CPR Promotional Check-Up - Apr 17, 2014

The Summer Of Giggity

Why? Why not? One of the stations is doing the All Access summer with seemingly a gazillion tickets to everything that's happening in town. This will tie everything together and give some continuity to it. Like the 10,000 tickets bit. If you do the Access thing, make sure that everyone gets a station laminate to clip on their key fob or backpack.

Trips Trips Trips Trips Trips

Here is the deal: trips are GREAT prizes. Often "money can't buy" prizes, like the VMA's or the Super Bowl.

So here are some suggestions for these terrific prizes which we, have an industry, so dumbed down that they usually fail to even make a blip on the radar.

How To Win How you get your qualifiers is one thing. But then, how do you get the winner? Cayrock did "Blow Your Way To The Windy City" to see Van Halen. Imagine a bunch of listeners with balloons, huffing and puffing. First one to pop wins. Back In The Day, H&B at WLOL took 25 pairs of winners to Hawaii for a week. I think they got something like 100,000 postcards. To award the last trip, myself and some other mook went out in sub-zero temps at 5 am and loaded all the postcards into a cement-mixer truck. The big one with the rotating thing on the back. Live on the radio, it started spinning and the first card to bounce down the trough, won. (At which point The Mooks then UNLOADED the 99,999 post cards and put them in barrels and rolled them back into the Itasca.)(A high point of my career)

By The Numbers Trips are a Promotional Position. When I go around and do market visits, one of the things we do is a breakdown, position-by-position, of how the battle looks. What's up for grabs. What position we can steal. One way to do that, especially with trips, is to number them. Like "Fall Flyaway #7". This also allows you to post-promote previous contests, which normally fall off the radar about five minutes after the Nuts announce the winner. So now, you can do "All this weekend, it's Jammin' Jetaway #27. In the past we sent you to buy prescription meds with Mariah Carey, shop for underwear with Britney and see Skelo in concert at a Ramada Inn in Oshkosh. (prerequisite "zaps" and "lazers") All this weekend, qualify for Jammin' Jetaway #27, sending you to..." KOB-FM in Albuquerque did Fantasy Flyaways and numbered them. Starting at #12.

Hooks And The Hookers Who Hook Them Every station in Minnesota will, in the month of January, send winners to Orlando and Mexico. It's like there's some kind of law. So if you intend to do that also, then how will you stand out? With Mexico, maybe play off being an Illegal Emigrant and we're going to sneak you across the border at Nogales on a Greyhound at midnight. Orlando? How about making the kids the comic foil. Get a bunch of kids and they have to say "Are we there yet?" over and over and over for hours until they quit. Golf trip? Try "Closest To The Pin Head" that Q in Halifax did.

Wild On Clubs are a good hook. We're just not one of 1000 stations sending winners to the VMA's, we're sending you to the clubs with an iPhone to make your own reports that will be posted on the website.

"Official Reporter" The name is very 1989 but the concept is great. One of the stations sent a morning guy to cover the Grammy's a few years ago and he ended up doing no calls; just hung out with other radio guys. Flip side? KS95 sent a winner with a digital camera and the hot line number. She did GREAT interviews. She crashed parties. She was amazing. Why? Because she's not jaded. This was going to be the greatest weekend of her life. It sounded amazing. I've had, over the years, listeners sneak into Paula Abdul's limo, onto the floor at Janet's hotel and into the Playboy party at the Super Bowl.

This also allows you post-promotion.

Destination Unknown KUBE in Seattle did an Air KUBE flyaway where the winners didn't know where they were all going until they all met for breakfast at a Sea-tac hotel that morning. A station-to-remain-nameless is going to do that with the Spring Book promotion. The promos, which will change twice a day, will feature the morning show in some far off place, scoping it out, booking ressies and getting it ready for that Friday's winner. But they won't ever say where exactly they are. That week's destination will be unveiled when they call the winner on the air Friday afternoon.

There-And-Back The biggest of all Hooks. Did this in 1984 when WLOL flew a 747 full of winners and clients to Chicago for lunch, a movie and then back home. Wild in SFO and V-103 in Atlanta have all done planes to Disney. Leave in the morning and back in time for The Tonight Show. Live in Ottawa and The Beat in Vancouver have done that with Vegas. Just like Wired. No hotel rooms: you fly, you gamble, you drink, you debauch, you fly home and 7-10 days later experience painful urination. There-and-back is your hook.

The Griswolds With An Attitude Most stations miss the opportunity of having some fun WITH the trip. KSFM was the first station I was able to prod into Super Bowl Survivor which was their 1999 trip to Miami in a van, kicking out winners along the way. 98PXY did that with Mardi Gras and booted people along the way. Ace & TJ have a terrific "run" with these things. They sent a stretch Hummer to the Grammy's. Their hook was that they had NO money. The contestants had to beg, borrow and squeegee the gas and food money.

An Actual FLYaway As done by Q-104 in Halifax where all the qualifiers came to a mall and threw paper airplanes at a target in the center court to win a trip to the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame awards in New York.

Last Flight Out For a true sense of Show Business, I like what KOB in Albuquerque did. Every Friday they would grab a winner and guest, limo them to the airport and stick them on whatever the next Southwest flight was. Vegas. Chicago. Lubbock. Tulsa. While they were in the air, they booked them hotel and rental car.

Adding Character To The Imaging First you need to acknowledge that 99% of all contest promos suck. (It's one of the twelve steps) They all sound the same. That's why adding a character or protagonist gives it a story line. Like what The Beat in Vancouver is doing with their accountant Larry absconding with funds to Cuba. (I'll send you the imaging if you want. It's great.) With trips, I'd make the character either a nervous flier, a flight attendant with a bad attitude or a bitchy travel agent.

Reality Radio Hollywood stumbled upon something with "Survivor": we're a society of voyeurs. Radio has done a semi-decent job tapping into that with stuff like "Last Student Standing" and "Survive It And Drive It". These things sound way way different then "The Incredible Free Money Birthday Game". Which is good. I think it would be fun to send the morning show, each paired with a listener and with no money, to some place that is as far away as you can go without a passport, and have them race back. First pair home wins a trip for that listener.

Busses I always drew a 200 mile circle around wherever I worked and started pinpointing places where we could ship off listeners in-bulk. Smart stations have some actual fun with it. Turn the bus into a casino. Have male strippers, whatever. There's a reason Greyhound is the last choice for travel. You need to tweak the mode a bit. But, again, busses are great. One of the Clear Channel "Classic Hits" stations did this a VW van they tricked out and sent pairs of winners to shows all over the Midwest. Wild in Tampa had The Piece Of S**t Bus for concert trips to Miami.

A Hook At The Destination Like what Cities 97 does with "Wine & Dine" flyaways. They go to really cool places like San Francisco, but there's something to do when they get there: eat at great restaurants and go wine tasting. Concert trips have that built-in hook. BRMB in Birmingham just kicked off a world tour of concert flyaways.

Trips With Balls Golf balls. Disco balls. The ball is your hook. Big Ball Flyaway #11, sending you and a beachball to the sunny sands of Puerto Vallarta.

I miss anything? I'm sure I missed a lot. But it's a good starting point to make sure that you're not blowing a great prize with a lame methodology.