Last week was spent helping a very high-profile morning show scrap together some ideas for “noise.” They need noise. Talk. People going into work and asking their coworkers, “Did you hear what (show) did this morning?!”
These things are easy and usually just involve some smoke, mirrors, and theater.
The morning host was exasperated that the station had missed St. Patrick’s Day. Literally no reference or acknowledgement of the date.
That’s egregious. So to help you maybe avoid that with Easter, here is some Dumpage for April 20th.
Bad Word Bunny Done by the late and forever missed Russell Rush at 96.1 NOW-FM in San Antonio. Kind of like Chubby Bunny, he filled his mouth with Peeps, and you had to guess the bad word he was trying to mumble.
An Egg Hunt For Dogs This is done in Chattanooga as a fundraiser for an animal shelter. Your dog is let into one of three yards (based on the size of the dogs), and there are plastic eggs with dog treats in them, scattered in the grass. When the dog settles on one, it’s opened, and he/she gets the treat. You would get TV out of this.
Hammin’ It Up One of the stations has a buttload™ of Honeybaked Hams to give away. It’s entirely possible to overthink prizing. Anyone who has given away turkeys in November and trees in December knows that these things will blow up the phones. If your company allows you to do post-and-vote photo galleries, then do ones of little kids in their Easter best. It’s like Santa Baby: your digital numbers will pop.
Chubby Funny If it gets 13 million views on YouTube, then they’re probably doing something right.
Instaham Again, you can overthink prizing. A ham dinner will get more than a few people to hashtag you.
Full Contact Egg Hunts Done by G-105 in Raleigh where men in football gear ran, dug, and grabbed for colored eggs that were worth prizes. But the egg needed to be intact when you ran to the end zone and handed it to the DJ. This would go viral in about three seconds.
Pig Races As done by KOB-FM in Albuquerque for Green Day & Ham, anytime you have a street full of pigs (and actual swine too), racing them, it’s a home run. Can also be done ala KLUC with little pink ping pong balls with pig faces Sharpee’d on them and individually numbered. A talent with a leafblower then blows them around the halls of the station. First across a line wins for its designated listener.
Twitter Bunny As done by one of the stations for Bruno tickets. Tweeted clues as to the location of a plastic egg that had the passes.
Alternative Eggs There are things to hunt other than eggs. For instance, Wild in SFO did a Purple Egg Hunt to find some specially marked purple eggs that they’d hidden around the Bay Area. They were redeemable at the station for cool Prince box sets that had just been released. They ran it all weekend, and it sounded great. Sitting on a trip or other big prizes? This’d be one way to give them out.
For The Beer Lovers One of the stations did an Easter Kegg Hunt in 2012 and lost a beer keg in their market, offering clues that eventually led one listener to the keg. There was a prize for returning it. Done by a Detroit station with a beer mug.
An Audio’ally Enhanced Egg Hunt I’ve seen this done by a couple of stations: getting a plastic egg, sticking an auto-respond cell phone in there, hiding it in the market, and dialing it up at least once an hour. People need to find the egg based on the ambient noises that surround it. Trains. Bells. Whatever is out there. Basically, it’s the Bug’d promotion.
Crawl, Timmy! Damn It!! Again, it just does NOT get better than Bunny Races. Taking infants in diapers with a little cotton tail on the butt, and having them do a diaper crawl race. WIOG knocked this out of the park, and K-Hits in Tulsa was all over the news with theirs. Huge. There’s something about crawling infants and frantically cheering parents that TV can’t ignore.
Shades Of A Christmas Story If you’ve got a bunny costume, then the world is truly your oyster. Or at the very least your scallop. B-95 in Fresno once sent the morning guy to a children’s hospital dressed in a bunny outfit. They gave out baskets to the kids on the ward and basically hung out. Fun and charitable. There’s a concept.
An Online Easter Egg Hunt I’ve referenced this before. The Xcel Energy Center (sports/concert arena) in St. Paul does a hunt every year on their site. Eggs are hidden all over in various sections like “Directory”, “Event Services”, “Lost And Found”. Find as many as you can, click and enter your info for entries into multiple draws for tickets and other packages.
