CPR Promotional Check-Up - May 16, 2016

Weekend Contests

• I think 98PXY in Rochester was the first station where I had the staff break into the GM's office and steal his shit. It was when he'd already announced he was leaving for another gig. So all weekend they cracked his door, rifled his desk and drawers and gave away all the stuff he'd absconded with for his own personal use. Kool in Bonnyville did a version of this while their GM was on vacation. It's got to be done as if you're taking the phone down the hall, opening the door, flipping on the lights and then you hear drawers opening and closing. You don't pre-announce the prize. That would make no sense.
• A "Spring Cleaning Weekend" can be incredibly lame. It needs to have a vibe. You've got the new interns clearing out the prize closet to get it ready for all the crap you've ordered for the summer. So give away ski lift tickets from last November. Tickets to a movie you screened in January. Candycanes from a remote in December. And...some new CD or concert ticket.

Golf

I got my first golf request from Hot in Sudbury a couple of weeks ago and then it hit with a vengeance this past week. Yesterday in a cold driving wind of about 30 degrees, the local driving range in Forest Lake? Packed. If you're into golf, you're really into golf.

• Charity tourneys abound. I saw one that CBS in Sacramento did called "Slice And Dice" at a casino course.
• Q-104 in Halifax did a promotion with Maxim called "Closest To The Pinhead" which had one of the morning people gearing up in a sumo outfit with a helmet and facemask and listeners drove balls at him.
• I lob this out about once a year. Get Lacey Underall at YOUR event? Every guy between 40 and 60 will show up. Bookable here http://www.cindy-morgan.com
• What if you did "At The Stroke Of Midnight" and gave night vision goggles to the morning show and some listeners for a few hours of severely visually challenged golf. This has "1,000,000 youtube hits" written all over it.
• The next level would be Blind Golf. Randomly pair two guys with two girls. The couples never see each other. With the assistance of promo staff, blindfolded, they golf 18 holes.
• A girl who has "sat" my daughters works in the summer as a bikini-clad drink server in a golf cart on a local course. This has Street Team potential written all over it.
• Here's your next charity event http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0UYw6Dz21C0
• One of the stations is doing a Lost Ball on the website every week. Find your ball and win golf cart use and greens fees.

Five And Drive

Kind of similar but done for a car, is a promotion that Chuck Benfer (now at CC/Hudson Valley) created when he was at Fly 92.3 in Albany. Answer five not-necessarily Googleable questions and win a car. From Chuck from two years ago:

Five And Drive

We've had very good success with the Five to Drive Contest. We've grown TSL and Share with the contest and improved the weakest hour of our AM Drive.

We come up with 5 difficult questions. The questions have to do with the region or the station's history. The questions should be paced so that the first one is the easiest, 2 or 3 and 5 are toughest. We do not reveal question two until question one is correctly answered and when we read question two the contestant must get one and two right to move on to number three. There are blog sites dedicated to the contest where listeners go to share ideas, observations and guesses. It is very effective. You only play once a day, ours is at 7:00 am with a replay at 6:35 am so we get a push for the 6 am hour. We play back the contest at 11, 4 and 7 so there's cross daypart promo and listening.

Our questions this year were:

Q: What do the following artists have in common: Shontelle, The Goo Goo Dolls, Blonde and Rhianna?

A: They have all performed at a Fly 92.3's Summer jam concert. (this allowed us to promote the upcoming concert on June 4)

Q: You enter between two towers.

A: The Fuze Box nightclub where you enter between two old Tower Records signs.

Q: He plays the best music for your work day.

A: Fly 92.3's terry O'Donnell.

Q: He went from the pen to the coop.

A: Mike Tyson (went from jail to a show on cable about pigeon racing)

Q: It's the 69 between Mr and Miss

A: Beef and Snow Peas (there's a Chinese restaurant between a Mr. Subb and a Women's Uniform store and #69 on their menu is Beef and Snow Peas)

So the results are 6 to 8 weeks of water cooler chatter and promo. The dealer loves it and can't wait for next spring to do it again.