CPR Promotional Check-Up - Sep 6, 2018

Coins X 1000's

Results Radio has been affected by the California fires with the loss of four of their five signals in Redding. Their Sacramento station channeled their inner Jeff Kapugi and collected several thousand dollars in coins at a drive up drop off event on Saturday. https://www.facebook.com/khitsradio/videos/10156583467744281/

Go Pink For The Cure

About 50 years ago it became popular for charities to have people pledge per mile for stuff like walks. What if listeners pledged per day that your morning show lives in pink body suits. Nah...TV would never cover that. Feels too stunty. Let's focus on developing the characters of the morning show...

The other option would be to have listeners dye their hair pink for the month for donations. And obviously there are opps for clients to get involved

Things That Could Be On The Street Today

This is just tip of the iceberg stuff but it gives you an idea of what should be addressed.

Breast Cancer Month

1. A web gallery of listeners who are survivors.
2. A day of Mommagrams at a clinic for listeners and their moms.
3. Sponsors for a bra stringing and after party.
4. An event like The Bosom Ball at Q-102 in Cincinnati.
5. A garage sale or similar event as a fundraiser.

Hunting Season

1. The Deer Widows Ball as done by WIOG in Saginaw and WPXY in Rochester. For lack of a better description, a party for a thousand women with a dozen male strippers the weekend that the husbands and boyfriends are out blasting Bambi.
2. A "Best Rack" gallery promotion. Done by KDWB with female listeners posing with this deer. You have to understand Minnesota to "get" how big that was.
3. Pimp Your Blind. Sponsored by Home Depot or Cabelas, have female interns decorate guys hunting spots with products from the clients.

Winter Sports/Weather

1. Ski reports
2. Ski busses
3. "Snow Squad" was done by a station in Vancouver that had street teamers assigned just to go and hit ski areas.
4. School/Business closings.
5. Get Plowed. Find someone on the staff who has a brother or cousin with a blade on the front of their pick up and spif them with tickets and gas to go and plow out a bunch of listeners after big storms.

Halloween

Like most of the big Hallmark Holidays, you need an event, a gallery, a morning show "thing" and something that weekend.

1. Complete Listing Of Every Halloween Haunted House And Corn Maze And Event In The Market Perfect research job for an intern. This would be a great on-line resource for the listeners. Beat your daily paper's site to it, because they will do this.
2. Corn Maze There seems to be one big one in every market. If it's not too late to get your logo grown into the corn, they might still find a way to get you in there.
3. Erotic Exotic Ball The lord, God, muther of all Halloween events. And it's very easy, if you're not careful, for it to become just another lame costume party.
4. Midnight Movie I saw U-92 in Palm Springs put this together in less then a week. They did an NTR event with a local Cineplex that had a different classic horror movie on each screen. People came in costume. There was a charitable angle, blah blah blah
5. The Great Pumpkin Drop If you have a mall or client with a big parking lot and who wants to drive traffic, THIS is the bit. You need a crane and a HUGE pumpkin. Done by Hot in Milwaukee at a mall. The client ponied up $1000 shopping spree for the listener who could guess how far the farthest piece of pumpkin would fly (it really flowed more then flew) when dropped from the crane. TV lives for these promotions.
6. Safe Halloween Another mall promotion. If it HASN'T been done, this can be and is usually huge but you also really need to know your market and your audience. This can be hit-and-miss whether people will go and participate.
7. Psychic Fair Call every mom-and-pop, rinky dink psychic in the Yellow Pages and sell them a cheap, affordable sked to set up in a hotel ballroom on the the Saturday before Halloween. Mrs. Paige, who is a bit teched in the heyud, dragged me to one of these things...and it was pretty damn cool. I will kill you, kill you dead if you ever tell anyone I said that.

Thanksgiving

Charity drives, something the night before, something for Thanksgiving night, something for Friday, and a weekend theme.

