CPR Promotional Check-Up - May 16, 2018

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.

Where The Hell Is Rite Aid?

I'm writing this at the bar at a Holiday Inn in upstate New York. It truly is a glamorous life. Trying to get back here from the radio station I'm doing a market visit at, I got hopelessly, unbelievably, frighteningly lost. Which is disconcerting because I rarely get lost. Made me yearn for one of those things that people have in their cars that will get them home from the deepest part of the Congo if they needed to. You punch in an address and a Fembot-like voice tells you right, left, left, right, cut through the Wendys parking lot (etc.) until you're safely in their own driveway.

Remotes suck. There. I said it. But if we're going to do these things, let's at least have people come to them. Can you get a Google Maps feature put on your site that will allow listeners to punch in their location and prompted, idiot-proof directions to wherever your canopy is up and interns are dealing with prize pigs. It's a hook. And that's the Essence of Promotions.

Win A CD That Could Start A Car

I'm pretty proud about my ideas and the stuff that I come up with for the Clifton and CPR clients. So it's always cool to be somewhere and hear someone toss out one of mine. I was just up at Canadian Music Week and one of the guys on my panel was telling the room about the 'win a CD' bit. Mine. I was riding around with Mickey Johnson, the PD at 95.7 Jamz in Birmingham, when the Promotion Director from Wild 94.9 in San Francisco called. He said they had a Mustang a week to giveaway all summer and they did NOT want to do the lame 'win a key' bit. As he was telling me this, Mickey was fumbling with a CD that wouldn't eject. So I said, "Why don't you qualify 50 people each week with a CD that could start the Mustang. Have everyone come to the Saturday event, sign in, pull a CD out of a box and one-at-a-time try them in the car stereo. 49 of the CD's will have music on them and one will have the morning show screaming 'You won the car!'." A methodology was born.

We're heading into a season when it's a fair guess that MANY of you will be doing car giveaways. If the car's a dodge, you should do Dodgeball. Or, do what KKMG in Colorado Springs did last Summer and do Musical Cars. The name says it all. Instead of diving onto a vacant chair, the contestants dive into a vacant car and slam the door. Leaving one listener standing alone. They're eliminated, a car is removed and you start the music again.