CPR Promotional Check-Up - Sep 4, 2019

Calendars

Calendars are to Christmas, what chocolate from a convenience store is for Valentines: the gift for the person you don't know what to get.

If you were going to do one, there are obviously many ways to gen sum rev off them, not the least being on-sale locations.

In the past I referenced how the little town I live in did a calendar of 12 local high-profile residents. Naked. Or seemingly naked. Creatively covered. And in Scandia, the guy who runs the liquor store is about as high up the food chain as they get so the photo of little old Adrian seemingly filling the beer display with a 24 pack across his midsection was October's image.

They raised $70,000 for a girl who had cancer. Based on my little time on the world wide web, nudity seems to work.

As witnessed by Radiowave helping with a naked calendar for the SPCA of Namibia.

Periscope For A Pair Of Tickets

In the beginning, there was Bug'd. A fantastic, terrific, forced listening at appointment times contest that was literally The Secret Sound on crack. Live mikes hidden all over the market that were turned on and played on the air. Find them based on what you heard, trains, planes, dogs, church bells, trolley clacking, whatever, and win. I have a fantastic TV spot from a station in Vermont if you'd like to see it.

Then, there was Live Eye For The Bieber Guy as done by Q in Memphis where they had an iPhone in the mesh pouch of a backpack that youstreamed to the station site. Find this guy who was wandering around, shopping, eating, buying over-priced softdrinks at Platinum Plus based on the real-time visual, and win Bieber tickets. Back when Bieber tickets were good. Mayhem.

Wild in SFO has done a version of that with helmet cams at their Bomb shows with a behind the scenes view of what was happening.

Seemingly half the stations on the planet have done that now with Periscope, or like Boom in Toronto, a live shot of The $1000 Minute being played, or at Hot in Knoxville, their water balloon toss.

No one has really done much with the app outside of doing things like live Q&A with artists and stuff like that.

What would be cool if you had some great tickets, would be to put them in the VIP Club.

Or, do a visual Bug'd. Go out, strategically place a well-camouflaged phone that is fully charged, on and live. Be the first person to run up, grab the phone, look right into the camera and say "Gimme my damn tickets!" and win.

Top Ten Back To School Bits

Based solely on my personal opinion (mileage may vary) and as applicable to highschools and colleges, and not just the first week, but throughout September.

#1 "Back To School Bunker"

As done by Wild in Tampa where they relocated the station to on-campus housing for the night show for the month of September. You could listen to the competition and hear nice, succinct breaks from a hermetically sealed studio, cut off from the world except for the request line...or you could hear Wild live at the quad pool, doing beer bongs and belly flop contests. Zactly.

#2 "Spodcasters"

Which is what you get when you mix sportscasting and podcasts. Done at Hot in Houston and Jamz in Birmingham last year. A student or pair of students was recruited from each local school and they covered that Friday evening's game, created a podcast of audio and video, submitted by 6 am the next morning, screened for content and posted. 50 or 100 or 200 fresh podcasts on the site every Saturday. It taught teens how to use station websites.

#3 "Team Of The Week"

As done by Rick Gillette at 'HYT in Detroit. Like every other CHR, they had highschool cheerleaders in during football season on Thursday nights. I mean, why wouldn't you? But 99% of stations drop it as soon as the season is over. 'HYT had a different school team in-studio every Thursday night. Girls Volleyball.Boys Basketball. Track. Whatever. And they were able to, eventually, find an excuse to host just about every major school in the market.

#4 "Campus Craze"

As done by The Beat in Vancouver, it's a week of events, parties and a smothering presence on the local campuses start to fill up. KZIA in Cedar Rapids has done something similar when they had the airstaff out to greet arriving students and their parents and help them to move in.

#5 "Trading Greeks"

Jo Jo Wright and I started out at Kiss in Charlotte on the same day and in the same month both of us moved to San Francisco to start Wild. One day he was lounging in my office and joked "You know, you really have slacked off. You used to be good and coming up with great promotions that would allow me to hang out with hot girls." So I said, "Then let's have you rush a sorority over at USF." And he did. Became the only male member (grow up) and had instant content for the next eight months. Plus he had the most smokin' phone screeners in Radio at Night.

#6 "Back To School Botox"

As done by Hot 89.8 in Ottawa. One woman got the opportunity to have all the lines that magically appeared over the Summer, buffed out. Also done as "The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year" at KSFM where the week that school returned to session, they gave out oodles of spa packages whenever the Christmas jingle played.

#7 "Dream Dorm"

Probably too late to sell, but it's still the best mall promotion I know of. Building a fake dorm room filled with items from retailers in the center court of the mall. Guess the total value of everything in the room to win it. Idiot proofed because the entry blank listed each retailer and the specific item was displayed in those stores. You just needed to walk around and then tally it all up.

#8 "Highschool Survivor"

The first highschool spirit contest I remember was where your school could win a Hall & Oates concert if you sent in the most Trident gum wrappers. This has been done with pennies, postcards, texts...all basically the same methodology: school that collects or sends the most, wins. The Survivor methodology has you voting OFF other schools. Every night the texts are counted and a school or several schools are eliminated. Key? You want every school in the rated area on your website. Don't make it difficult. Up to ten times a day you can click on another school. One of the stations added in the element that you had to sign up to be in their database. Killed it. Nobody played. Wild in SFO actually had 'eliminated' schools teaming up with other schools to vote off schools. And they split the concert and everyone would be able to go from both schools.

#9 "Highschool Ambush"

Pre-Columbine. Change the name. But huge for Greg at Wild in Tampa. Every week the school that had called in the most requests by Thursday night, got a post-school jeep hit with all the street teamers, music, soda and ice cream in their parking lot, or, if the school said "no", across the street in a business parking lot.

#10 "Lunchlady From Hell"

As done by Z-90 in San Diego. It doesn't seem like you can go through a scholastic year without seeing some principal in a dunk tank because his elementary school hit their goal of reading books. Billy Burke went out and was a lunch lady (complete with a fake wart of his nose) at a different highschool a day that had achieved some kind of attendance goal.