1. Canned Film Festival Many of you do it. I have a sales piece.
2. Turkey Bingo Client want an event? Very simple. You get a turkey. Some chicken/turkey wire. You chalk out squares on the pavement. And let nature take it's course. Turkey plops in your square and you win.
3. Free Willy Biggest food drive ever. You get a turkey and you threaten to kill it if you don't raise enough canned food. That was easy.
4. Canstruction For the client that "wants more then a sponsorship or a food drive." Go to www.canstruction.com You could also get Art students from the university to do it.
5. Emergency Food Response Team For a grocery store, deli or restaurant that offers fully prepared meals. Everyone has a Thanksgiving meal disaster once in their life. You have a promo person in the vehicle on Thanksgiving morning, dispatchable to bring food to save Thanksgiving for some family where the stove broke or the dogs ate the turkey. ("Sons of bitches Bumpasses!")
6. The Biggest Gainer Weigh in ten listeners on Wednesday morning and then bring them back on Monday morning after the holiday weekend. Person who gained the most gets a fitness club membership.
7. Get Plastered For Hunger For a mall or other client that wants foot traffic, this has been done at Wild in OKC and 'PXY in Rochester. Morning person is wrapped in a full body cast and is on display until a goal in canned food donations is met.
8. Grocery Store Dash The Mother Of All Grocery Store Bits. A listener and a DJ each get a dial position number of seconds to run through the store grabbing as much food as they can. TV loves this stuff. Listener keeps their bounty. DJ donates it to a food shelf. Most recently done by Hot in Houston.
9. Roof Sits WIOG in Saginaw does this annually with McDonalds. Morning guy sits on a roof and freezes his McNuggets off, collecting money for the needy. Again, clear this with the morning show and Programming first.
10. Recipes Get holiday recipes from the airstaff, their moms and from artists. Downloadable off the website and sponsorable by a grocery store or a food client. I have artwork from one of the stations if you'd like to see it.
11. Flee The Family Wednesday night before Thanksgiving AND Thanksgiving night are huge club nights as college students come home and people feel the need to get away from their family for a few hours. But it needs a vibe. It just can't be your regular Wednesday night club gig. Zzzzzzzzzzzz
12. Volunteer Drive Everyone is going to be on the air begging for stuff. It comes with the season. In this vibrant economy here in the states, not a lot of people are going to be able to donate money or toys or food. But time? They could do that. Have a client sponsor and on-the-web listing of local charities who are needing bodies. Maybe incentivise it so that people who sign up to deliver meals or visit the elderly would get product or giftcards from the client. Hubbard in Cincinnati did a Volunteer Expo. And it killed.
13. A Ton Of Turkeys As done by Power 96 in Miami where they will annually go out and give away thousands and thousands of free turkeys. Done by WHO-AM in Des Moines last year with pork roasts. Thousands of pork roasts.

Christmas

I apply the Chinese Menu Theory Of Holiday Promotions. You want something from Column A, which will be the umbrella for everything you do in December. B is an event. C is something just for the morning show.

