CPR Promotional Check-Up - Jan 30, 2023

Thawout Thursdays

Kiss in Dallas had three concert flyaways for a weekend and while this contest name might not be applicable to a weekend, it was great and a fun followup to yesterday’s “Wintervention.”

Kiss-A-Thons

There are a few universals in Promotions and they include that sticking a DJ on a billboard or platform will juice entries, adding a limo to a prize is great, and TV can not resist diaper crawls and kiss-a-thons.

The first kiss-a-thon in about five years is set to roll. First, and on advice of counsel, I can NOT stress this enough…make sure they’re of age.

Things have changed since 1975…

And then:

1. Give them a pee break of five minutes every hour. And during the break, give one of each pair something like garlic of sardines or tuna for a snack.
2. Stick little logos on their cheeks: that’s the camera angle.
3. Have a camera on each couple and it is absolutely clearly stated that the decision of the judges is final. If you unlocked lips, boom, you’re out.

Valentroll

A few stations like B-96 in Chicago and Hot in Ottawa, have done the morning show curveball where a listener calls in and invites one of the hosts to an adults-play weekend. Ask and I’ll walk you through it. It’s one of those bits that has a half-life equal to plutonium, ie: a decade down the line people will be at a remote and ask you about it.

With one of the stations we’re going to have the female host start to get Facebook messages from a guy she went to school with a million years ago, had never really known, he lives out of market, and he’s trying to strike up a friendship and then relationship.

Like the Chicago and Ottawa bit, it starts out as just a casual thing that comes up on the morning show. And let’s be honest, this is not entirely a new thing: lurkers from middle school suddenly popping up on social media. With one of the co-hosts, it was a guy she went out with one time in 11th grade and BANG, he’s suddenly popped up. They were trading messages on Facebook and cozying up…and she mentioned it to a friend who said that the guy was in prison in Connecticut for something really really bad. Zoinks.

As the week progresses you take some calls from other women who have had that happen. Did it work out? Did it fail?

And then he starts to get a little clingy. A little weird. So she posts some screengrabs of the conversation with his info blacked out.

Basically it’s a topic generator that ends with him going off the deep-end and her blocking him.

Bang. Bit over.

Any time you can do something like this where, maybe five or six years from now you’ll be at a wedding and someone asks if you had ever heard more from the creepy guy in Oregon, that’s a home run.