CPR Promotional Check-Up - May 11, 2020

Zoom Bye

The Blue Angels did a tour of the east coast to provide some entertainment and a rallying moment for people stuck at home. The PK Show at Power 96.1 got audio from the tower, a drone in the sky for an aerial shot and they pulled 10,000 Facebook views in the hour after the fly by.

Pennies From Heaven

There have been a lot of gofundme’s and other pages and campaigns to raise money for furloughed employees and funds for the food banks.

In about 2001 there was a story about a Catholic school in Chicago that needed $40,000 for a new roof. They didn’t have the funds and insurance wasn’t going to cover it. So the students went door to door, business to business in their neighborhood and collected 4 million pennies.

Pennies have no perceived value. They’re essentially worthless which is why we have jars of them and trays of them cluttering up our lives. It’s not like asking people to text their credit card to a charity or write a check. I probably have $20 in them in cans in my closet; the remains of 28 years of paying for business travel in cash and coming home with change. If myTalk in the Twin Cities asked for my pennies? Sure!

Pennies From Heaven was done for the first time by PXY a few months later and a school that helped chip into a $30,000 total got a concert by Tenacious D.

The CHR here did it for a Will Smith appearance later that year and got over $50,000 in pennies for charity AND landed a whale of a savings and loan as a client. (because you need a place that can take the coins, spin, tally and save)

The name is great.

It doesn’t have to be a contest.

It’s a great hook at a time when everyone is asking for donations.

And people ARE feeling charitable but might not have the funds to help out.

Or…

The Penny Pickup

This is a Jeff Kapugi idea from when he was at Z in St. Louis.

1. There was a tornado
2. They got a pickup from a client
3. They lined the bed with plastic
4. They drove around and had people dump in their change

Boom. So simple and so brilliant.