CPR Promotional Check-Up - Aug 14, 2014

Maybe The Greatest, Fastest Radio Disaster Relief Campaign

I learned the term "tangible" from Rick Thomas who is now at AMP in NYC where they just pulled their best #'s in recent memory. He just got there after programming K-Earth to #1 in LA.

The concept of "tangible" as it relates to charity and a disaster response dictates that it's an entity that you can see or touch and that once you've donated it, you can envision it being put to use. Blood is tangible. Sandbags are tangible. Working with a group of listeners to clean up debris in a town hit by a tornado is tangible.

Texting a code to the Red Cross is not just intangible but it's also the epitome of "We're going to do something because everyone else is but we don't really want to do anything that takes effort or time because this really isn't a priority for the station."

Following Katrina the stations in this group at that time sent 116 trucks of ice, water and supplies to Louisiana and Texas. Newcap in Edmonton sent/delivered close to 500,000 teddy bears. Jamz and Kiss in Birmingham took care of hotel rooms for refugees. Kiss in Seattle sent hundreds of back to school supplies. Those are all tangible.

The morning of the LA earthquake I woke up in a hotel in San Francisco and turned on the TV and there was a live shot of fire erupting from a crack in the street.

I called Rick who had already called Mancow and said to start directing people to 10 am when we would have a place for them to drop off water. The important thing was to get it going and then figure out the delivery later.

Rick, Michael and I started calling people and on the 2nd call, United Airlines offered the station a 737 in 48 hours to fly water to LA.

The plane made three roundtrips and Power 106 offered vehicles to get the water to Northridge. Listening to the station two days after the quake I could hear Renee Taylor handing it out to sobbing people who were reduced to sleeping in parks. THAT...is tangible.

So the next time one of these situations presents itself, ask "What can we do that is tangible and that will actually bring help to the people affected?"

Things You Freeze For $500, Bob

Steve Jones and I once did a one hour stand up routine in front of all the sales managers and AE's from the Newcap Maritime stations.

One of the PEI guys was telling about how he froze an entire riding lawn mower in a block of ice (I live in Minnesota; mine still is) and put it on display in a mall. Guess how long until it melts out and win a new, dry one.

Seriously? How simple and cool is that? You could freeze ANYTHING in ice and put it on display. Do it.

Things We Do Not Do

One of the mantras I've always tried to drill in is that we should have some fairly strict rules about client promotions. We don't do trivia based on their products. We don't have more than one "and then" in the methodology.

Got a "thing" forwarded from a station to me this morning. First? No buy. Second? The station needs to come up with six qualifying prizes and a grand prize. Length? Six weeks. (A car is four weeks, max) And then the red flags: DJ Chatter and Write Our Jingle. We don't do DJ chatter. ("Say Dave, I was using the new Swiffer broom and it was great." "Wait Paige, that's not the one with the flexible rotating heads is it?") And in terms of Writing The Jingle, people don't do it. Because, well, they have lives. So to do a contest that gets no entries will only then open it up for them to yell at you and call you a failed station.