CPR Promotional Check-Up - May 19, 2014

Beat The Heat

One of the GREAT all-time Summer themes is back for '14. Somewhere. Scorpio used it at The Boxx in Houston as an umbrella that everything went under between Memorial Day and Labor Day. Movie tickets, water park tickets, cases of soda, ice cream hits, club nights...all were tweaked to fit the theme that the station was giving you a break from the Hiroshima-like(tm) temps.

The Mattress Of Fame

As opposed to the Pole Of Fame. It's always been fun to watch listeners when they're at the station, gravitate straight to the Autograph Wall. Like lemmings to a cliff. We take celebrity pop-ins for granted. For a listener, the signatures are pretty damn cool. Got a mattress or bed client? Get one of their items, have it set up as the defacto autograph wall and after a year, give it away. I remember giving away Bon Jovi's signed sheets from his hotel bed. The winner came down with her whole family to pick them up. It was like we were handing over the Shroud of Turin. They were that in awe of what they were getting.

Things That Skip

• One of the all time great "out of leftfield curve balls" was something Clifton came up with for Dave Morales in the early weeks of Wild in SFO. Cost? Zip. Risk to license? Zip. Recall Factor? A PD who was in highschool in Fremont at the time, told me about listening to it when it happened. NINETEEN YEARS after the fact. Very simple. Dave locked himself in the studio. Papered over the windows so the research staff couldn't see in. And about two hours into his night show, introduced "Too Legit To Quit". Song played for maybe 90 seconds, there was a scratch, a skipping sound and it started all over. And it happened again. And again. And again. He took the phone off the hook and sat and read a magazine for 45 minutes. Until San Mateo FD showed up. 911 had exploded with people thinking he had died. When the paramedics showed up, Dave "appeared" to be breaking back into the studio after getting locked out while going to the bathroom. In the early days of Wild, this was one of the things that put it on the map.
• Senior Skip Days. I lobbed this out at the CHR's and other "contemporary" stations. A lot of local Seniors are going to be bouncing out for a last day of bonding with their classmates. You need to be out crashing as many of these as you can.

There's generally one acknowledged first "nice day" of Spring. Back in the day, we used to do a Skip Day. Having a couple of days to prep for it, we got rental stuff like volleyball nets, had a truck of Coke and ice cream, grills and on a Friday morning, just stated that it was too nice to be inside and we were relocating to Lake Nokomis for the rest of the day and encouraged everyone in the Twin Cities to join us. It was great. It was fun. Clients were involved. It was one of the best "lifestyle promotions" I can remember.