CPR Promotional Check-Up - Oct 28, 2015

Pizza

A quick refresher course on "universals".

• Movies are the universal entertainment choice.
• If you stick a DJ on a billboard or hang them from a crane, you will get press.
• Ditto with diaper crawls
• Most people (listeners) will never socialize with their coworkers outside the workplace
• Most people (listeners) will never be in a limousine except on their wedding day
• Pizza is the universal food choice.

With that said, pizza seems to be pretty economy proof as evidenced by the almost daily promo requests I get from stations.

Slice & Dice At a station to remain nameless, they have a sampling day with a major chain about to hit. Come by, have a bite and sign up for a junket to a nearby casino. Pizza is great bus food. And casinos can be great bus trips. Do the math. Count the cards. Roll the dice.

Pizza Man Confessions As done by one of the Newcap stations for Superbowl. They pinhole cammed a delivery guys' hat and posted the video of his visits to literally a hundred parties.

Dough Or No Dough Those boxes have to be good for something. What about using them as the contest methodology for a larger giveaway? A trip or meet and greets. Choose the box with the pizza in it and win.

Fund Raising Pizza chains are usually the go-to people for most charitable campaigns. WMZQ in DC raised money for St. Judes with each sale of a local delivery pizza and got on all the boxes.

Box Tops Attaching artwork from Kiss in Boise where they tied Little Caesars into a Bieber flyaway and made bucco bucks.

Ticket Sales One of the Journal stations was experiencing some soft sales for Fall Jam. So they tied in Dominos. For a special price tickets and food arrived at your door.

Mothers Little Helper God created takeout pizza so that parents who have had a particularly brutal day can take a break from thawing, preparing, cooking, serving and then cleaning up. MLH was done by Cayrock on Grand Cayman. Very simple. I'm at work (on Grand Cayman, let's say I'm Paige The Pool Boy) and Mrs. Paige calls. She's fried. Bad day. I call in to the station, tell her tale of wo(e) and there's a pizza waiting at the Little Caesars closest to our place when I roll by on the way home.

FLAT Food Fast As done by a station in Spokane. It was the standard at-work food delivery but with a minor hook. You called in and said where you were working and Feeling Lazy And Tired and the street team popped in within the hour with some pizzas.

RIF Most major clients have charities or causes that they're passionate about. Wendys is adoption. Meineke is childseats. McDonalds is…crap…I forget. And Pizza Hut is reading. If you go to them with something based on education it will be far more difficult for them to turn you down.

Ticket Deliveries Bob West and I created "Janet Jackson In 30 Minutes Or Less" for the station in Atlantic City when they had a weekend contest that needed a hook. You won your tickets and they were delivered to your door in half an hour…or you got a free pizza. This was at the height of the Dominos guarantee campaign. NOW in NYC does ticket delivery weekends and they QUICKLY became a benchmark. Adding in some free food is just accoutrement.

Pizza Expo I've seen this done twice and it KILLED both times. Free entry. You then bought tickets which were good for sample sized squares from the two dozen-or-so pizza places that had bought booth space. Great op for mom-and-pop shops who couldn't normally afford a Papa John's-ish sked. Voting for best pizza. Live music. Kids area. Beer garden.

Theater In The Round If you have any kind of movie clip or other feature on the morning show, round food would be a good prize.

A Personalized Pan Pizza When Leah Black was at KOB-FM in Albiekerkey had her own smoothie at a chain of local smoothie places. The Market Manager for CBS in Sacramental ate so often at Max's Opera Café that they named a sandwich after him. Your morning show could/should have their own pizza.

FNL (Family Night Live) Pair them up with Netflix and you have a nice evening at home with the fam.

High School Cheerleaders It would be kind of rude to have them on the air and not feed them.

Cheesiest (Insert Noun) Cheesiest Pickup Line. Cheesiest Movie. Cheesiest First Date. So many options as a topic and a pizza goes a long way.

After The Party, There's The Pizza Party We take movie screenings for granted. We do so many of them. But for the average schmo (listener) it's a pretty big deal. We used to try to have an after party or gathering at an appropriate location. "Bull Durham"? Sports bar. Inviting everyone out for food and games after a screening is always always fun.

Hallmark Holiday Sales Timeline

With local sellers especially, we have to be aware of their nervousness with hitting clients with packages TOO far in advance. Some clients are less savvy than others, like malls are for Christmas (savvy that is).

In a Perfect World™ I try to have Promo people having worked with their PD's so they're in the loop and have signed off, and with the Sales managers, and packages are ready and dropping on these dates.

150 Days Out
Christmas and the aforementioned Chinese menu of three Promotions: the seasonal umbrella and all contesting that falls under that, a one time event and a morning show feature, contest or charity campaign.

120 Days Out
Thanksgiving
Valentines (jewelers especially operate about four months out)
Back To School
"Summer" (soft drinks are on this sked, ditting with theme parks)
The weekend after Thanksgiving

90 Days Out
Halloween (with clubs especially and other venues, this is THE last date before you start to run out of time for quality locations)
New Years Eve
Highschool Football (fast food and soft drinks)
Mothers Day
Fathers Day
Superbowl
Proms
Spring Break
Easter

60 Days Out
St. Patricks Day
Cinco de Mayo
Earth Day
Adminitrative Professionals Day
Tax Night
Three Day Summer Weekends
Graduations