CPR Promotional Check-Up

Street School: For The Hospitality Industry

For the past 17 years I've had three hotels here at the Minny airport that have been my defacto layover or first-leg places to sleep. The one I'm at tonight? In 17 years I have not had anything closely resembling a bad experience. It all comes from the people.

You see that with hotels. And stations too. Certain stations just have amazing promo staffs. The Directors Of First And (Usually) Only Impressions. You meet them and walk away with a positive image of the station.

Taking the shuttle over from the airport there was a young woman who immediately struck up a conversation with me. Perky? Ridiculously so. I commented that she didn't have any bags. She replied that she was a new employee of the hotel and they sent her over to the airport for six hours of talking to people. Learning the layout so she could more effectively answer questions when she would get their calls, and more or less, to learn the mindset of the Traveling Public. To understand and empathize with these people when they showed up in crappy moods.

How cool and smart is that? They actually, shudder, put some thought into training their employees.

If you have an intern meeting, give them manuals to read and send them out to represent the station? Good luck.

A Chris Brown Buttkicking

Whoops. Sounded better in my head. A huge charity concert at VCU in Richmond a few weeks back night. Chris Brown and about a dozen other artists like Trey Songz and Kari Hilson.

Radio One doesn't have any more or any less then anyone else when it comes to bodies and resources. They just manage them better. In addition to the show that night they had the inevitable sales remote and a charity softball game between the local cops and the Pittsburgh Stealers. And at 7 pm, the biggest concert of '10 so far.

They had three street teamers bannering downtown around the university starting at 1 pm. Thus, they got the better banner placement locations as opposed to one competitor who showed up at 3 pm and set up a canopy and then just sat there looking bored. And another competitor that showed up at 5.

Every venue has different challenges. This neighborhood was really minimal in terms of places to banner outside of walls and store fronts. STILL...they went four blocks in all directions.

They also caught what most stations will miss: the Texas School Book Depository overlooks. In this case, parking garages.

They hit the offramp from the freeway which was a couple of miles away. You saw Radio One before you even reached campus

Most importantly, by the time people started to show up at 5, it was completely locked down and they had, at any given time, 50 or 60 people crowded around the set up while the promo kids worked the crowd. No chairs. They were out in front making noise. The competition? Sat in chairs and looked bored.

And they stayed until everyone had left. You know it's good when the OM emails: by the way.. We had 2 calls from label reps who gave us major props for how we took over that event Saturday

The lessons:

• Be the first thing they see
• Don't still be setting up when people arrive
• Don't have chairs
• Have the loudest soundsystem
• Don't neglect the high sightlines
• Stand at the exits and personally thank everyone for coming "to our concert!"