Procteggolists One of the stations annually does What’s Up The Bunny’s Butt? as their weekend theme. Basically, hourly callers “grab a bunny and squeeze prizes out of it.” The SFX are GOLD and the listeners and jocks really get into this theater-of-the-mind contesting. Essentially, you didn’t know what you’d won until it popped out of the rabbit.
Huge In 1977 This is an old bit and eventually the post office will cease and desist me from sending it out. On the morning after Easter, invite your listeners to write their names and phone numbers on raw, uncooked eggs and mail them to you. The first one to arrive unbroken wins. It’s old. It was old when I was young. And I’m old(er).
Easter Egg Hunts Obviously are a big deal as witnessed by the scads ‘o stations that tie in with one. Or put on your own. There’s a concept. We all know how huge of a pain in the butt these can be but it’s worth it; these are the ultimate family event and are always well-attended. Another option is to fill the van with candy and hit as many of these over the course of the day as you can. The visibility and call-ins will compensate for not being the official sponsor. As anyone who’s ever done one of these can attest to: get lots of security. Not for the kids…for the parents. They’ll rush the field and trample toddlers trying to get candy. Don’t laugh. I’ve never done one of these where the adults weren’t the problem.
Ripped From The Pages Of Summer Camp More fun with eggs at V-103 in Atlanta, where they did an egg toss contest to give away a trip. Pairs of listeners tossed eggs back and forth, stepping back a foot after each series. Their feet had to stay planted, and if they missed or it broke, they were out of the contest. Done as Balloon-O Mars at WiLD in Tampa.
Boom Beat The Bomb work for you? How about Beat The Bunny? I like the name. It’s got a good beat and you can dance to it.
Reserved Mezzanine Seating In A Very Warm Place Wild in Tampa lived up to their name when they changed Good Friday to Bad Friday in 1999 and gave away red meat and adult videos.
Bringing The Dead (Artist) To Life If ’80s music or Old School jams are features that you occasionally spike in, then do a Resurrection Weekend and bring some artists’ careers back from the dead. One of the stations had the all-time best weekend promo for this. I’ll try to dig it up if you’d like to hear it.
Very Cryptic One of the talent at NOW in SFO had listeners roll back a large stone on the air, and they won whatever was in the crypt. And yes, he is going to Hell for that.
Drive By Egging Both KUBE/Seattle and KRTR/Hawaii have done contests with The Free Money Bunny. In Seattle they had a jock in a bunny costume driving around in a car with magnetic logos on it, pulling into parking lots and handing out plastic eggs with prizes in them. In Honolulu, the morning show producer had ten plastic eggs with him (five with $100 in them and five with certificates for a family brunch at the Hyatt,) and all Friday before Easter the station gave out clues to find him. The first ten people to track the clues got an egg. Kiss in Chicago did something called Bunny Money and had a guy in a bunny costume throwing plastic eggs filled with prizes from the sunroof of a limo.
I Said “Gacked” For a post-Easter stunt, one of the stations hosted Crackapalooza (imagine who showed up just because of the name) during the morning show on the Monday after Easter. At a busy public location, they invited listeners to come by, reach into a basket, select an egg randomly, and crack it on their head. All were hardboiled except for one. The guy who got gacked won some fabulous parting gifts.
Free Crack Or as a weekend contest, crack open eggs on the air, and you win what’s inside. Sell it as “all this weekend, we’re giving away free crack.”
Egg Roulette Your other comedic element.
Another Spin To Trivia KZIA in Cedar Rapids did “Crucifact Or Crucifiction” as a trivia contest for tickets to see The Passion Of Christ. They’ll have seats adjacent to NOW’s in Hell.
And Dot Your I’s Speaking of things that destine you for an eternity in a warm climate, the night guy at Magic in Colorado Springs had a listener carry an 8-foot cross across town, on his back, to the station in 2006 for Kanye West tickets.
