CPR Promotional Check-Up - Mar 21, 2014

Remotes

True story: I was at KOB-FM in Albuquerque about three years ago and used a remote at some fruit smoothie place as a bannering exercise for their new crop of interns. We parked the van on the curb, cranked up the music, turned on flashing lights and then bannered both sides of the street for a block in both directions.

And people started turning in and going into the store.

When it was over the AE comes over with the regional manager for the client who is literally bouncing. This was the biggest turn out for a radio remote that the chain had had in three years. What'd we do different? Promo placement in the stopsets? Social media engagement? Jock talk? I said "No, we put up more banners than usual."

Theoverwhelming majority of people who go to remotes stumble on them. No one gets up and says, "Honey, Wayne D from KDWB is broadcasting at Famous Footwear at Eden Prairie Center so I'm going to rearrange my entire day and burn $20 in gas to go and spin the prize wheel and hope to win some crap that they were too embarrassed to giveaway on the air, like Diet Pepsi Clear plastic sunglasses!"

No. They're driving past, we give them a hundred yards of signs to alert them to our presence and give them time to make the conscience decision to pause in their schedule and pull in and see what's happening.
Thus, you need signs.

Realtor Signs Since you rarely will have a consultant and ten interns to help with signage, having something that you can just slowly drive the street as someone reaches into the backdoor and grabs signs and plants them every 50 feet, would be great. In Phoenix, the Business Manager's mom worked at a realtor so we got 40 signs, wrapped them and it was then possible to do a block in each direction in about ten minutes.

Sign Spinners Mount banners on foam core and train some of the interns on how to spin them. You want to get people's attention and movement will do that.

Or, Spinning Signs Or maybe this http://www.velocitysigns.com/ or this http://signspin.com/

Progressive Signage Very simple. You get seven sandwich boards that are free-standing and, in order, say "Hey!", "Station", "Is Just 100 feet" "down the road", "so stop", "and win some prizes", "(Big Logo)".

Activities

First, like a 12 Step program, it's important to acknowledge and accept that perhaps there's more to Life that a prize wheel. That's a big step. And then you can move on. You need the "semblance of activity". No one wants to be the first leper to approach the bored looking DJ standing at the table with an intern who is texting her boyfriend.

Nerf stuff is great. Any kind of audience interaction thing like Name That Tune. The engineer at the old V in Baltimore built a set-up for $50 and it generated a crowd. Spin Art was done by V in Atlanta for pennies. CD Scramble at KSFM killed and the cost was a logoed cloth that laid over the inevitable 8 foot table. Ask and I can walk you through it though it would need a new name.

Tat (not her real name), one of the street-teamers at Q-107.5 in Memphis was a college cheerleader and had to organize activities for cheerleading camp. Pause. Cement a mental image. Move on. She shares these things they did.

• say the alphabet backwards
• spell your name using your butt( actually movement is involved)
• come up with a cheer about gf or bf......and has to have the word crack in it.....
• naming 5 vegetables that start with the letter "B"......but 4 will do cause them fifth one is a little tricky.......beets, beans, brocoli, brusselspouts( didn't spell half of that right)
• come up with a rap about your favorite super hero.......
• any trivia question would be good........
• making impressions of your fave disc jockey....
• who does the best hair band impression..........
• who does the best air instrument....(which is really funny)

Eventiquette

Radiowave 96.3 in Windhoek Namibia did a manual on how to act at remotes and events. Send me an email and name a Seinfeld "girlfriend" from the TV series and I'll send it to you.