CPR Promotional Check-Up - Dec 3, 2013

Stuff The Bus

Most stations that do these kinds of things do them every year, year-after-year, so you really need to tweak it and add a new element every December. Like Chet does with the scaffold in Vegas. To that end; here are some suggestions:

* We're doing "Stuff The Bust" at one of the stations. People stop by and fill an interns top with crumpled bills. (Hey, if you're going to have hot street teamers, you may as well make the most of them)

* Is the announcers' mom available to call every night and read a bedtime story at 10 pm?

* When Mark S. Allen used to do his MDA stunts at KSFM, they always padded the take with t-shirt sales; "I Helped Get Mark S. Allen Off The Desert Island". Stuff like that. What if you sold the op to spend the night on the bus with the jock and the listeners get "I Slept With (DJ) From (station)...And All I Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt" shirts. The station in Cedar Rapids sold $83,000 in shirts for flood relief.

* On nights that you don't have a paid club gig, you should do Club Bus and turn the parking lot into a club.

* The Rock station here did the bus campaign in the early 90's and they moved it for a couple of nights to Vikings games and a U2 concert. If there ARE going to be 15,000 people all going somewhere, it'd be great visibility. Most stations that do this will lock in at one location, or move once in the middle. That's fine...but again...you don't want to miss a buttload of people.

* Can you get a rear project screen and do movies every night in the parking lot?

* Think like a car dealer: get a BIG helium balloon, tethered, with a hanging, weighted, vertical, "Stuff The Bus With (DJ) From (Station)!!!" hanging under it.

* KLUC used the sign spinners last year on nearby corners. THAT was pretty damn cool.

* B-95 in Fresno had all the local TV anchors come out and act out "A Christmas Carole" on the air, with each reading a part.

* We always try to acknowledge people who have stopped by and donated. Can you compile a list and have it scrolling on the website?

Remote-To-Web Bounceback Traffic

Taking photos of people at concerts and posting the photos the next day usually juices traffic about 600%.

One of the OM's had this question: we're without budget on our smaller (format) property and trying to do some stickers - other than the old "coupon for sponsors" bit have you ever done anything different with stickers or other swag that includes a sponsor?

Here are two links and an ad industry piece on these things http://www.prizedecoder.com/ and http://www.tradeshowshopping.com/red-reveal-hidden-message-promotions.html I got hip to the little acetate things because I'm a Point Whore with all the airlines and hotel chains and Sheraton would hand these out when you checked in and you then went to their website and help it up to your laptop screen to see if you won.

SCREEN GEMS

What red acetate did for 3-D glasses, it's now doing for the Internet. Like their bricks-and-mortar brethren, dot-coms are using games to bring consumers to their sites. Web decoder gamepieces distributed offline - via FSIs, sampling packs, or hand-outs - bring players online to see if they've won. The device was launched about two years ago and has become quite popular over the last year.

OnMoney.com last month broke a sweeps that inserted 16 million gamepieces in Parade and other magazines as well as in national sampling packs (via Overland Park, KS-based The Sunflower Group). Players go to OnMoney.com and hold the acetate piece to a play area on their computer screen. A prize message embedded in the gamepiece is revealed by the colored background on the screen. CCL Label handles.

Some marketers prefer to embed messages online so they can change them daily and drive repeat traffic. Scratch-and-win games have blossomed online, and technology is upgraded constantly. St. Louis-based eIncentives revamped its eScratchers technology to permit faster loading and easier navigation. The latest version bowed in June via winamilliondollars.com.

American Express brought its techno-toys to the park last summer to launch Blue, a revolving-credit card with a smart chip. AmEx's silver-helmeted "Blue Crews" patrolled New York City on skateboards and scooters handing out 100,000 gamepieces, then scanning them on the spot with Speakstakes, portable scanners that announce winners via voice chip. One in four cards won tickets to a Central Park concert starring Sheryl Crow (where roving photographers took digital photos to post on AmEx's Web site).

AmEx's agency, Momentum, bought 35 Speakstakes from Data Display, El Segundo, CA, and made custom holsters for Blue Crew reps. When winning cards were scanned, a pre-recorded message announced the prize. Gamepieces were redeemed for two concert tickets at a nearby kiosk.

Holiday Inn's current May-through-September One Million Nights Free sweeps delivers 165 million gamepieces via Val-Pak and Carol Wright direct mailers and FSIs. Players hold cards up to a decoder display at the front desk of a Holiday Inn, Holiday Inn Express, or SunSpree Resort, with winners getting reimbursed for one night's stay. (Winning cards have a sun, losers have a star.)

Parent Bass Hotels calls it one of the highest-value promotions in the hotel business, because the huge chain can afford to give away a lot of room nights. Stamford, CT-based BEN Marketing's Atlanta office helped make the campaign turn-key for hotel clerks. "We made the cards and decoders all self-explanatory, so even a brand new clerk who's never heard of the promotion can execute it," says spokesperson Francie Schulwolf. "That's important because there's high turnover with staff."