(By Paige Nienaber) We’re almost sixty days out from New Year’s Eve. What was your station’s plan last year and any thoughts for this year? It’s sadly become kind of a throwaway night for Radio these days. No mixer. No club. Just a syndicated countdown.
One station I know wants to put some effort into sounding like they’re actually out on NYE, so they’re going to prerecord 10 “check-ins” from parties around the market using people from the station. By the way, you’d really want to try to make these sound authentic. One of the stations here did that with “being out at the lakes” when they were clearly in the studio. There were no jet skis in the background or waves or kids shrieking.
The goal at this particular station is to put a soundsystem in the conference room so you get non-specific thumping music, do it on a Friday afternoon, make margaritas, and use a Marti.
It could be a way of taking the countdown and making it not so stale.
Want more? Tell me what Radio market Andy Travis came from when he arrived at WKRP and I’ll send you all my New Year’s stuff. Just email me at [email protected]
And now on with the Dumpage.
“The Secret”
This came up in regard to Taylor Swift. It’s a great contest for stuff like really special tickets that you want to milk some mileage out of.
It’s simple: the station has a secret and if you know it, you win. And the secret is “How to answer the DJ when they get you on the phone.”
DJ: So we have Clarissa Darling on the phone. Clarissa, let me ask you a question – what is your favorite color of car?
CD: Watermelon. I just can’t find a dealer who has one on the lot.
DJ: Clarissa… you know the Secret! You’re going to see the Little River Band Coverband!
The Secret was that you needed to reply with the same first letter of the question, which, in this case, was “W.”
It’s like Secret Sound in that you have people tracking all these responses and dissecting them for the hook. Other “Secrets” have been “answering with a question”, “Using the DJ’s first name in the reply” and “referring to a sport.”
You want to get the Secret out before you start it. It was presented at one of the stations as the cohost “is really vain about her hair. She’s going to be at the Pet Gala on Saturday. Compliment her hair and she’ll tell you the Secret.” And once you start getting regular winners, it’s no longer a Secret so you start a new one.
Here are a few samples from CBS/Pittsburgh, Australia, and from Phil Becker’s time with Oasis Media. And yes, I have rules.
#FailedElfNames
One of the stations has TSO tickets and a syndicated morning show so they’re probably going to be stuck with Text-To-Win. Everything between Thanksgiving and December 25th really needs to be examined to see if you can spin some sense of the holiday out of it. If you’re going to do texts, one could play off the Twitter trends of which there are at least three versions of “fail” every day. Text a Failed Elf Name to 86609 and win Jingle Bash Ball Fest Palooza tickets. “This hour’s #FEN is ‘Weird Doug From IT’.”
Nap Stations
Emily with Results in Chico noted that a lot of the Thanksgiving night mall-sitters last year were sleeping in their cars. Hmmm… she wondered, what would happen if a station provided some heated RVs or other places for people to take a break and catch a few zzzz’s while waiting for the doors to open? Well, what would happen would be that you’d have a promotion and you’d probably get some TV out of it. And who doesn’t have an RV client or two?
What’s The Worst That Could Happen? They Say No?
One of the big clusters has some McDonalds money popping in the 4th quarter. I’ve always been a big believer in just always asking for something grandiose. Why not?
When you have someone like a McDonalds or Subway or Taco Bell come to you, on the list of things that you should add:
- Can we be on the in-studio audio in the stores? (Imagine, if you will, the cume and TSL…)
- Can we be on your traylines? (KUBE in Seattle was on every Burger King trayliner in western Washington State when they did a Match Game kind of contest. The trayliners were your game pieces for tracking guesses)
“Failure To Lunch”
Yes; food deliveries are very 1985. But… they work. (The “damn it” is implied.) One of the stations had a pizza place that wanted to do free product but with a hook. The hook is going to be people emailing in mid-afternoon, lightheaded and starving because they got dragged into an HR meeting, they were stuck in the elevator, or any of the myriad of reasons why people miss lunch. And the station and client will dash over and rescue their afternoon.
F.L.U. Shots
Every church, drug store, library, and fitness club (at least where I am) is pushing flu shots. For a club client, and if your state allows ladies’ night specials, Free Liquor Unlimited shots would be a nice hook.
Obviously, As A Mennonite Youth Pastor, I’m Deeply Offended
A couple of the stations are working on pizza deliveries for Wednesday the 24th when families will have their fridges and freezers full and are also not really wanting to do any more cooking or add to the cold/frozen stuff. It’s a great prize.
So thank you to a Hubbard station for nudging me towards “Mother Pluckers” which could be a music feature for our hard-working heroes of the kitchen on their busiest day of the year. On social media, add a visual and ask people to post pics of their gastro-odyssey.
Juicing Your Donations
We’re going into the Season Of Begging where we beg for donations. And this is good. People need help.
One of the things that I’ve historically seen work over and over are challenges from businesses. The Mark S. Allen billboard broadcasts in Sacramento were HUGE. And there were certainly a lot of people dropping off individual cash donations, but half to 2/3’s came in via challenges, ie: “This is Michele with the Folsom High School cheerleaders and we challenge all the other squads in town to top our $800 donation!
And from businesses, ie: “This is Paige with McDonald’s on Arden Way and we collected over $590 just during breakfast this morning. We challenge all the other McDonalds in Sacramento to top that!!!”
Big money came in that way.
Tanksgiving
One of the clients is going to get $500 each from six clients and do over a thousand gallons of gas on the morning before Thanksgiving. The clients will get credit for the gas, and their signage will have prime real estate when the inevitable TV crews arrive. KLUC in Las Vegas once got $10,000 from Cricket Wireless to help that brand debut with a splash in the market and it was pumped into a gas station event.
But a reminder: never ever never pre-announce the location until you are there and set up.
A Griswold Christmas
WHO-AM in Des Moines is one of the more iconic stations in Radio and this holiday they’re bringing back their home decorating project:
We actually are on the air with the morning show on Thanksgiving but the day before we broadcast the show live from a listener’s home as we have a troop of professionals decorate their home elaborately inside and out for the holidays. Winner gets that service and gets to keep the thousands of dollars worth of decorations forever. And we serve them a huge holiday breakfast as we broadcast from their kitchen table. Part of the bit is that macho man Van does the outside of their house while interior decorator Bonnie does the inside. We time the broadcast so they can turn their lights on Thanksgiving night.
Last Call/Last Comment
“Last Comment” as a social media contest is huge, great, and a few of the companies have forbade it.
One of the companies that doesn’t block the promotion is selling a fairly ginormous package of prizes to be given away at midnight on New Year’s Eve. The concept is simple. The LAST person to comment in 2024, gets the prize. Is there a possibility that 100,000 people trying to comment at the same time could eff up Facebook for a couple of minutes? We could only HOPE that CNN would lead with “And (station) in (market) caused a major disruption to social media at the stroke of midnight…”
Much like when KCBQ did The Last Contest and crashed phone service to a huge part of San Diego.
So maybe look at “Last Call” as an option. This safer, legal-compliant option (since everyone will be drinking anyway), is to take a caller exactly at 11:59:59.
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.
