CPR Promotional Check-Up - May 9, 2023

Memorial Day & Queen Victoria Day

Victoria Day is the Canadian version of our traditional start of summer and is thee weeks from today, followed on May 30th by the US start of summer. Memorial DayWeekend is great because it's like the Fourth of July: people will be off work and will be outside enjoying the weather, and thus very susceptible to being promoted to.

Vehicular Management I get a lot of “we can’t be at (event)(activity) because we have a remote”. I then ask how many vehicles do they have? And if they say two or more, then that answers the question. You can be at remotes AND actually at places where people are. It’s just basic. For the first two years they were on the air, Wild in San Francisco had ONE van. But we planned out every day in 30 minute increments, ahead of time. So we made the most of it. You should get a three day calendar and break it down, hour-by-hour, vehicle-by-vehicle for this and every weekend.

Stalking The Audience Part of Promotions is knowing where your listeners are, and being there. What WIOG in Saginaw did is pretty much from the Duh School” Of Common Sense but considering the state of Radio, it is more from the Rocket Science School. Where do their listeners go? North to go camping. So, where did WIOG take their three day weekend broadcast? North to the campgrounds. How freaking vibing is that? Granted, not as scintillating as a broadcast from a muffler store, but you work with what you have. Genius.

Goin’ Live To The Streets Whatever and wherever you go, it’s pretty much a waste if you don’t talk about it on the air. Part of Street School is teaching the kids how to do call-ins. Both Power 96 in Miami and NOW in SFO have mastered the art of piggy-backing the call-ins. For instance, “Let’s check in with Paige, he’s out with the street team at Lake Calhoun.” I say something brilliant and then send it to Sonia, who’s with the Pepsi Street Unit at Grand Old Days. She mumbles something intelligent, sends it to Dan down at Hoop It Up on Hennepin Avenue, he does a quick break and sends it back to the jock in the studio. Damn. That station sounds like they’re everywhere. Ya think?

The Ministry Of Silly Races The Mascara 500 is a take-off on the Indy 500, and would be great if you've already done the Undie 500; or even if you haven't. Find a large parking lot like at a stadium and set up an obstacle course. Invite your female audience down during the morning show and have them drive the course...while applying their makeup. They lose points for knocking over cones, smearing lipstick on their teeth, etc.

For the uninitiated, the Undie 500 is a tricycle race around a course and the contestants have to do it in diapers. When we did this in San Francisco we invited TV sports reporters to participate and that helped us get some killer coverage. The prize for the winner should be $500, and when you set up the obstacle course, keep in mind that riding a trike ain't easy: make it a lap or two at most. With either the Mascara or Undie 500's, you can have some fun and do tongue-in-cheek parodys of the big race in Indianapolis: have an official motor oil, a pace trike, etc.

Things & Places You Crash You need to be where everyone is, and that's going to be outside. Be sure to hit the parks, the pools, beaches and playgrounds. If you haven't got a park/pool patrol going, this would be the weekend to kick it off. 95.7 Jamz in Birmingham crashed pools at apartment complexes and city parks all weekend. KLUC in Vegas did an entire weekend of backyard pool party crashing. Wild 97.9 in Oklahoma City debuted their Long Ass Limo on Memorial Day Weekend and crashed picnics. Maybe this is the weekend to haul “Invasion Of The Party Crashers” out of mothballs and spring it on the audience?

Because “Blocks” Are Bigger Than “Backyards” Giveaway three Block Parties for the three day Memorial Day Weekend: one for each day. Tell the listeners that you'll provide the food, beverages and music, and they have to provide the family and friends and neighbors to enjoy the party. Bring out coolers of pop, rent a big grill and have hot dogs, buy/trade some buckets of potato salad, and of course, don't forget the chips!

Getting “Out” Broadcast outside all weekend. Have the jocks do their shifts from different outdoor locations throughout the holiday weekend: at a public golf course, sitting in a lounge chair next to a pool, laying on an airmattress at a water park...anywhere, just so you're outside.

Meat Lots of people grill on Memorial Day Weekend. Wild went to San Jose, set up in a park and did a giant free barbecue for the community. The Wheel Of Meat is a great weekend giveaway. Have you done Beat The Bomb? Then you could do Beat The Meat. People would have to "stop the microwave before the hot dog explodes" to win steak, chicken, shrimp, bratwurst and other grillable prizes. Throw in charcoal, chips, soda, and ice cream for all the winners. Can you get special station barbecue aprons printed in time? The Beat in Austin did a Kanye barbecue flyaway and gave away all sorts of grilling supplies…including aprons that said “Beat The Chef”.

FNL A great Summer/Warm Weather feature for the night show would be a Friday Night Live type program that would have the jock hit the streets and do every break live at spots all over town. Wild/SFO, Jamz in Greensboro and WPGC have all done this quite successfully under different names. When I was at 'PGC, Albie Dee was doing his Friday night show out on the streets and ran into a bachlorette party in a limo. He jumped out of the van and rode with the women for awhile. You could kick off your own Friday Night Live program on the Friday of Memorial Day weekend, heading into the three day weekend. KLUC did this on Saturday nights for YEARS. An obviously very successful-for-them promotion.

