(By Paige Nienaber) When interviewing people for a Promotion Director job, I always ask, “So what promotion, event, or contest have you always wanted to do?” I think you find that a lot of talented people have dreams or bucket lists.
One problem we will always run into will be walls. And people saying “no.” I’ve always had a tremendous respect for the Sales team and their ability to take rejection well.
I look at making calls kind of like a slot machine. If you stay with it long enough, maybe you’ll get three cherries.
In my formative wonder years, the Emmis station I was at in Minneapolis/St. Paul did a promotion with Northwest Airlines and a movie company to fly fifty pairs of winners and some clients to Chicago on a Sunday to have lunch, see a movie, and then fly back. Leave at 10. Back by 7. The cost? Nothing. The movie company covered the theater, lunch was through a partnership with the chain and Northwest was doing it to promote their new hourly service between the two markets.
Wait… we had to pay for the charter buses in Chicago. It was pretty cool and user-friendly: no requesting vacation time off.
When I got my first Big Boy job with Beasley in Charlotte, I did the math and it seemed conceivable to do Disney and back in a day. So I wrote it on a Post-it note and stuck it in a place where I would see it every day.
When I had a free moment, I’d pick up the phone and make a call. It never panned out but I did connect with a guy who was the market manager for Delta. US Air monopolized the bulk of flights out of CLT so Delta was open to playing. They had flights to Atlanta and from there, the world, and my guy would give me tickets for an 8 to 1 promo value. Easy peasy.
The PD would get concert tickets and hotel from labels, I would get airfare from my dude, and voile, we were doing a ton of concert flyaways.
But Disney alluded me.
I went to San Francisco to start Wild 107.7 and brought my Post-it note. Disneyland was the new goal. So I made calls and made calls and made calls and one day, talking with someone in Marketing at Alaska Airlines, it happened. They had new service to Orange County and were talking to the local Fox affiliate KTVU about doing something together. The whole thing came together in ten minutes.
Wild and KTVU got sixty seats on each of two Alaska flights that would be leaving at 8 and 9:30 in the morning and everyone would be back in the Bay Area by 11:45 pm.
Home. Run. Our cost was shirts for everyone including the flight crews.
No qualifying. Be caller 107 and you and a guest were on the plane. Remember when we used to have screaming winners? This was it.
It just took some patience.
And now… on with the Dumpage.
Hacking & Entering
This came up yesterday as something that could be semi-regular for a morning show. It’s occasionally funny to break into the GM’s office when he’s out on a Friday, steal his/her stuff, and give it away.
The morning show to remain nameless is going to get bored occasionally, go and crack the GM’s work computer and initiate Tinder exchanges, post things like “What is this? It wasn’t there when I went to bed?” on the social media and perhaps change the profile pic. Why? Why not? The same reason I used to change all of Rick Thomas’s favorites on this office computer at K-Earth to incredibly obscene sites.
A Great Metaphor
With so many stations playing the same music, it’s how it’s presented that makes the difference. Jeff Barry at Cumulus in Albuquerque had a great line in a meeting yesterday: All Fords are created equal. It’s the dealer that makes the difference.
Lazy Day Weekend
One of the stations that normally has LOTS of concert tickets, don’t for this weekend. It will be hot so for something like this, hook up with your local waterpark.
At the end of August, we celebrate the workforce with Labor Day Weekend. This weekend we celebrate the hot and tired workforce with a Lazy Day Weekend: win tickets to kick back and float in the Lazy River at (client).
Insta Fan
To have a celebrity even acknowledge your tweet is pretty cool. (Albert Brooks and Steve Martin). To have a celebrity reply is even cooler. (Andie McDowell: “Tonight we drink to world peace.”)
Thus, “Tweet With Fame” was born. The listener who could get the biggest celebrity (judged by the morning show) to reply, won.
For The Morning Shows
Class Photos – Laura Daniels at Joy-FM in Buffalo and the staff re-did their senior pics. Who looks back at their senior class photo in the yearbook and goes “Damn, I looked great!”? Thus the shot of Laura looking thoughtful with her chin on her fist.
Things You Crash – Yes. “Wedding Crashers” is comparatively ancient but it could still be topic-able. On Saturday night my high school’s rival high school held their 20th reunion at the same place as my class was holding our 65th reunion. So, Kay Comb and I took off our nametags and went and worked their room. I was “Steve Emerson”, a Career Ed counselor at their school during that era and Kay was my wife “Pumpkin.” All I needed to do was get a couple of teachers names and I was ready to go. And for the record, there were students who remembered me.
Pillow Talk – As exciting and visual as it is to interview a guest in the studio, one of the morning shows is starting Pillow Talk. There will be a bed outside the studio and the guest/artist/celeb will climb in with CJ and share intimate secrets.
WhatYaWearingWednesday – If you don’t follow Elizabethany at Hot in DC, you should. She mastered social media before Kane discovered her and truly has an engagement with her audience through Facebook and Twitter. WYWW? Post a pic of what you’re wearing. It IS rocket science.
Intelius – This is one of the great ways of tracking down “regular person” interviews. So, a woman in Baltimore does something stupid in front of the neighbor’s house and the video goes around the world twice before breakfast? You can get her home phone number with Intelius 90% of the time, usually for no cost.
Food Truck Friday – AMP in LA has done versions of this, but the concept is fairly simple: market to the at-work nesters, and at noon on Friday one of the workplaces gets fed by the morning show and a food truck. The next level of that is a Food Truck Pageant and the morning show invites all of the vendors down for competition and an awards banquet.
Win, Lose, Or Draw – Done as Pictionary at KDWB where Dave would whisper a person, place, or thing to Steve O who would have ten seconds to draw it and then they posted it on Facebook. The first person to ID who or what it was, won.
Lost Summer Loves – Find a listener fresh out of a divorce and help them reconnect with “Dave the lifeguard” from 1989 or “Dana, the camp doctor’s daugh…” I’ve said too much. Send them to a drive-in or something else that’s seasonal for your market.
Fall Down For Backstreet Boys – About to pop for one of the morning shows. The station vending machine has something like 28 items in it. They’ll take 28 listeners, assign them each to an item, and shake the machine vigorously until one drops. That item’s “person” gets the tix.
Who’s It – This is like “Know The Show” but with someone unique (Prince’s gym teacher) and two AE’s or support staff as imposters. Listeners grill them like, “#3, did you ever make Prince run laps”? After some questioning, you take some callers to see if they got it correct.
Hot Bartenders – Your next morning show “submit-post-vote” gallery.
Prize Vault Wars – First, we never want to call it a “prize closet”. Closets are small and even if yours is just a filing cabinet, “vault” sounds bigger. Pick one winner who gets to go through and choose one of every “thing” you have in there. For the average listener? This is a huge huge prize. Doubt me? Do it.
Minute To Win It – Caller has to stay on the phone with someone for one minute while saying or yelling something (a word or phrase) without the person hanging up on them.
White, Black, Hispanic, or “Other” – Done by the morning show at Power 96 in Miami. They read some seriously jacked-up news story and the caller had to ID the central figure by skin color. (It’s always White.)
Hey Mom – Have a winner give you their mother’s phone number. Dial up mom, conference them in with you, and give them 60 seconds to accomplish one goal while on the phone. Typically they like to have the daughter/son break some type of terrible news to their mother on the air. It plays out great if they are given a random specific word or phrase that they have to make mom say, but either way just hearing their horrified or terrified reactions is great.
Been There Done That – Basically a “topic of the day.” They throw out a topic like “Who’s seen their grandparents naked?” or “Who’s been kicked out of school”, and then open up the phones to see who has “been there and done that.”
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.
