CPR Promotional Check-Up - Dec 2, 2013

Play For View

Radio does contests. I like Games. Monty Hall played Games. Occasional zonk which means the winners are bigger, more exciting and less expected.

Trips are great prizes. They're usually money-can't-buy prizes like going to sit in a soundcheck with The Peas in Vegas. Or what K-Rock in Kingston just did with ""Two Tickets To Paradise": a winner and guest won a trip anywhere in the world. Which is better sounding then "a $10,000 travel voucher", which is what it was.

Trips as an umbrella promotion are always big. January Jetaways. Trip A Day. KOB-FM in Albuquerque is doing a weekly Fall Fantasy Flyaway. It's the second year they've done it and the digital stats from last year were staggering. And they were brilliant in that they started with Flyaway #7.

Most radio stations will post a wacky photo of a plane as the logo for the contest.

Go to airline or hotel or travel websites: no goofy cartoon photo of a plane. Lots and lots of extremely great quality photos of cool destinations. Because they want to hook ya.

If you HAD a weekly trip in January, what if you did Play For View? A big colorful photo of the waves pounding the beach on Cayman. That's what we're playing for this week. Next week? A shot of a couple in the midst of a packed dance floor: Vegas.

Things You Beat For $500, Alex

I was just at Power 96 which was I think the first station to do Beat The Bomb.

Again, it's a game. Winners. Losers. TBD outcomes.

What else can you Beat? The pump. Jamz in Birmingham did that with an intern stealing gas from cars in a garages. (Though "a $25 BP gift card in the VIP Club" would have been large). WDVD in Detroit just did The Bank. Pinatas are great. Which is why KDWB did Beat The Leprechaun with a leprechaun pinata in the studio (he screamed "I'm real! Stop hitting me!"). Jamz in Orlando did Beat The Tax Man at the post office on 4/15.

Wired in Saskatoon once did Money Hungry Daryl where a character was fed Big Macs until his belt popped. You won $10 for each Mac and hung in until you bailed or got popped.

The Ugly Tie Quilt

When I was but a mere researcher, back in my formative days, I was working in Portland, Oregon where one of the local TV affiliates did something that was cool enough that it's stuck with me for lo these many years. Following the holidays, they collected ugly ties from their audience. You know, those gaudy gifts that elicit a startled "No. Really. You shouldn't have" response from the giftee. They got several hundred and had them woven into a quilt, that they then auctioned off for several thousand dollars with all the money going to some program that helped pay people's power bills in the dead of winter. I loved the concept. Steal it.

Oh, What A Tangled Ball We Try To Unweave

That low rumble on the horizon? That muffled crunch that sounded like a far-off summer thunderstorm? That was the sound of millions of Americans bringing down cardboard boxes from the attic, peeling away the masking tape and taking out their Christmas lights...only to find them all balled up in a Rubic's cube mess of wire. I truly believe that Primal Scream Therapy was conceived by a psychiatrist as they tried to untangle Christmas lights.

Ya know what would be fun? Get five big tangled balls of lights and five listeners and have them try to unweave the mess. First person to have them spread out and plugged in should win a fully decorated tree.

The next challenge of course is when you discover that one of the 200 lights is out. And you have to go light-by-light trying their fit until you discover the culprit. What if you introduce your audience to "Roulight"? Get a string of empty sockets and 200 bulbs...one of which actually works. At a remote or similar event, have people reach into a bucket, grab a light and try it on the string. The person whose light works gets a trip to the City of Lights, Las Vegas, to play real roulette.