(By Paige Nienaber) We just marked the 19th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, a weather event that killed 1300 people and caused damage that took a decade to repair. I look back at Katrina as possibly the last time that Radio was ever able to fully mobilize.
For any number of reasons, Radio’s acknowledgment of such an event in 2024 would be to run a PSA directing people to donate to the Red Cross. I doubt that a Red Cross disaster PSA has ever spurred more than a few people to donate – and we’ll never know because the charity won’t tell us.
You want “tangible.” You want to do something more than just soliciting donations. There needs to be the middle, collecting the donations, and the end, which is to actually go and deliver them.
The best and most needed item? Clean water. My clients from as far away as Seattle physically drove 118 trucks full of bottled water to the disaster zone. The people in Rochester listening to WPXY could hear the airstaff and follow their journey south to Mississippi where the haul was handed out to lines of people who’d been without running water for five days.
Hurricanes aren’t like earthquakes: you know they’re coming. I was at Newcap in Edmonton and the day before it made landfall, we had a staff meeting and were ready to push the button and start the response to the storm. They sold requests. $97 would get your song, any song played. And they added a hook: for $197 you could block a song. The talent would promote that, “Paige’s request, ‘Fascinated’ by Company B is coming up in 15 minutes. If you’re like me and this song makes you want to plunge knitting needles into your ears, you still have time to block it.”
They raised about $90,000 in four days.
But they didn’t stop there. You had a million displaced kids living in shelters, so they collected – wait for it – 400,000 teddy bears and drove them to Texas.
THAT is something that a streaming service could never do and was one of the reasons that Newcap, as a company, was a monster.
And now on with the Dumpage.
Match The Mouth
One of the stations has a walk-in dental place. 24 hours. Multiple locations. An obvious sponsorship for them would be if you have any kind of station team. Softball. Basketball. Hockey. Sports that tends to lend themselves to dental injuries.
The other option is to post close-up shots of about ten smiles and match them to a celebrity’s name for a prize.
A Ton Of Turkeys
You can overthink prizing: if you give away pumpkins in mid-October, people will try to win them. If you give away Christmas trees in December, the phones will blow up. And if you give away turkeys in November, you will get a tree-like reaction.
Jason Palmer with Juneau Alaska Communications said that he’s always wanted to give away “a ton of turkeys,” which equals about 100 turkeys. “Ton” sounds bigger than “100.” How could you do that? Maybe with Turkey Tag: know the name of the previous winner and the next winner needs to know your name, etc., etc., ad nauseam.
Breaking & Ticketing
Breaking & Entering is a terrific spin to Christmas Wish that basically has the station, with the help of an accomplice, breaking into a house and surprising a listener when they come home with a whole buncha crap™.
This is about to occur somewhere I cannot disclose with tickets to a show I also cannot disclose. The station was alerted to a person I cannot disclose who would REALLY appreciate and deserve them. (Which I can disclose.)
Movember
Not to be confused with Mocember which is an annual celebration by the residents of east central Iowa who come together as one to laud and honor Mo Holland from KZIA. It’s literally bigger than Boxing Day. It’s the men’s health recognition month and it seems to get bigger every year.
One of the GMs has actually tied in with an event in her market which is great. What else could you do besides the obvious “have the talent grow mustaches”?
First, if you aren’t using me for “sales stuff,” please do. In fact, I’m hitting the road next month and will be doing cattle call days with AE’s: just camping in the conference room as they come through and hopefully leave with stuff they can immediately sell.
I spent a chunk of Sunday helping a salesperson at Journal in Knoxville sway a very lucrative laser hair removal client. One of the ideas was Hairyoke where listeners win prizes for singing while getting cleaned up.
Or try Ask ‘N Wax. Bel Boschi, CPR Director of Computer Stuff, is Brazilian in a couple of ways and says that this TV show was HUGE. Imagine it as a morning show bit sponsored by some kind of laser or waxing joint. Miss a trivia question and get ripped.
Dance More Monday
Hot 89.9 in Ottawa uses “Listen More, Dance More” as their motto. On holiday Mondays (like Canadian Labor Day on Monday) they do Dance More Mondays. From Mauler: “It is just wall-to-wall dance music – retro and new. From 9a-6p. Goes along with our motto. We sell the days to clients and they come up with a grand prize.”
Lost In Textation
One of the talent got a text from someone who clearly thought they were their dealer and wanted him to drop off “60.” I had the same thing occur on a Saturday morning last winter with some girl who thought I was “Roman” and wanted to pick up a “20” before she and “Lauren” had to go to work.
I know this will surprise you, but I was bored and had her going all over the north suburbs for “meets.” I even got her to send a photo to prove she wasn’t the cops.
It was fun. And it’s also a terrific topic: weird texts that were meant for someone else.
Costumes & The Clients Who Love Them
Judging by emails from my clients, in addition to Breast Cancer now being the #1 looming “thing” that stations are planning for, clients are coming out of the woodwork for Halloween. Especially costume and party stores.
- It’s Not Prostitution If She Doesn’t Get A Talent Fee. 103.3 Kiss-FM in Boise pimped out the services of Michele Heart (MD and morning cohost) to model costumes in an online gallery for a client. I think she did about six different photos.
- Costumeless Costumes. Not that anyone cares about web stats, but every time a station has done a gallery of perceived or partial nudity, the numbers make an RT to Mars. Handbras. Build Your Own Bikinis. Birthday Suit & Tie. Backstage Asses. So, one of the stations has a costume client and won’t be able to do a Pet Costume gallery this year, so they’re doing body-painted costumes as a gallery. Their hits will be Google-like.
- Costumes For The Costumeless. I can’t think of many CHRs and even quite a few Country stations that haven’t done the Gown Town prom dress campaign. What about collecting old costumes to distribute to low-income kids? Use costume clients as a drop-off point; make a donation and get a discount on your garb for 2024.
- Crypt Crashing. Have them (and other clients) sponsor office hits on the 31st. What do workplaces do on Halloween? People dress up at work. Have a gallery of costumes and have the audience vote for which one the morning show should wear when they’re out all day. (It’s a Thursday this year). Photo evidence of the lovely and challenged Fritsch as a drunken bridesmaid from a couple of years ago at Q-102 in Cincinnati.
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.
