Paige Nienaber’s Midweek Idea Dump: Good Cause, Great Promos

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We got mail. Long-time reader, first-time writer Sun in Seminole asks, “What was the best local charity campaign that you ever witnessed?”

Stop The Violence was an awareness campaign created by Jerry Clifton and Dave Ferguson at WPGC and which eventually got picked up by a hundred stations. It was massive.

In terms of a campaign that had visible results and that activated the audience, it would be Jamz Corps at 95.7 Jamz in Birmingham. This was from the heart and mind of the morning show producer, B Money. It was one of those things that he undertook on his own and self-funded until someone in Sales heard it, attended one, was “converted” and sold the Bejesus out of it.

Basically, it was a community service day: they’d pick a project like cleaning a community center and would invite their listening family down to help out. They weren’t asking for money or food or clothes; they were asking for the audience’s time on a Saturday.

You’d come out for a couple of hours and get assigned to something like putting up new backboards on the basketball court, landscaping, cleaning the kitchens, or painting rooms.  McDonald’s was the food sponsor and brought a bounce house for the kids. Other clients like hardware stores were brought in to help with tools and materials.

And one Saturday a month, Jamz transformed the market. That is a homerun.

Now on with the Dumpage.

My First Word Of Warning For 2025

Once or twice a year I’ll catch everyone by surprise and strongly suggest not doing something. A morning show was thinking about doing “something” on Monday based on the inauguration. It would have been very funny to 50% of the listening audience. The other 50% would not have found any humor in it at all.

I’m cool with pissing off 3-5% of the listening audience if it’s a really funny bit, but to add to Monchai’s words of advice about factoring in distance, time, and intangibles when it comes to deciding when to leave for a remote:

“Never piss off 50% of the audience.”

Word.

“The Cabin Fever Mix”

What do people do in snow storms? They (hopefully) listen to the radio. They live on Facebook. And they find alternative ways to stay warm. So in the course of a five-minute email exchange, it was decided that 95.7 Jamz in Birmingham would acknowledge the crippling inch of snow they were getting with a music feature of slow jam, love makin’, Luther/Barry music. I love this medium.

Snowcial Media

When Portland got socked by an ice storm, all of the Alpha stations did exceptional jobs at dropping the autopost stuff that know one who is iced in without power, really cares about. Live got an IG video up of Tiny Fey, Maya Rudolph, and Amy Poehler who were stuck at Pioneer Square. And the Bull had a nice winter mix of humor and info.

Red Hot Slots

iHeart in St. Louis was the first to do a stoplight contest on their site with Green For Aldean. When the stoplight turned green, that was the cue to call and win concert tickets. Simple and people kept their workplace computers on the site all day.

Sadly no one has casinos that advertise or this would be big. Flinn in Memphis had the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Chris Taylor came up with this:

“Winning tickets week of we sold it to a casino… Listeners were given a time on our Facebook page when the “red hot slot” would go red… When it did everyone who liked it would be in the running for tix. We did it every day for 10 days and the response was huge.”

iPad Tag

You really only need to look at what happens when 94/9 in San Diego does one of their Attack Of, Bride Of, In Space series of ‘pad giveaways to realize that cash doesn’t have to be cash. It can be stuff.

Brew Ha Ha

For the beer and comedy club clients. Every office has a jokester. A clown. At my office, it’s Carl the pool guy. LIKE “Office Hottie,” have at-work listeners sign up their person for a competition at a club. Funniest person wins a getaway/tickets/Kit Kat Prize Paks for themselves and all their coworkers… who you KNOW will pack the joint to support him/her.

Morning Show Bits

Trading emails with “someone” and near-as-I-can-tell, a couple of these haven’t been done:

  • I think “(Person) U” would be fun. Every month you take on something you’ve never tried before like skydiving or poker or, whatever. And you take some listeners along who are virgins too. Done as Kate U at Mix 106 in Boise. It’s freaking great.
  • Back before she got preachy, Oprah used to do a job switch and go and do a viewer’s job while they hosted the show. THAT would be cool.
  • Springer Friday. Every Friday do something ripped from Jerry Springer. My Mom Dresses Too Damn Sexy is a given.
  • “We Will Do Anything To Get You To Listen” is/was always large as you take listeners’ dares to do stuff like jump out of a window on fire.
  • The “Whatcha Doing At (Address Of The Jail” thing is great. But it lacks audience participation. I’d open it up and let the guy who’s getting released at 6 am state his case and let the audience vote via text on whether he was guilty or got screwed.
  • “(Morning Person) & The Pound.” Let a guy call in and explain what he did to seriously get in the doghouse. You help him soothe it over with his spouse and act as a hostage negotiator and the calming voice to work with her and find out what dude needs to do.

Another For The Morning Show

I learned the concept of “If You Believe Something Is There, People Will See It” from Kerry Brown in 6th grade who was the first “on” the Sears men’s underwear rumor. So it was fun to make the population of Miami/Dade believe that something, well, really offensive had somehow snuck onto Power 96’s busboards. The station spiked in lots of “listeners” who had seen it and “Someone is going to lose their job for sure. You kind of have to squint but ‘it’ is RIGHT THERE. I had to explain a whole lot to my kids about things I thought I could wait on until they were older.”

Grab a shot of something random from a morning show event, post it on Facebook and Instagram, loop in a dozen of your favorite prize pigs to start the commenting, and watch it take on a life of its own.

Mardi Bra

Fat Tuesday hits on March 4th and “Mardi Bra” is a Volunteers Of America fundraiser of clothes and products for women living in shelters. If there is a campaign happening in your market, it might be something you can support (literally no pun intended) if you have the promo room.

5 COMMENTS

  1. Yea, I found the ignore the Trump inauguration to be pretty short-sighted and dismissive.

    Our AM show played some funny trump-biden moment over the past 8 years…. they also talked to people on both sides. It was fun. They also aired a couple who was split and it was funny to hear the girlfriend roast her boyfriend for “being sad” that Trump won.

    The whole ignore the biggest moments in pop culture was not how radio used to be cool and relevant. But, easy to see how we got to where we are.

      • Seems like a nice feel-good but lacks a real-time listening component. Community charity is always valuable. What’s really valuable is increasing audience size and passion, so when you activate charity components, they are more effective. The station and shows who are at the forefront, leading or hosting the talk of the day (week/month) while having fun or evoking emotions usually win. “Trump” is not a person, it’s more of a movement. I really found the quick dismissal of content around a MASSIVE event (that’s still happening) to be very illogical and personally motivated. Full disclosure, I have several colleagues that have mentioned your “disdain” for Trump, which seems even more biased if you’re actually consulting media properties based on personal politics and/or insecurities.

  2. So funny to watch a declining business get obsessed with “politically correct” mantras and guidelines. These people are so scared of Trump, while America just keeps asking for real change. THIS is why the silly, goofy and tired promotions have gotten radio “stuck”…. same ol goofball audio for people who are now 55+ and don’t even know how to use IG or tik tok.

    He also has zero insight on “pissing off half the audience”, because living in the simple and incorrect sphere of “half the people love this and the other half hates it” is just media-speak for people WITHOUT data. Look at Portnoy, Outkick, Rogan etc… they have more audience than every radio station combined, and they do not blindly fall “in-line” with a party, person or even perspective.

    If your station is considering perspective from someone who has a box, and a line in the middle of the box, then puts your audience on one side or another…. you’re taking really horrible advice. That’s just not America, or American media audiences.

    • I actually really agree with this. It’s becoming a liability to generalize an audience based on a PD or GM opinion. The best PD I ever had said this “We never know what we pretend to know.”

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