CPR Promotional Check-Up - Oct 1, 2013

Great Moments In Torturing The Competition

When we were doing Wild in Reno, the competition had one of those huge cash contests that was hard to compete against. So Clifton made Wild the underdog. People love underdogs. We ran a promo saying that since the station wasn't owned by a company with 9000 radio stations all over the globe and since all of our employees actually lived in Reno, it would be hard to match that kind of money. And we were getting flooded with emails from people who wanted to win their money but just couldn't stomach sitting through all of the horrible music and all of their commercials.

So Jason from the Street Team got yet ANOTHER parking ticket on the Wild SUV and as punishment, we're going to make him listen for you. We'll tell you when to call and win from them and you can still stay tuned to our vastly superior programming.

Literally 1/3 of their winners were Wild listeners.

And the same scenario happened in Halifax where the competition has been promoting for a month that this morning at 8:20 am they'd announce a phone number. Caller 100 to that number would win $50,000.

So, Q-104 (which is killing them anyway) popped the phone number for their audience and encouraged everyone to try and win. Competition's heads exploded.

Names

With pretty much every radio station doing exactly the same thing (Win It Before You Can Buy It, Family Four Packs and Prize Packs), just simple semantics will differentiate what you're doing from the rest of the pack. Which is what Promotions is, basically. Standing out.

With that said, three promo requests crossed my desk yesterday that could be fun to play with.

• One of the stations is going to do a costume drive for low income kids. Seriously, I've never heard this done. Really cool idea. Possible name? "(Station's) Charity Bootique"
• You should have a list of every family event, haunted house, corn maze, costume parade and other Halloween attraction on your website. And it's OBVIOUSLY sponsorable. Instead of Map Quest, a station-to-remain-nameless is calling theirs Haunt Quest.
• A Newcap station is going to stick their Friday night club gigs under an umbrella and then change up the theme every month, ie: Cougar Month. Why do people go to a club? To drink and fornicate. Basically. "The Friday Night Hook Up" would cover that, as would "12 Step Fridays."