1. Batteries Batteries are a great prize to give away en mass from the van for the two or three days after Christmas. Q-102 in Philadelphia once bought 10,000 batteries, blew them out on the streets and it was large. Giving them out at remotes is a nice post-holiday hook.
2. Electronic Gift Seminar If you've got a client like a big box store, that'd be a great place to host a remote the weekend after Christmas. Have people bring their presents in and the client will show them how to operate them. Stuff like programming their new gizmo.. How many people get gifts that they have no idea how to work? This could be fun and big.
3. Shopping Mall Shuttle Service 102 Jamz in Orlando did this in '93. They used golf carts to run people and their presents out to their cars at a busy mall. For a fee, of course, and the money went to charity. In Bakersfield, KKXX once did Ballet Parking at Christmas and had jocks in tutus parking cars for shoppers on the day after Thanksgiving. Editors Note: if you can get your airstaff to do this, you are a far better Promotion Director then I ever was. Several of the stations, like KYLD in San Francisco have had major homeruns with the golf cart bit. It's a great service for the mall and a hook to just being out there doing a broadcast.
4. Psychic Santa Z-102.9 did this and had a psychic at their remotes, telling listeners what they were getting for Christmas. Another opportunity to put the prize wheel away, if only for a little while
5. The Twelve Days Of Christmas This is an old bit, that is basically a pyramid-style contest that uses prizes donated by 12 clients. The contest begins 12 weekdays before Christmas Eve. On the first day of the contest, the winner (which you can pick through any method you want) gets a prize. The next day's winner gets one of the previous day's prizes, plus another prize is added on. And so on and so on until the 23rd (Christmas is on a Thursday this year) when that day's winner gets a whopping 12 prizes. It's best when the morning show gets into it and sings the "12 Days Of Christmas" song, replacing all the gifts with the names of the prizes that are donated by the clients. One client will supply 12 smaller prizes, one client will supply 11 slightly bigger prizes, and so on with one client supplying one REALLY BIG prize for the final day of the contest.
6. The Giving Tree B-95 in Fresno did this at Weinstocks, which was a major department store in town. On the morning show, listeners call in and tell stories of needy families and individuals who are having a tough holiday season. The names of these needy families go up on the Giving Tree, which is located in the center of the Fresno Weinstocks. Listeners are encouraged to go by the store and take a name down off the tree, thus "adopting" that family or individual. As the "adopter" you're supposed to try to take care of that's families special needs this season.
7. Santa Texts This is another B-95 promotion. With this contest, winners get a textto their kid from "Santa". Clients are involved and listeners are directed to go by their locations and fill out an entry form. There are spaces on the form for the name of the kid, brothers/sisters, best friend, favorite past-time, and three items that are on the kid's Christmas list. At each client, 25 names are drawn to win a text from Santa. This was actually a B-95 jock doing the text, armed with all of the info on the entry form.
8. Pet Photos KUBE did photos at a clients location with a Santa...and people's pets. Very popular. A major hot button for the listeners; their pets.
9. Santa Babies A great gallery contest for clients.
10. World's Largest Office Party This is a major fund-raiser that Hyatt did at their hotels all over the country, and there were always a bunch of media sponsors. Call your local Hyatt and see if they're doing this in 2014. If not, then re-initiate it. Kiss in Memphis did this at a club on Beale Street in '99 and e-mailed invitations to their at-work data base. I've done this as a club event for listeners whose employers were not having staff holiday parties. Bacardi was the sponsor when I did it in SFO.
11. Toy Assembly Line You could do this as a remote at Toys 'R Us or a similar client. Help people put their kids presents together. Everyone has experienced instructions that are written in every language, including Sanskrit, except English. And don't forget the proverbial missing piece!
12. Toy Review Once again, you could use a Toys 'R Us client for this. Get them to bring a load of their toys to the morning show. Also have a bunch of kids, representing both sexes and various age groups, in the studio to try out the toys and review them.
13. Ring My Bell Don't forget that the Salvation Army is out there doing their Red Kettle campaign. Get the jocks involved as celebrity bell ringers at the malls. I'd do it with the airstaff and employees from a client, ie: Dave, Steve-O and Falen are joining staff from our friends at Taco Bell today and will be ringing bells for the Salvation Army at Ridgedale
14. Lingerie/Jewelry Seminar Sell remotes to lingerie and jewelry clients that cater towards men (like me) who are totally helpless when it comes to shopping for this stuff. Maybe have beer, wings and Hooters girls on hand to ease the tension. (My problem is that I'm on a nationwide watch list with Victoria's Secret. I'm not even allowed in their stores. There was an "incident" and let's just leave it at that.)
15. Single PartiesI don't even know why I bother sending this because I'm sure you never have a client asking for a club night idea. But just in case, how about doing something for people who are newly single and are pissed. Not a "singles night" because "single" often has a leper-like connotation. When I think of a singles night, I think of this thing that I walked in on in a ballroom at a Holiday Inn. Yeesh. Or what my church does on Tuesday nights. But do it with an attitude. If you target women, have male strippers. You can have people bring in all the old Christmas presents they got from their ex and deposit them in a bin to be donated to charity. Embrace their bitterness. Wired 96.5 called it "The Unattached Bash".
16. A Wrapping Party The KSFM Promotion Director and some of her staff went out, set up tables at malls, and wrapped peoples presents. It turned out to be a pretty big promotion and they generated a lot of goodwill towards KSFM. You could do a charity angle on this and charge a couple of bucks per present.
17. The $102,000 Present An SCA insured bit. The Mother Of All Mall Promotions.
18. Elf Races/Tossing Baby crawls are always great. They are inevitably large. But present it as being elf races. Dress the kids up, and let them go. Have them crawl for a shopping spree at a toy store. Wild in Tampa once took a diminutive street teamer, dressed him as a leprechaun and had large men hurl him for distance at a club gig on St. Patricks Day. Elf Tossing is a natural extension of this. Another nice way to dress up a club gig or remote in December.
19. Personal Shoppers WPGC did this for the Fourth Of July. The station went out, bought all the barbecuing supplies and then delivered it for families. Your morning show could do this with Christmas shopping and save some winners the pain and headaches of dealing with the malls. Sponsored by a Temp Service?
20. Mistletoe Marathon This is a terribly under-exploited holiday element. Could be done for a jewelry client. Malls or any other large venue would work. Could be a good morning show stunt.
21. Database Incentivising A brilliant suggestion from the Promotion Director at Mix 100 in Denver who suggested doing a drive to add listeners and members to whatever you call your VIP club. During the month of December, pledge to donate X amount of money for each new member, to whatever the stations charity of choice is.
22. Candy Cane Lick OffSomething visual for your holiday club gigs. Could be a series throughout the month. Be sure to send the winner my way for an internship.
23. Stand-Ins Literally. For one winner, offer the services of a jock who will go down and stand in line to return gifts at the mall. Red Bull would be a fun sponsor. Done by Hot in DC for the 4th where they went and held your spot for the fireworks.
24. Blocks Of Music Some of the stations have done this and dropped all their spots for Christmas. Power 96 in Miami dropped all their spots from 6 pm on the 24th through noon on the 25th, and mixed in some fun holiday music. Every hour is sponsored by a different client.
25. Personal Parking Spots Similar to the shuttle service that San Francisco and Seattle did in the past, KSFM finagled the best, closest to the mall, parking spots and gave them away on the air. A station in NYC did this and took it to the next level: they stenciled the winner's name in the spot. Could be done at pretty much any client

