot proofed because the entry blank listed each retailer and the specific item was displayed in those stores. You just needed to walk around and then tally it all up.

#8 "Highschool Survivor"

The first highschool spirit contest I remember was where your school could win a Hall & Oates concert if you sent in the most Trident gum wrappers. This has been done with pennies, postcards, texts...all basically the same methodology: school that collects or sends the most, wins. The Survivor methodology has you voting OFF other schools. Every night the texts are counted and a school or several schools are eliminated. Key? You want every school in the rated area on your website. Don't make it difficult. Up to ten times a day you can click on another school. One of the stations added in the element that you had to sign up to be in their database. Killed it. Nobody played. Wild in SFO actually had 'eliminated' schools teaming up with other schools to vote off schools. And they split the concert and everyone would be able to go from both schools.

#9 "Highschool Ambush"

Pre-Columbine. Change the name. But huge for Greg at Wild in Tampa. Every week the school that had called in the most requests by Thursday night, got a post-school jeep hit with all the street teamers, music, soda and ice cream in their parking lot, or, if the school said "no", across the street in a business parking lot.

#10 "Lunchlady From Hell"

As done by Z-90 in San Diego. It doesn't seem like you can go through a scholastic year without seeing some principal in a dunk tank because his elementary school hit their goal of reading books. Billy Burke went out and was a lunch lady (complete with a fake wart of his nose) at a different highschool a day that had achieved some kind of attendance goal.