CPR Promotional Check-Up - May 21, 2018

Winner Promos

Why would we NOT want to remind out audience that actual people living in the actual market are winning actual money from your station? This is Walter from Alameida picking up a could four grand with the Big Money Minute on 99.7 NOW-FM.

Brand Ambassadors

One of the OM's asked if street teams were still relevant in 2017. I replied, seriously, "Not unless you do remotes or go to concerts or have vehicles or are in an area where some company may call people on their landline and ask them to rate radio stations, in which case you would really hope that they'd met someone in the past decade from a station and that that eight seconds was positive."

Bud, Red Bull, Copenhagen, NASCAR all "get" street teams better than we do. Toyota has retained (for a cool 800,000 a year) one clusters 'team as their brand activators for the upper 2/3's of their state and the lower 1/3 of a neighboring state.

For my next ebook, I had a piece ghosted by Carie Ellington who came up through the WiLD 98.7 team in Tampa and then ran a "brand ambassador" team for a major major company for three years, living out of tour busses and long term housing.

It's a good read and has some insights into stuff that we probably forgot about:

On The Road With Cowboy Jesus

What might you find yourself asking do a bobble head Jesus figurine, with a cowboy hat, a sprinter van and what appears to be an overly enthusiastic Street Teamer aka Brand Ambassador, in a pair of killer socks have to do with marketing?

EVERYTHING, I boldly tell you. Absolutely everything!

In case you were wondering, I'm the one not wearing the cowboy hat. My much more fashionably inclined counterpart part is, "Cowboy Jesus." Yes, I know his name is the equivalent of naming your dog, "Dog." Cowboy Jesus was my road dog for a little bit better than 3 years, on nationwide experiential marketing tour. This wasn't your run of the mill marketing program and it was more than experiential. Take everything you thought you knew about brand awareness platforms, guerilla marketing, consumer engagement, client interfacing and your marketing degree, throw it into a blender and then add your dream budget, dream team. Add a shot of holy sh** as a floater and you've now just taken a gander at THE most amazing program I had the privilege of spending much of my 20's working on.

Due to confidentiality, I cannot disclose the direct name of the client I was contracted for, I'm sure there's more than a few people out there who will be able to figure it out, quite easily or who might already know, but let's keep things legal shall we?

What we did and why it worked?

The easy answer is $$Money$$! To run a program of this monstrous size and scale, with the types of events we targeted for our demographic, in layman terms takes some serious dough. Before you stop reading and forward this to your friends or colleagues that work for brands that have that kind of a budget, allow me stop you before you make a huge mistake and offer you some hope. Yes, a budget with $$,000,000 to play off of made this particular program amazing on a number of levels.

That being said, I'm going to share a bit of what I took away from those 3 plus years and applied it to a startup with a start up budget of $3,500 (for the entire company launch), which is the equivalent to about a $250 marketing budget and yielded astounding results. The kind of results you dream about.

To simplify it, it boiled down to a couple factors beyond the obvious. (Dilute the rest from there).

1. The People - Staffing & developing your talent is crucial. To say it was one of the key components is beyond an understatement. They are your brand /'d so critical, that in my experience can and/or will make or break your program's success.
2. Know Your Demographic - If you don't know them, invest heavily in getting to know them. Do not underestimate the value in getting to know them. If you don't have "Research," built into your budget, build it!
   Be Memorable!!!!!!!!!!!! - Make an impact! Take the craziest idea in the room and make it workable. Execute it! Look at what everyone else is doing that works into consideration and do all of those things in a way that looks like its never been done before. Giving out high-fives CAN be your WOW FACTOR!

The People - I'm not trying to make this the "Me" Show. I was selected to be one of about 35 people from over 100 markets and a few thousand individuals, nationwide to be a part of this program. I was constantly being developed to embody the brand I was representing. Embodiment, that part never felt like work, forced or faked. If it does, stop, rework what you are doing, because you're still doing it wrong. Our training staff was supremely skilled and yes there were PowerPoint decks, weekly, monthly, quarterly and annual training summits that went on, but they were done in such a way that I happily and proudly bled my brand. I still say my brand, because I wore it like a badge of honor. Seven years later, I think part of me still does. As Street Teamers, which we were renamed as Brand Ambassadors, we wore our team colors through and through. I was never off the clock in my mind and I loved my job. I knew my brand inside and out, I was taught my brand inside and out. Further, I knew my competition's brand equally as well. An environment was created that naturally lead to my team becoming my family. Seven years later, my "tour family," is still a part of my life to this day. Of the three nationwide touring teams that this program was designed for, I worked on all 3. From the lowest budget to being dedicated to the tour with the highest budget. We all had certain qualities in common. We were all fiercely competitive, not just our direct competition and not just with ourselves, but with each other. All in a healthy way of course, everyone strived to be the best.

Everyone was invested in how they performed for the client, for their team/tour. We all had direct access to our individual, team, program and overall program's progress and results. The success of the program was engrained and became a part of our identities. You could see that thirst, hunger and drive in each and everyone of us and much like football team, you could see it on and off the field. We were all acutely aware we were the elite, we were the number one squad and we were ultimately the ones who's shoulders the continuation of the program hinged upon. Anyone who didn't understand the magnitude of what not being the best meant - Meaning, that we no longer got to live this life in this wet dream of an amazing job where you actually get paid for crisscrossing the country, didn't last very long.

We were all developed and provided an environment to thrive in that left us to work harder than we've ever worked, live the dream job life and thrive as brand soldiers, fiercely guarding and conquering new territory...and it worked. It still does in every situation I've applied the same methods in since.

Know Your Demographic - This is simple and I still to this day am baffled by the lack of research that goes into....strike that, I'm baffled by the lack of the type of research that goes into REALLY knowing your demographic. Who can say they're killing it in their market, on consistent, mind blowing trajectory off the charts in a way nobody has seen before? I tend not to see too many hands raised. Are you at the top and just chilling there, because it's easy to be number one? Here's the deal, for every number 1, 2,3 or 25, someone is going to come along who really gets getting to know your demographic means get you're a** out there, even hire some of your demographic and spend facetime getting to know your demographic. Surveys can tell you only so much and no matter what number on the charts you are sitting at, at some point somebody like me is going to pop up with my kind of understanding and background and blow you out of the water. Start getting uncomfortable, start investing in what your demographic is invested in and start blowing their minds and leveling up your game, even if you're at the top of it. We have a lot of brilliant minds that are younger, smarter and will figure out a cheaper way to do it...and they might even take your job and cheapen what you do. I don't plan on letting what I do get cheapened. Know Your Demo!

The last part of melding these things together is all marketing where you are engaging the public, a business, whatever your platform is...my personal experience is to make it an experience. Experiential marketing can be as I mentioned in a high five, in a blow your mind immersive branded structure, but it's the experience that makes it memorable. People like what they can remember in this sense. There in lies the beginning of your conversion of the masses.