CPR Promotional Check-Up - Feb 1, 2016

The Grammys

The Grammys are next Sunday at the Staples Center. You can find the nominees for the Grammys at http://www.grammy.com

Since seemingly every station with a signal sends winners to these shows, then your methodology is one way to stand out. The other is what your winners do when they're there. So hopefully these ideas can at least get you thinking in the right direction.

BTW: DJ broadcasts. No one cares. It's nice that Bob didn't get his extra three days of vacation in '15 and you're going to spiff him with sending him to broadcast from the awards, but this automatically removes any contesting possibilities, and once again: who cares? With that said...

Grammys Or Bus It's the same concept as Superbowl Survivor: load ten winners in an RV and send them to LA, voting off a couple of winners a day until you're down to one. Ace & TJ did this with a stretch Hummer and sent people cross-country. PXY got INSANE web numbers when they sent people from upstate NY to Mardi Gras. This is Show Biz. Qualifying with the touchtones, is not. Liking on Facebook, is not. Click and enter on the website, is not.

Grammys Or Bust A station to remain nameless got a client on-board. All of the qualifiers are going to their location and will pull a balloon off the ceiling and pop it. There will be a prize slip in each balloon. One is good for the trip.

Stealing The Signal KLUC in Vegas has done this at Planet Hollywood with an invite-only party and basically steals the signal off the bird so that the west coast audience can hear/watch the winners two hours early.

Grammys In Your Jammies The Beat in Austin used to do this and have the morning show host a pajama party at a listeners' home, bring in a surround sound TV and food and watch the show.

The Grammy Granny As done by KDWB in Minny, not for a trip but to acknowledge the awards the weekend of the event. They had the GSM, Sonia, sing pop music as an old Jewish woman. ID the song and win whatever their prize was.

The Grammy Grid Hot in Evansville did an NCAA like grid in conjunction with the CBS affiliate (who provided the trip) and on-line voting eliminated music down to a winning song and one person was chosen from all who'd predicted the winner, for the LA trip.

Grammy Crammys Oldest bit in the world: scramble up a load of Grammy nominated hooks into a six second montage and have listeners call in to ID them to win either stacks of nominated CD's or a trip.

The Jammies WPGC started this first and Wild in Tampa was one of the first to jump on the bandwagon. Basically you do your own award show. Tampa polled their audience at the Florida State Fair, but you could do it on-line. Come up with categories like "Most Likely To Engage In A Same Sex Kiss On Live TV", "Most Likely To Fail A Breathalyzer", "Most Skankable", etc. Announce the winners on your air minutes before the real show starts on TV.

Wild On... I've always been a huge believer in giving the winners an assignment. Give them something to do when they're in LA. 98PXY did that with Mardi Gras last and hooked up all of their winners with digital cameras to cover the action and post it on the station website. Nice post-promotion to a great contest.

Official Reporter Obviously we'd want a hipper name, but "hiring" a listener to cover the awards for the station combines contesting and broadcast elements. Remember that the awards are just a small part of the vibe. It's the parties that your audience wants to hear about. Who got drunk and threw up in the parking lot? Who was making out with a Kardashian? Who forgot their underwear. You think that Entertainment Tonight would be on for this long if people didn't care about this stuff? I heard a competitor in Minneapolis do this and their winner was awesome and having the time of her freaking life. Conversely, I've heard DJ's go and talk to DJ Towa Towa from Deelite (pushing his solo project) who sounded like they were at a Taco Bell remote.

The Cheapest Grammys Trip Ever There are professional party crashers. Get one of these bozos on the air and have them coach your winner on how to sneak into the show. Put your winner on a bus with $10 and a bag lunch with a first class ticket home guaranteed if they can get into the show and prove it.

Party Like A Rock Star Yes. You might not play Rock, but "Party Like A Pop Star" is not part of your audience's vocabulary. This was a Clear Channel contest in '03. In Minneapolis we wrote up curriculum and used them in promos, as in: Do's and Don'ts for partying like a rock star. How to exit a limo. How to hire an assistant. How to trash a hotel room. How to explain why your passed out naked in the middle of the street (exhaustion combined with an adverse reaction to prescription medication.) Position the trip like the ultimate drunk fest that it is, and we don't want to send any lame winners. The promos sold this and it was, as group contests go, a good one. Solely because of the vibe created by the promos. At least in Minneapolis.

After The Lobby... Whatever. A station-to-remain-nameless is going to do a theater of the mind, massive, on-air afterparty. The concept is that the station has taken over an entire floor at the Mondrian in LA. You have to guess which suite Katy (or whoever you're using that round) is partying in, ie: "I think Katy's in Suite #4." You then cue the pre-recorded bit of knocking on the door and walking in on Katy, or an old couple sleeping, or the morning show getting it on with the room service maid, or whatever. You have to listen to track the guesses, get the right suite and then be one of five or six qualifiers for the final trip. KSFM in Sacramento did this with their Big Enchilada cruise to Mexico: guess which cabin the artist was in. The missed guess scenarios were all different and funny.

Musical Chairs Wild in Tampa was the first station to dust off this old 4th grade birthday party game and use it for a contest when they gave away a trip to the Grammys in '00. Did this in the center court of a mall using Grammy nominated songs.

The Thumbys Give your morning guy and two listeners five dollars and five days to get across the country using only their wits and their thumbs. If they make it to LA in time, the tickets to the show will be awaiting them at the hotel. Take away their credit cards, their ATM cards and any other ways they might have for getting money. KZHT has kinda sorta done this with something they call Zoovivor where they go and dump the morning show in a place like the Yukon with no money and they have to get home.