New Years Eve

You should be at a club. There. That was easy. (And also really lame if that's all you do)

1. Invasion Of The Party Crashers This is a huge night for house parties. That's the true vibe of NYE. I've seen stations have this sponsored by Pepsi, Miller, Red Lobster, Dominos and KFC (seriously). It's really Rocket Science. You solicit on-line the times and addresses of listeners' New Years parties. And then you hit 20 or 30 of them and drop stuff off and do some calls. You're imaging the client as the food or beverage that no party should be without.
2. Last Baby Of '18 Everyone does the First Baby. Celebrate the last baby of the year. Get call-ins from the hospitals. Put together a basket of swag from multiple clients. Stuff that new parents would want/need.
3. First Breakfast Of '19 Dennys. Perkins. Any "family restaurant" kind of place would be a great broadcast location for 7-9 am on the 1st.
4. Noon Years Eve The Mother Of All Family Bits. Chuckee Cheese or any similar client is the location for a party from 10 to 12 (noon) on the 31st.
5. Hotel Rooms There simply is NO better prize for on-air the week after Christmas. Either a client buys a block of rooms and sponsors this, or you work with a hotel.
6. The Hangover Mix Bayer. Pepto Bismal. Tums. Goodies Powders. Go "National" and see if you can extricate some dollars for the sponsorship of a music feature on the 1st that is based only on soft, quiet, non-thumpy tuneage.

Go. Sell. Make money.