(By Paige Nienaber, of course) First, if you haven’t listened to my podcast, “Three Radio Promotions In Three Minutes,” give it a spin. (Available where all podcasts and Men’s intimate wear are sold.)
Why do we take photos of our events and remotes? First, for the client recaps and second for social media so that people who didn’t make it, get an idea of what they missed.
There was a station in Miami that, for Taylor in about 2015, posted a photo of their empty tent. And then a photo of the empty club where they were having their pre-event. It looked like something from The Day After and not what you would expect from the biggest shows to roll through your market in 2015.
Carlos Pedrazza was the Marketing Director at NOW in SFO and created this tutorial for his team:
Station Appearances & Event Day Photo Requirements
*One (1) Staff Photo – photo should be from head to toe & everyone should be in full uniform. Should be taken at start of event to ensure best lighting & clean uniforms.
*One (1) Final Event Set Up – this photo should be inclusive of the entire set up & all set up elements; the tent, table, sound system, banners posted, etc etc.
*One (1) Final Event Set Up relative to the main entrance / or where all the foot traffic is located.
*Six (6) “Action” Photos – staff grilling meat, prepping meat, cutting meat, setting up, cleaning, customer buying the meat inside the store, participation in the Grilling Rodeo, meat dept selling the meat, meat rep chatting with customers, customers showing off their purchase, customers visiting the kiosks inside the store.
*Six (6) “Engagement” Photos – staff sampling the meat, distributing recipe cards, engaging with customers, sampling action inside the store (if applicable). Please don’t snap photos from a bird’s eye view or when you are standing behind the staff member. It should be at ground level.
In closing, for each event day you should be submitting at least 8 photos per day except on the first day which requires more. It would be great if you are submitting anywhere between 12 – 15 quality photos for each event day. More is better than less. Always provide a nice mix of photos.
And now, on with the Idea Dump:
The Flight To The North Pole
The concept is brilliant: you fly a bunch of kids to meet Santa Claus.
The first station to do this was Jamz in Orlando with the Magic and the team plane. Power in Miami did it with a Carnival Cruiselines charter plane and there’s a station in Jackson that does it with the Mississippi Air National Guard. It’s back and about to take wing at HOT 99.1 in St. Johns, Canada.
Party Girl (Or Boy)
As far as I can tell you all have music features for New Year’s Eve. Cool.
Most of you have social media plans for this very very busy night. Cooler.
Some of you like Jammin’ in Denver have station events that will make them $$$. Coolerer.
Since “house parties” are the real vibe, some of you like WQEN in Birmingham will be out crashing them all night with food and prizes. Coolest.
So, you REALLY want some kind of “outside of the building” coverage of what’s going on. Both Hot in Ottawa and Hot in Norfolk had a street teamer they named “Party Girl”. Her gig (which she was going to do anyway) was to go out to clubs and parties and music events and post tons and tons and tons of photos to social media. Kind of like every other 23 y/o female.
So, she did it for the station and became a character. Party Girl was the trendiest young woman in town and was out enjoying the scene and covering it on the stations’ Instagram and Facebook.
“Party Girl” would be one way to cover New Year’s Eve because I can guarantee you that there are going to be a ton of stations with a syndicated show on the air, no one on the phones or social media, and nothing but auto-posts to acknowledge the night.
What The Flock?!
Deaner and Daniels at KGGI in Riverside once flocked themselves. I’m not sure why. Wouldn’t it be fun™ if you flocked random items that were stolen from salespeople’s cubicles and listeners had to ID the pic on social media to win TSO or whatever holiday prize you might have?
The Closet Of Misfit Prizes
KOB-FM in Albuquerque was the first station to do a December promotion based on “misfit toys” or “We couldn’t get you the PS3 but here is (something simply not as good).” Kiss in Dallas did a December version of cleaning out all of the old un-picked-up prizes from the previous 12 months. Bing. There’s your theme. But the promo HAS to mirror the song from the Christmas program.
I….Love A Parade
I’ve never understood why a station wouldn’t be out in front of 5 or 10 or 50,000 people. Sassy with Kiss in Chattanooga has ID’ed the most important Christmas parades in their hot zips and has people, vehicles, and plans to be at them all. 94.9 in San Diego and Alpha in Savannah were the first stations to delve into battery-packed strings of lights wrapped around promo people at events. And Magic in Albuquerque was out at this past weekend’s parade.
Insert-Prize December Methodologies
It would be sad to have some prizes in December and not cloak them and drape them in Christmas. So… a few things that you can plug pretty much anything into.
- Jingle Jumble – Your basic mashup of hooks. They could be songs from the playlist or Christmas songs, of which there are quite a few to choose from. But you’d want to make sure that they get not just the song but the artist.
- Slo Mo Ho Ho – Take a clip from a Christmas film and slow it way way down. ID it as “Jingle All The Way” and win.
- The On Ho-Ho-Hold Game – The On Hold Game rocks. In fact, it was the only promotion that Judy Ellis actually liked. You take a caller, put them on hold and they need to repeat the music positioning statement over and over and over. You punch them up between songs and spots and after 20 or 30 minutes, if you haven’t caught them not saying it, you award them their prize. The December methodology would be with ho’ing.
- Randy The Green Nosed Reindeer – Jeff Kapugi was the first person I ever saw who figured out that by manually refreshing the site, you could get something like a stoplight to turn green when you wanted it to. (“Green For Aldean” which had the stoplight as the cue to call and win) I think a reindeer prominently featured on the homepage would also do the trick.
- Reindeer Races – A little more arduous in terms of actually having to produce some “stuff”, but this is a theater of the mind contest that’s been done by Mix in Houston and Mix in Cincy. You take nine callers and assign them each to a reindeer, and then you play the race with the call to the gate and then the dash to the finish line. Mix it up and have muddy track conditions. Maybe have Donner get erased for Albuterol.
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.
