CPR Promotional Check-Up - May 22, 2020

FREE FOOD

Radio is an industry that is very reactive to research and success. If a station in Boise switched to Smooth Jazz and went up 8%, there would be 8 new Smooth Jazz stations by Monday.

So, knowing what works promotionally, I’m kind of surprised that we just don’t live in these zones and never venture out.

• If you take over a gas station and pump gas, you will get TV coverage.
• You can Sell The Bejezuz™ out of wacky weddings and they always get TV coverage.
• If you still a DJ on a billboard for a few days, you will get TV coverage and a ton of donations.
• People LOVE free movie tickets.
• If you have people kiss or touch something for long periods of time, you will get TV coverage and you can sell it.
• Secret Sound kills. Always has, always will.

And people love free food. Do you think people would come to a car dealership to meet a DJ if there wasn’t free pizza? No.

Free breakfast has always been the hook for stuff like the Hometown Hangouts that 93.1 The Wolf does in Greensboro.

I worked at a station where three times a summer we’d set up in a grocery store parking lot and do free meals. Show up, go into the store and get your ticket, come outside, walk through line and get a hot dog, chips, condiments, a slice of pizza, baked beans, soda and ice cream. It was all co-op dollars and the Sales team Sold The Bejezuz™ out of it. The furthest that I ever heard a listener admit to driving was from Eau Claire. That’s 105 miles to Eden Prairie. For a paper plate of food.

94/9 in San Diego has regularly gone out and just fed people. And they’re mobbed.

BEN-FM in Philly has an ice cream truck and it’s the focus of their summer: free ice cream.

Van Harden at WHO-AM in Des Moines has teamed up with a local foundation and they do Operation Christmas Meal every December: a drive thru give away of pork roasts. It makes Coachella look like a backyard picnic.

In late March, the YMCA near me started doing fully cooked box lunches every day at noon. Traffic is backed up a mile.

So, 98.9 The Wolf in Seattle teamed up with the Washington State Potato Growers to give away 200,000 pounds of potatoes yesterday.

This could be done with cases of bottled water, pet food, sweet corn in Minnesota, frozen pizzas, or whatever you could get a state ag agency or industry to supply, or, obviously what you could get from a client.