(By Paige Nienaber) I’ve always thought that our sites and logos were artist templates, and a static, unchanged image is kind of boring. Google, which has turned out to be a moderately successful enterprise, will change its logo every day. Why? Why not?
Radio has had occasional moments of brilliance when it comes to temporary rebranding. KUBE in Seattle would mix up the moniker a few times a year if there was a particularly mega concert that was coming through.
This has been repeated by stations during the Eras tour.
In fact, KDWB did one of the best rebrands in 2011 when Jack “Jabs” Jablonski, a high school hockey player in the Minneapolis suburbs, got checked in a game that resulted in his paralysis. Just a really sad incident from a pretty standard hit.
It was the number-one news story in the Twin Cities the next day. The following day it was the number one news story in the state. On a Sunday afternoon, we all got together via email and two days later they rebranded as K-Jabs. There were lots of messages and tributes from his classmates, and they sold 5000 t-shirts to raise funds for his long-term spinal care and treatments.
It’s a station that has done some pretty historic contests but this was bigger than all of them.
Something similar was done by Hot 99.5 in DC when they heard a story about some cheerleaders who were doing a drive to register bone marrow donors in honor of a girl on the squad who was battling blood cancer.
Just rebranding would have been a nice tribute, but they threw the weight of the station behind the drive and signed up thousands of people who came by and got swabbed and registered. That… was big.
And now on with the Dumpage.
The Second Chance Concert Series
About to debut on a station. This taps into the vibe that, at one point or another, most of us have missed a great concert for various reasons. I missed The Police because I had to work the State Fair. I missed Journey because of prom. I missed Jimmy Buffett because my date bailed. With so many of these artists out for the 1000th time on the road, you call and say why you missed them the first time around, and finally get to catch the show.
Arithmetickets
While “designated caller when we roll the touch tones” rocks, there are other things you can do. Like pop quizzing the listeners.
“Chris Stapleton has nine bunks on his bus. If the crew each drinks three bottles of beer, how many bottles should the caterer put on ice during the load out?”
“Bruno Mars sold out (venue) of 14,500 tickets at $50 a ticket. The promoter gave 100 tickets to (your station). How much is Bruno banking?”
Chill & Charge
Tulsa got smacked bad with weather on Saturday and, as of yesterday morning, there were still about 100,000 people without power in insane heat.
We’ve learned a couple of things:
- People will actually go to social media for news
- Sometimes the greatest prize you can give a listener is a charged phone
Despite being in OKC, JJ Ryan did a great job with his station 92.1 The Beat in Tulsa getting info out and in a timely fashion. And that included where people could get free ice and that the aquarium had opened its doors for free. Come sit in their air-conditioned lobby and charge your phone for free.
Brilliant idea if you have a client with room and power after your next, inevitable, summer storm.
Fill The Fridge
Growing up in Minnesota I’d had post-storm power outages but never more than 12 or 18 hours. And a month after I got to Charlotte there was a hurricane and we were without power for six days. And all our food spoiled. So, the ice giveaway is great. Helping people save their (expensive) groceries is a great prize.
Hot 89.9 in Ottawa did something great, and quickly after they had storms that knocked out power for days: they filled peoples’ fridges. More specifically, they gave out gift cards to a grocery store, but the response was fantastic.
Phone Sex
A very simple concept that reminds me of Ticket Tag, courtesy of Y-94 in Fargo where they did an escalating cash contest based on caller 9 being able to guess elements of caller 10, including their gender. It could be as simple as caller 9 guessing the next caller’s gender and if they’re right, both get tickets.
Tanaholics
Magic in Colorado Springs stumbled on “12-step groups” as a comic foil in imaging when they had some tanning sessions for a weekend contest.
Kiss in Albany created People For The Ethical Treatment Of Dragons for an Imagine Dragons contest.
Pet Food
In 2009 one of the things that happened in the US was that some people had to bring their dogs and cats to shelters because they could no longer afford to feed them. One of the former salespeople from Wild in SFO was actually on a program where she could go and get a zip-locked bag of dog food once a week.
You should be hyper-alert for if anything like that is available in your market and could use your “voice” and perhaps assistance with fundraising.
After one of the Florida hurricanes a few years ago Beasley in Boston did an event at a client where people could drop off pet food but also fill a kiddie pool (that they tricked out as a dog dish) with pennies. The food was driven south to a Humane Society in Tampa that had been hit hard and the pennies spun and used as a cash donation.
Pets are a “hot button.” I bet that you’d get a response.
Flight Attendants
This and the holidays are the time of year when a lot of people who travel MAYBE once a year, fill the airports. One of my favorite morning show people has flown for Delta since 2007 and she says everyone dreads this time of year.
There was a social media post bouncing around yesterday from a flight attendant with advice for the occasional fliers. It was actually spot ON. So if you have a flight attendant in your circle of friends or staff at the station, get him or her on. It’s great advice that might help save some listeners some headaches.
When The Ticket Sales Are Slow
One of the Cumulus clusters had a Country concert last weekend and tickets were slow.
Better than a DJ or a recorded promo? “Listeners.” Have them sell the show. For the week up to the show, any social media post got at least one “listener” asking about tickets and where they could still be purchased.
On the air? “Listeners” talking about how much they missed live music, or where they were going to eat, or who they were going with, or the last time they’d seen the artist… just creating excitement and anticipation.
Pre-sales jumped and they got close to 1,000 walk-ups the day of the show.
“Listeners” > Promos.
Canada Day/4th Of July Vehicle Music
There are going to be literally too many parades to be in some markets. It’s just way, way too easy to get out in front of a LOT of people. As great as having the SUV in the parade is, you should hopefully be blasting music. Can you reach out to a car stereo place and see if they’ll loan you some speakers to either place on the roof or face out the back door?
Also, either bump the spots or have a playlist on a device that you can dump into. This comes from a guy who blasted a commercial for Yeast Guard at 10,000 people at the Kings Mtn Christmas Parade in South Carolina.
Lotto
One of the stations just got an insane number of lottery tickets. They’re going to do the Blizzard Of Tix. Ten listeners each get ten seconds blindfolded in a wind machine to grab as many as they can.
Solve The Case And Roll To The Show
In 2020 I started delving into the case of a guy who I’d gone to school with and who had disappeared along with his car in Florida when I was 18. And this brought me into the world of “web sleuths.” And there are a LOT.
One of the reasons Fugitive works is that it sucks people in and engages them.
Q-102 in Cincy does Q Clue and one round had listeners trying to solve the mystery of Taylor’s missing cat. The prize? Four tickets to her show and limo have a perceived value of about a million dollars.
Obviously, I’m Offended
Michael Martin and I once did a weekend contest that played off “Win It Before You Can Buy It” and did “Premature Etickulation”: the station was giving out tickets quickly and way before most stations did. Kiss 102.3 in Albany got ahead of graduations in that market with a weekend ticket contest.
Dogs On The 4th
If you have pets, you know that they really can react poorly to fireworks. There are more and more events like this taking place every July. You could and should recruit some volunteers to do this.
You could and should get a guest on the morning show to talk about exercises and strategies for calming your pet during the fireworks. Or have a podcast of calming, soothing talk with harp music. My daughter plays harp at the animal shelter here to calm dogs down so they can be adopted. It works.
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.