A Really High Bunny A decade ago, the flying cats thing was the stunt du jour for mornings. On Friday morning before the holiday weekend, you could debut the bit if it hasn’t been done, as a Flying Bunny in your market. This is Theater at its best. Only great stations can manage the nuances of convincing the audience that the idiots from a morning show have dangled a live rabbit from a bouquet of balloons, it got away in the wind, and is currently floating over the market. They did this in Charleston at B-92 in 2006. One guy called from New Jersey to tell him his sister had emailed him about the mayhem run amok as everyone was searching the skies for the bunny.
Because it’s About The Food Just like Thanksgiving, a mega-family meal is a big tradition for this holiday. What turkeys are to Thanksgiving, hams are to Easter. The station with the most generally wins. KRTR in Hawaii always hooks up with the Hyatt for Thanksgiving and gives away fully prepared meals: the turkey, the sweet potatoes, the lime jello mold… the works. A huge prize that they always get some mileage out of. This is easily adaptable for Easter. Either to take home or give out brunches at one of the biggest restaurants in town.
Easter Fools One of the Promotion Directors once downloaded the competition’s logo off their website, created fake prize slips (ie, “You’ve won $1000”) and snuck in plastic eggs which she mingled with the real plastic eggs. Consequently, the other radio station was besieged by angry “winners” and their parents demanding N’Sync tickets and cash.
Great Friday!!! What’s better than Good Friday? How about Great Friday? Hoard movie tickets and other swag and next Friday, do versions of the Power 96 “Power Blast”: open up the phones for 20-minute periods of time; everyone who gets through wins. We answer? You win.
The Other White Meat What if you did a fake morning show broadcast on Friday from the Grand Opening of The Bunny Buffet; a restaurant that only serves meals prepared with rabbit meat. Much like the Reindeer Café that Wild in OKC did the Friday before Christmas. Or KSON’s Callahan’s Feline Cuisine on April 1, 2011. Disregard the file name.
Oh, The Carnage Q in Memphis had a group of listeners each select a color Peep, a promo person put them out on the road, and the last one to get hit by a car won a prize for their listener. The Peep 500.
Because You Have The Choice Phil Dowse with Dowse Media says that the morning show bit that has been large on Australian stations is called “Heaven Or Hell.” I know I’m going to screw this up but it involves randomly asking a question from the Bible. Something that, even though you might not be a churchgoer now, you should have hopefully retained from when your parents took you as a kid. Win a “heaven-like” prize (great concert seats, etc.) and lose, you go to Hell. And get zip. Of course, if you did this in the States, a trip to Hell, Michigan, would be in order.
The Peep Olympics And finally, it’s nice to see a station NOT miss the opportunity to acknowledge Easter using those gross marshmallow “peeps” candies. This is from WIOG in Saginaw where, following a torch run and urine test, the first annual Peep Olympics unfolded.
- Challenge One – The Heat Is On – Peeps 1, 2, and 3 all go into the microwave I brought into the studio. We set it on a swivel chair, how safe huh? …We had caller 10 guess which will peep will explode first. Instead of exploding as anticipated, they melt and catch fire. We spent the next 2 hours smelling like Smores and fanning smoke into the hall without looking too suspicious.
- Challenge Two – The Swim – Pink Peep and Yellow Peep go into the toilet bowl in the community ladies room. This had to be done in between “users” and the male intern shooting video had to stay very still. Caller 10 guesses which peep will go down first post-flush. We wanted to have a winner so we played until a caller guessed right. 3 rounds and 6 flushed peeps later the toilet stoped working as well as it should. We got confused looks as the intern and I exited the bathroom together, smelling like campfire and looking quite guilty.
- Challenge Three – The Peep Show – Each member of the show stuffed as many peeps as they could into their mouth. Then they recited a line from a movie and the caller had to guess the movie it was from. Very funny, and lots of gagging, which makes for some good audio. KZIA did this with Heather the Morning Show Producer in 2017. Nothing says a million hits on YouTube like some woman with her face stuffed with that awful candy, singing hits.
