CPR Promotional Check-Up

Prom Otions

I have actual hope for the future. People talking, planning, scheming stuff like proms and Cinco de Mayo. Sigh. I'm giddy.

Promtourage One of the stations reached out yesterday and they have a makeover (crappy name), and the night show will escort the re-done wallflower to her prom in a limo. I Googled: as a name, this got 747 hits. In today's world, that's original.

Extreme Teen Facials As done by KOB-FM in Albuquerque where they awarded hair, makeup, and all-around reconstruction from a spa/salon.

Menage A Prom DJ tags along and shares prom night and pays for all their expenses for the privilege of finally getting to go to prom.

Prom Wars A station-to-remain-nameless is going to dust off Last School Standing and do it as Prom Wars. Schools vote each other off. Last school wins a dance. Now, the challenge is that most of your schools have locked down their entertainment already. So there needs to be another hook or incentive for them to care.

Getting an artist or celeb to pop in would be cool...but difficult since proms fall on different dates. Having the DJ's host would be decent. Giveaways and food would be all right. Getting your prom webcast on the station website might be cool. If you put some of this stuff together, you could have a package.

And if you think "Olympics", you could sell some "officials".

• The Official Limousine Service
• The Official Formal Wear Store
• The Official Florist
• The Official Hair Salon
• The Official Morning-After Pill
• The Official Breakfast-At-6 am-Joint

(Market) Prom "Second Chance Prom" when it was initially done, was cool. It had a vibe. And then it got dumbed down into just a club gig. KLUC in Las Vegas was the radio sponsor for an event called The Vegas Prom. Thinking from the standpoint of a cold, lonely and revenue-challenged 2nd, this might be pretty cool to replicate in your market.

iProms To paraphrase R Kelly, "After the dance, it's the after party." In theory, on Sunday mornings at 3 am in May, there should be thousands of 17 and 18 year-olds listening to the station in houses and limos and hotels. The iProm bit is simple; you solicit playlists, scan through them (like stations do with myPod) and find ones that are basically what you would be playing anyway. A couple of cool songs that might not be necessarily in the format can only drive in the point that this is legit and also help your hipness factor.

So every hour from midnight to 6 am on Sundays in May, you are listener driven and focused on the kids who are partying after their proms. And you obviously let them know a week in advance so they can tell all their friends to be listening.

It's similar to what Live 105 did with "Free For All" at night in San Francisco...and the numbers have doubled.

Gown Town This was originally done by Wild in Tampa where they collected used prom dresses from their audience and then had them cleaned and distributed to low-income highschool girls so that they could go to their proms. Very warm and fuzzy.

KDWB took this to the next level and created a campaign she called Gown Town. They put up collection bins at dozens of clients' locations, the donated dresses (of which there were hundreds and hundreds) were then cleaned and sold in a Filene's style stampede in an empty retail space at a mall. None were over $20. Mass hysteria as the girls and their moms rushed into the store, elbowing people aside, trying to score a dress. Ace & TJ in Charlotte have been doing this for years too.

Prom Crashers If you're a CHR or Rhythm station, you're 30-60 days away from a season of revelry for a large portion of your audience. And talk about captive audiences?! Most proms will happen on one of three nights, and most school-sponsored, all-night grad parties will hit on one of two nights. So a savvy promotional professional would stick an intern on the phones, calling all the schools to find out when and where their events are. And then, with this info, map out a blitz to hit as many of these as you can. It's not rocket science. Crash the party, run in, jump on the crowd mike, toss out a few t-shirts, and become an indelible part of your listeners' memories of these huge nights.

Win A Date With The DJ The first time I ever sent a DJ to prom with a listener was at Wild/San Francisco in '92. And it was great, primarily because we had a premise, a plot so-to-speak as to why Dave Morales needed to go to prom. It wasn't some (cue a pukey announcer voice) "Win a date with Johnny Bravo!" Dave could have gotten an Oscar for his portrayal of a man struggling with the lingering trauma of being stood up for prom ten years previously. The problem is that this has become an unctuous, smarmy, egotistical and conceited. You need to have a hook.