CPR Promotional Check-Up - Jan 12, 2018

File For Pretty Much Any Event

When the Paigettes were younger we went to a summer festival in Hudson, Wisconsin and the local bank had a kid area with tables of art supplies, craft projects, beads and other stuff for little kids and their parents to do. Go down to the river bank, find a rock and one of the volunteers would help you paint it or decorate it. Stuff like that. And their area was packed with families doing projects together. Which is kind of what you want, right?

Results Radio in Redding, California is in the middle of a toy campaign and as a way to have something, anything going on on-site, they're doing it. And...it works.

It could be sold, sponsored, whatever. And it would be something nice to differentiate yourself from the station next to you with a prize wheel.

Slut Or Nut

"Hot Or Not" was one of those flash-in-the-pan TV shows that was oddly close to a morning show bit that's been floating around since about the time we all got websites. But since everyone has already done the tame version of it, why not do "Slut Or Nut"? Post the picture of someone's ex on your site, get the submitter on to regale us with the story of their breakup, and then have your audience log-on to vote on whether the person was a slut, or simply a nut.

The Reaction Game

The best, most historic stuff Radio has ever done was the product of a Hall Meeting. It was stuff that unfolded in moments after a story broke. The Boston Marathon is an example. Sandy Hook is another.

The Reaction Game is a great exercise at brainstorming sessions and that I try to work into cluster meetings

You break the group into five teams of four or five or six people each. They each draw a card from a pile and don't look at it until you give them the cue. You set the stage by telling them that it's 10:11 am, they are doing whatever they would normally be doing at 10:11 am, and someone rushes in to tell them (and they all flip over their cards and read):

• Your market was just awarded the pro sports franchise it's been lobbying for for 20 years.
• Your biggest core artist was killed in a plane crash
• The mayor was arrested with a little boy in lederhosen in a hotel room, naked
• There was a school shooting in a suburb
• A gas explosion just leveled a building downtown
• The biggest bridge in town just collapsed
• There was an earthquake in a nearby major city
• Because of a lawsuit by the ACLU, the term "Christmas" can not be used by businesses in your market

Because, again, the best stuff is decisive let's-get-it-on-the-air-and-don't-overthink-it stuff, this is a great exercise in training the staff to think that way. They get ten minutes to plan their reaction to their scenario and then present it to the group. (Steve Jones and I took the sports team card. Our "reaction" to this op included getting a skating arena organist to come in and play our powers for a day: "If you like hockey, then you'll love our organ")