CPR Promotional Check-Up - Mar 18, 2016

The Listener Choice Wedding

Again, you really need to go no further than TV, movies and social media to see that a lot of our research has been done for us. For instance, take theThe Today Show and their annual wedding where the audience chooses all of the elements.

One of the stations has a pretty ginormous prize. In fact, it's the closest to the $300,000 "free life" that AMP in Calgary did with "Swap Your Wife For A New Life". On the table is a rip-off of the Today Show contest, which one of the Clear Channels did six years ago for a $25,000 wedding.

Five couples who the audience gets to know and then pick one to move on to the lightening rounds.

The audience then picks rings from one of five jewelry clients, ditto with formal wear, a dress, flowers, reception hall, menu, limo, wedding entertainment and honeymoon destinations. In theory, you could sell five clients into each of these categories. In theory, before June and wedding season.

Group Contests

It's a safe bet that 90% of my US clients will be doing these in the next, well, forever.

These can actually work but only if you get creative with them. Seriously, with the next round of these, go and listen to other markets and it will scare you straight. THEY ALL SOUND THE SAME. (Sometimes you HAVE to use caps). In Cleveland two years ago there were four stations using "Free Money" and "$1000" in their names for the contests.

102 Jamz in Orlando? GOT actual damn numbers off these things. How? They repackaged them so they stood out and sounded like the station.

You need a character and/or a premise or it will just be another radio contest that 4% of people will play.

What's Local? Jamz used The Berglunds in a lot of their contests. If you lived in Orlando, you knew them. A large pale family from Minnesota who drove an RV slowly. In Cincinnati? Maybe it would be a fish fry. In Minneapolis? Maybe an insane hockey mom as the voice/premise of the promotion.

Vote (Station) It MIGHT be too early to throw this pitch but Wired in Philly, when people listened to them, did a Vote 96.5 campaign. All of the imaging was based on the morning guy running for mayor and buying votes. And thanks to Dom for putting this back on the radar.

Boss From Hell KSFM in Sacramento and Jamz in Orlando have used bosses from Hell as the focus of their contests. Why were they giving away $1000 an hour? Because Craven had created ghost winners for fake contests and embezzled millions from the company, and he needed to unload all the money or get sent off to the joint. I have copy.

Or Just Steal It Like Jamzron, Steal It Before You Can Buy It and Download The Dough, you don't have a budget so you get money for contesting the old fashioned way: you steal it.

Fun With Nigerians Like Hot in Houston when they had Chinese organ thieves do their contest imaging, have an internet scammer offering to give away a $1000 as a gesture of good will as you start the process of helping the royal family free up their seized funds.

WTF Win Thousands Free, as done by Power 96.

What Ails You? San Antonio and Denver used a doctor who wrote prescriptions of cash.

1-800-ASK-(Morning Guy) This is on the table at a station where they would parody radio spots for insurance companies by offering instant, $1000 settlements? Hangnail?? That's a tragedy. A life altering event that YOU DESERVE TO BE COMPENSATED FOR. Here's a $1000.

Cash....MAN!!!!! Radio NEEDS a Marvel-like super hero. Bills and liens are powerless against...CASH MAN. Kind of like KSON and Gas Man in San Diego. Without Gas Man, it would have just been another gas giveaway.

Green History The promos would be vignettes chronicling the history of money. "This Green History Month honors...Timmy Olson. This industrious 11 year-old in 1956, discovered that by using a magnet on a string, he could recover spare change that had fall into street grates."

Brunos Bucks Much like one of the Country stations that got Brad Paisley to cut all of their imaging for when they "siphoned all the gas off his tour bus and gave it away in big red 10 gallon cans". What if you got an artist's ATM card? We've given away their cars, why not their money?

Moneyville Make your contest a Facebook game, played by fanatical people who continually are asking their friends to play along with them.

App Maybe your promotion is an app with amazing benefits.

Free Money Gerbil The Cash Cow has been milked to death. San Antonio had the Free Money Dog. Gerbils are Comedy Gold.

But first, listen around and you will truly understand why taking two minutes and creating a character and some premise around it will actually take it to the next level.