(By Paige Nienaber) Heat is a promotional op. So if it’s hot (and it is) you may as well make the most of it.
Tantoos – Have listeners write your brand on their stomachs or backs in sunblock and then go out for a day of fun in the sun. Post the photo and maybe win some tanning or an actual tattoo.
Sweating Sites – Many of you have done the cascading snowflakes during the holidays. What about dripping sweat on the site?
Shake & Bake – Give out room packages for one of your local casino resorts. Shake the dice at night and bake at their pool during the day.
Time & Temp – The late/great/bald Jay Stone did something in Vegas that made me literally fall down laughing. He took the “time/temp lady” and changed it to say, “At the tone, the time is 12 noon, and the temperature is 10,000 degrees.” He did these for all of the top-of-the-hours. Like this but without the gimmicky music at the end.
Drive-By Scooping – Happened in Denver when the morning guy went crazy from the heat™, stole an ice cream truck, and went on a rampage that had him handing out 3000 free samples of frozen relief to people in the community. BEN-FM in Philly hits the street with their Ice Cream Team next week.
Heat & Greet – Mix 93 in Kansas City collected air conditioners and fans for senior citizens. In exchange, they hooked up the listeners who dropped these off with meet-and-greet passes for Gaga.
Car Washes – With heat comes dust and with dust comes dirty cars. Do the math. Why not get ten or twelve local high school cheerleading squads and do a big ass car wash for charity? Hook the girls up with movie passes. That was easy. Much like what KOB-FM did with firefighters and servers from some bar for fire relief.
Freeze Your Ass For (Insert Prize) – Any time you can freeze prizes in blocks of ice and have listeners try to win them by melting them using only their butt temps, well, that’s the reason I quit med school for a career in Radio. GREAT visual for TV.
The Incredible Bikini Jam – If your station targets women, then you need to know that free swimsuits are right up there with shoes and purses in terms of being great prizes. Rick Thomas during his first regime at Z-90 in San Diego, just for no reason other than he thought it might be big, did a weekend of free bikinis. Phones melted. He was stunned at the response. Wild in OKC did the Bikini Wax Weekend and I have a promo if you’d like to hear it.
Free Swim Fridays – V-103 in Baltimore once, when the temps topped their dial position, went and paid for all of the public swimming pools in that market for the day. Come and swim for free. Granted it was only a couple of bucks a person but the size of it on the air sounded huge.
Your Logo In Grass – Is there a hillside that overlooks a major interstate in your market where the grass has begun to go brown from the heat? Get the intern staff, and using buckets, water your call letters on the hillside. It’ll grow in green. Nothing illegal about watering grass. They can’t stop ya. Unless you’re in California.
The Big Drip – Q in Memphis froze a medallion in a logo-shaped block of ice. Guess how long it would take to melt out and fall to the ground to win a trip to Alaska. myTalk 107.1 in the Twin Cities did it when the ice went out on the lake. Guess how long it would take for a toy car to melt through a sheet of ice (webcammed outside Greg Strassell’s office window) to win a really cool inflatable lake toy.
To Hell And Back – Go and see what concerts are playing in Detroit, put together a trip, and send listeners to Hell… Michigan. The only place hotter than (wherever you are).
Movie Theaters – What could possibly be better on a hot humid day than to sit in a dark, air-conditioned theater for a couple of hours? Movie tickets are always great prizes. No more so than when it’s 1000 degrees outside.
Play With Our Hose – What’s your relationship like with the fire department? Can you get one of their pumper trucks to come out and spray down the masses in a park as you host some kind of game or contest? Or at least open up a hydrant.
Getting Out Of The Studio – Doing the fake nude beach broadcast that Wired in Philly did would be very vibing. Call me and I can walk you through it. The station in Salt Lake City did a bit where the AC broke down and they relocated the studio to a listeners’ pool for a day. At the very least, you want tons and tons and tons of calls from the beaches and lakes and pools. Much like Mandy & Jimmy are doing at Hits 106.3 in Lexington tomorrow morning.
