CPR Promotional Check-Up

The iShow

Station-to-remain-nameless has a show with an act at a theater. Could I be more vague? One listener gets to present the show. Name on the tickets. 99 for themselves to do with what they like. Voice the spot. They get an assistant. They have their own dressing room. They introduce the concert. Name on the marquee. How cool is that?

An Actual Charitable Hook For Valentines

Toys. Food. Coats. And now pajamas. An awesome niche found and exploited by B-95.5 in Albany. Something that could easily be collected this month:

This Holiday Season, B95.5 decided to do something different than a toy drive.... With the current economy & more people out of work than normal, it's really all about the necessities & no child should have to wake up on Christmas morning without warm, clean pajama's. That's why we held the Warm & Fuzzy Holiday Jammie Drive!

We kicked it off mid-November at our annual "Breakfast with Santa" which is held at a local mall (& free). Anyone who made a jammie donation that day got a free pair of tickets to see Planet 51. We followed up with more incentives - advanced screening tickets to "Old Dogs", "The Princess & The Frog" & "It's Complicated". We also have a Wii which everyone receives an entry for, for each pair of jammies donated. Of course - to cover ourselves from being a lottery - anyone could get 1 free entry, simply by asking.

We had an opportunity to have Michael Johns from Season 7 of American Idol come perform for a free show... so we brought him to the big mall in the area. Our GMs 11 or 12 year old daughter has an amazing voice, she kicked off the mini-show. A local High School had called in & said they were collecting PJs at school, so we invited their chorus to come to the mall & sing some Christmas Carols to open for Michael Johns. Then Michael performed 4 songs. The best part.... All of the B95 staff was in their PJs... the high school students wore PJs... the GMs daughter wore PJs...and even Michael Johns wore PJs! And he was the one who talked our afternoon guy into it! The performance was in support of the Jammie Drive & while you didn't have to make a donation, many people did & we collected... wait for it.... 95 pairs of jammies that night alone! (Side note - we had him sign his PJs & we put them on the Rewards site for someone to win)

So far, we've collected & boxed 554 pairs of pajama's. We are divvying them up between 3 local organizations that benefit children & families in need here in the Capital Region. Laura & I made the first delivery today, Ric takes the second tomorrow & I'm still waiting on confirmation from the third organization about whether or not they want these PJs! Now that we are nearing the end, we are getting a lot of bigger donations that are still waiting to come in.... 130 some odd pair from the high school I spoke of (they also allowed/encouraged kids to wear PJs to school one day as well)... 30+ pair from a Kindergarten Class who is having a PJ Party at school... a hospital that collected 40 - 50 pairs... Fedex who has "a bunch"... and I'm hearing about more & more businesses each day who are planning on bringing in larger donations this week & next! Listeners could drop their donations off at our office or whenever they saw us out at events. We'll definitely exceed 700 pairs.

I included a few pics from recent events & of our delivery today :) You really can't tell the magnitude of 554 pairs of pajama's in the picture unless you are actually in the room... absolutely amazing for a first year event & I even had one woman ask me today if we were going to do it again next year! You can check out B95's facebook page if you want to see more pics, videos, etc (we're friends... search WYJB Albany). Definitely a feel good and something different from a toy drive.... And more affordable for the listener than say - a coat drive. :-) We're definitely doing it again next year!