SPF(Dial Position) The Tuesday morning after everyone gets back, do a Worst Sunburns contest on the morning show. This would be Amy Kaye from Y-94 circa 2017.

Music You can remember other things on Memorial Day, including great music. This might be a great opportunity for an Old School feature or other music countdown or weekend of music. In San Francisco Wild 94.9 did an All Request Weekend. Starting the week before Memorial Day they had a phone line that people could call in on and record their requests to get played back during the holiday weekend. The request and the song were both played. Sounded huge.

Boat…On The Water…. KSFM in Sacramento used Memorial Day to kick off their season of promoting to people on the water. There are a couple of rivers, some lakes and the Sacramento River delta in the market and these are always packed with people on boats and on the beaches. KSFM had their own powerboat and it was out on the water all summer. Tough duty. I've done boat promotions like this before and you reach a lot of people that other stations miss because they're not out there. One of the morning guys offers his own boat to the cause and hauls promo people around on nice weekend days, marketing to the people, the HUGE numbers of people, out on their boats.

For Whom The Bridge Tolls Since everyone's heading out of town, take a page from the WPGC play book and pay all their bridge tolls as they flee the city.

Hank Hill Back-in-the-day Welch and Woody at 102 Jamz in Orlando gave away a barbecue to one of their listeners, went over to their home, and cooked up a storm for the winner and 20 friends. The station provided the grill, charcoal, food and drinks. A great morning show promotion. Chris Coleman at WEUP in Huntsville did this in 2001. They did this in 2009 in Tampa. V-103 took it to the next level in Atlanta and did a massive Barbecue Fest geared towards families, in a city park, complete with acts and games.

Ice Ice Baby Where does everyone in your market go on Memorial Day Weekend? Wherever they head, you need to be there. Just like WIOG did. I did this at Kiss 102 in Charlotte and the station packed up and went to Myrtle Beach for the best three days I'll never remember. We were joined by about 100,000 people on vacation. Most from our market. Q-102 in Philly used to go to the Jersey shore and broadcast. They also set up at highway rest area that was halfway to the beach, and filled coolers with ice. Killer visibility as a quarter million people headed to the ocean.

WWMTVD? Having your own Beach House would be very MTV-ish...and extremely cool. You'll always have a place to flee to and broadcast from when the weather gets too scorching. Stressed that there's not a lot of time left? Don't be. Find someone from the staff who has a beach home, or knows someone who does, and slip them a couple of bucks to move the airstaff in for a three days. It's on-air that counts: it'll sound massive that the station has it's own beach house. But this is definitely something you want to start on Memorial Day: not in late July. Incorporate all the stuff that MTV used to do: pool parties, pajama parties, concerts, etc. KLUC in Las Vegas did this and it was HUGE. They took the DAT to Spring Jam and got drops from artists that they worked into “breaks” from the Beach House “out at the lake.” It was the place to be in Las Vegas all weekend…even though it didn’t exist.

Sticky If you're doing a summer sticker campaign, this would be the weekend to blow it up big. Be on the streets looking for hundreds of winners; everytime that the jock opens the mike, he/she should have more names of winners to read off. Do a Super Sticker Stop each day of the weekend. Don't ease into the campaign...kick it off with a bang. Blow the competition out of the water and totally eclipse whatever boring sticker promotion they have.

All Mixed Up 94.3 The Party did 72 hours of live mixing and gave hourly winners a CD of that hour's mix, including the live mention of them winning. Hot 107 in Memphis did the Memorial Day Mix Weekend and it was large. People are going to be partying: give them the soundtrack to do it to. Power 102 in El Paso did The Top 300 Countdown in '09 and backed up all the music with waterpark and theme park ticket giveaways. Wild in SFO did a Mucho Mixing Weekend in 2015.

Alternative Signage Figure out the key highways that everyone is going to use to flee town, and banner all the overpasses with “Have A Great Weekend!” signs. Programmable highway message boards would work just as well. FRED-FM like progressive signage would be just as large.

Gas Gas prices are always a hot button...so why not make them non-existent? Take over a gas station on Friday and do free gas. At these prices, even discounted gas would cause havoc.

Memorial Fools Day Power 96 in Miami did Natural Life Miami and did a remote from a clothing optional community on Memorial Day in ‘12. The trolls came out of the woodwork. Tragically for the perves, this was all theater-of-the-mind.

Kelly Clarkson!!! Speaking of Power 96, they did a Bikini Wax Weekend. Mixing and free bikini’s all weekend. Ask and I’ll send the promo.

Sand In Places It Shouldn’t Be On the Friday before everyone splits town, have people come in in swimsuits and give a prize to the person who can hold the most sand in theirs.

Falco, Left Eye & Even Timmy T Just like some stations did with a Resurrection Weekend when they brought back one-hit wonders for a music weekend, this might be an opportunity to Memorialize “dead” artists.

Imaging I have oodles™. And it’s here.