Innertubing – In some markets, there are nearby rivers where people go and rent tubes, drink beer, and float down the river. If there’s one near you, that’s where you have to be.
An Inflatable Weekend – Go to Walmart and get slip ‘n slides and super-soakers and every inflatable pool toy you can find. Great prizes in warm weather.
Waterparks – An obvious no-brainer. Your listeners are not going to be buying cars, shopping for wallpaper, or visiting clients… unless that client is a waterpark. You need to find a reason to be there. If they won’t pay for you to come, then go for free. This is “lifestyle” and topical at the same time. Would you rather be at a drug store doing a remote or at a waterpark with 10,000 people?
Things You Throw – What if you got 100 listeners, gave them each a bucket of water balloons, and hosted a big ass water balloon fight? Done as Baloono Mars at WiLD in Tampa and Balloon Five in Detroit.
Christmas In July – Mancow did this in San Francisco during a heatwave. Got a freezer truck (like the kind companies like Tyson will use to ship their product cross-country) and had it filled with snow up at Tahoe. Drove it down to Oakland and dumped it in a park for kids who had NEVER seen snow to frolic in. Can you get ice shavings or one of those snowmaking machines to do this?
HoX3 – Christmas In July is old and clichéd….and it works. Christmas music for a day.
Skating Parties – For families, admission and skate rental at an ice rink would be a fun way for them to beat the heat.
Kool-Aid – For no reason other than you can, go out and do a Kool-Aid stand with all of the money going to some kids’ charity.
Wet Screams – This was a weekend contest from Wired in Philly. Nothing but pool toys and waterpark tickets.
Pay Off Your Power – With heavy AC use comes high electric bills. KDWB did a bit in 2005 when they paid off people’s heating bills. Email it in, listen for your name and the station will pay it off. Why not do this with electric bills?
Outdoor Movies – The city of Minneapolis used to do this where they’d get some kind of big screen, set it up in Loring Park, and on summer evenings they show free movies. You pull something like that off? It’d be large.
Fountains – KSFM’s booth at the California State Fair used to be right across from a fountain and on hot days (it never seemed to be below 100) people would just sit in the fountain and listen to the music from the station. There’s a bit here.
Imaging – Some fun recorded stuff and some copy.
From Lake 94.5 in Milwaukee, and two from Z-100 in Portland.
IT’S SO HOT OUT, MY REESE PEANUT BUTTER CUPS… TURNED INTO REESE PEANUT BUTTER SHOOTERS… AH, I DRANK THEM ANYWAY
IT’S BALLS STICKING TO THE SIDE OF YOUR LEG HOT
WARNING! WARNING! DUE TO THIS HEAT, THERE ARE HIGH LEVELS OF SWASS… SWALLS… SWUSSY AND SWITS… EWWWWWWWW.
IT’S SO HOT OUT… THAT ENVIRONMENT CANADA HAS ISSUED A FAT GUY IN A TANK TOP WARNING
IT’S SO HOT OUT… WE SAW OPTIMUS PRIME TRANSFORM INTO AN AIR CONDITIONER
IT’S SO HOT OUT… IT FEEL’S LIKE THE DEVIL JUST FARTED
REMEMBER LAST FEBRUARY… WHEN YOU WERE PRAYING YOU WOULDN’T FREEZE TO DEATH? WELL, YOUR PRAYERS HAVE BEEN ANSWERED
TRY AND STAY COOL… FROM EDMONTON’S CLASSIC ROCK… K97/FROM FORT MCMURRAY’S CLASSIC ROCK – 100.5 K-ROCK
I miss anything? And I’m sure I did. Let me know and I’ll pass it along.
Paige Nienaber insults/consults more than 100 radio stations on Fun ‘N Games (Marketing & Promotions). Find him at CPR Promotions. Read Paige’s Radio Ink archives here.
