CPR Promotional Check-Up - Oct 19, 2020

Sixteen Things You Can (Promotionally) Do With Turkeys

Two Turkey Truisms:

1. If you have even a single turkey in the week or two leading up to Thanksgiving, people will most assuredly try to win it.
2. In any economy, collecting turkeys and other food, should be a homerun.

Turkeys are kind of like shrimp, they’re the fruit of the prize closet.

Things are going to be “different” this year and every cluster and company has different policies for what they can and can’t do. So if you can’t do one of these things, maybe you can do another.

So here are 16 things you can do with a turkey - - -

This is an annual promotion that Cumulus in Colorado Springs is involved with. I love the name. It catches your ear.

With just one turkey to award, KLUC got 98 paper little accordian-style centerpieces, awarded each to a designated listener, made a pile of them in the hall and with a leafblower, someone from Promotions blew them down the hall, around the corner to the right, down a hall, around the corner to the right and eventually back to the starting line. The first turkey to cross the line won for it’s listeners.

It could just as easily be an animated race with four or five turkeys with the airstaff’s faces on them. Guess which turkey will win the daily race and maybe win one.

“Cooking” has made a resurgence during COVID and a lot of people (like me) who have never tried, took some shots. My beef stroganoff? I don’t want to brag…

A lot of people have moms who had their “specialty” thing. That one thing that no one else can beat. My mom? Cheesy potatoes.

So do some Zoom cooking with the moms (or dads) of the staff and have them reveal their secrets. Sell it to a grocery store.

Working with a farmer, get 15 or 20 turkey eggs, web cam them and have the audience vote to see which won will peck it’s way out. Better? NASCAR the eggs with sponsors logos.

Mix in Cincy is one of several stations that has Thanksgiving jocked by turkeys. In a perfect world you stage interaction with callers.

Caller: Can I hear the new Nickelback song?
Turkey: (crazy gobbling)
Caller: Thanks. I love this station.

As done by V in Atlanta when they hung 103 little paper turkeys under bouquets of balloons and released them. Find and return for a bird.

‘MGK and John Debella do a “turkey drop” as their moniker for a giant one day drop off event.

But you can also drop them on your site. A couple of times a day have a turkey plummet from the “top” of your site. Click it before it hits the bottom and get an entry.

Thanksgiving is always a ridiculously “tense” holiday and this year post-election? Exactly. So do The Anti-Socially Distanced Thanksgiving and award two fully prepared dinners from a grocery store for a family that will be dining separately.

Again, awarding turkeys is great. Hot in DC dropped the Ticket Window for a few days and it became the Turkey Window.

Turkey Tag would simply be, to win, know the name of the person who won before you, and the next person would need to know your name, etc, and on and on.

Every Thanksgiving Billy at Kiss in Dallas allows listeners to take out their holiday angst by punching a turkey.

Coloring contests seem to have made a big resurgence during COVID. Live 96.7 in Hagerstown solicited hand turkeys and even channeled Bob Ross in a tutorial on how to draw them.

I saw this done by KRST in Albuquerque as a “live” thing with a DJ covered in post-it notes who visited offices. People “plucked” off one of the “feathers” and won was written under it. Could just as easily be done on line.

Another Albuquerque contest where they gave away numbered squares in a grid, awarded them to listeners, stuck a turkey in there and waited for nature to take it’s course.

If you can do turkey bowling, there’s something stupid about it that just is like a big light for TV coverage. I have a tutorial from Jay Kruz is you’d like to see it.

Balloon tosses are funny and silly and great, but MAYBE not something for 2020. Midwest Comm in Evansville did it with “pass the gravy” and will the balloons.

You could do what KSON did and get a football QB from a college (they got a guy from the Chargers) and zip balls at listeners. Catch the ball and win a fully prepared meal.