CPR Promotional Check-Up - Apr 7, 2011

Only Clifton...

We were doing a radio station that was up against a monster with a big buck contest. So he ran a promo with listeners talking about how the music on the other station sucked and their DJ's sucked and it was horrible that they would have to sit through all of that just to play the big contest. So our station made it easy and painless: we listened for you and announced when you had to call and win from them.

At one point 1/3 of their winners were our listeners. They (the other station) went berserk. Our guys ran actual winner promos of our listeners thinking us for helping them win off "them" without having to sit through the crap music and the crap talent. We text and email listeners when their favorite song is about to play...why not text them and tell them when to call and win off the competition?

Golf

I got my first golf request from KZIA a couple of months ago and then it hit with a vengeance this past week. Going to the airport yesterday in a cold driving rain of about 50 degrees, the local driving range in Forest Lake? Packed. If you're into golf, you're really into golf.

• Charity tourneys abound. I saw one that CBS in Sacramento did called "Slice And Dice" at a casino course.
• Q-104 in Halifax did a promotion with Maxim last year called "Closest To The Pinhead" which had one of the morning people gearing up in a sumo outfit with a helmet and facemask and listeners drove balls at him.
• I lob this out about once a year. Get Lacey Underall at YOUR event? Every guy between 40 and 60 will show up. Bookable here http://www.cindy-morgan.com
• What if you did "At The Stroke Of Midnight" and gave night vision goggles to the morning show and some listeners for a few hours of severely visually challenged golf. This has "1,000,000 youtube hits" written all over it.
• The next level would be Blind Golf. Randomly pair two guys with two girls. The couples never see each other. With the assistance of promo staff, blindfolded, they golf 18 holes.
• I saw "Strip Dodgeball" as a file name the other day. Strip Golf is pretty self-explanatory. Players lose an item of clothing for every stroke over par they are, each hole. They're eliminated when they're down to their underwear...but only after playing a hole.
• A girl who has "sat" my daughters works in the summer as a bikini-clad drink server in a golf cart on a local course. This has Street Team potential written all over it.

Training Your New AE's

I'm not a socialist. We need to meet money. And just as you take your interns out for Street School, you also want to take the AE's out and give them some programming edyoukashun. I know: the GSM will give them manuals and material and send them to seminars. But seriously? At every radio station I've ever worked at there was one, maybe two, AE's who just kicked ass. And usually these were the men/women who "got" the station. Who were fans. Who lived the lifestyle. Who had met, shudder, actual listeners. At Wild in Tampa, those would be Eveann and Michelle. Lifers who love the station and go to all the promotions, whether they need to or not.

Get Them On The Streets Wild 94.9 in SFO has done a thing where new AE's spend their first week on the job as members of the street team. They go out, they banner, they listen to the station, they meet listeners and they bond with the promo kids and airstaff. In-freaking-valuable.

Here Is What We Are I worked at a station once where, on any given day going on Sales calls with the AE's, I would hear the station described as Urban, Top 40, Churban, Rap, and Dance. None of which were accurate. The AE's clearly didn't listen or applied their own musical tastes to what they believed we were. Get the new AE, sit down with him/her and give them a crash course in who you are, what the format is, and the history of the format.

The Ten Commandments Lay down the law in no uncertain terms. Whatever your rules are. No more then two remotes on Saturdays. No clients-cutting-their-own-spots. No use of rotated music in spots. No client trivia. No Family Four Packs. No prize giveaway from a client that is not incorporated into a station prize. Let them know the boundaries up front.

Question #1 What is the clients' goal with this added value request? What are they trying to achieve besides getting free spots? If your AE can't answer that, then how can we be expected to create something that works for the client?

Question #2 Does your client have a charitable hot button? Many national clients are involved with campaigns or organizations. Pizza Hut supports reading. As an example. If you know what their hot button is, then you can innocently go to Meineke with a plan to help collect and distribute cars seats to low income families....which is their big thing.

Next week? Getting them to use the paper.