Being a consultant allows me a slightly revisionist career history. For instance, no way did I ever send a recap photo to Pepsi of a high school football promotion that they sponsored, where half the cheerleaders were holding cans of Coke.
Whoops.
An image from a station (which will remain nameless) is getting some traction on Instagram as a friendly reminder to never post a photo of an empty setup at a remote. There was another one a few years ago from a Taylor Swift show in Miami that was just basically a canopy, a table with a duct-taped banner on it, and a stack of cardboard boxes.
No people.
This is a tutorial from Carlos Pedraza at 99.7 NOW-FM in San Francisco. Print it and give it to whoever is taking photos at events.
Station Appearances & Event Day Photo Requirements
• One (1) Staff Photo – photo should be from head to toe & everyone should be in full uniform. Should be taken at start of event to ensure best lighting & clean uniforms.
• One (1) Final Event Set Up – this photo should be inclusive of the entire set up & all set up elements; the tent, table, sound system, banners posted, etc etc.
• One (1) Final Event Set Up relative to the main entrance / or where all the foot traffic is located.
• Six (6) “Action” Photos – staff grilling meat, prepping meat, cutting meat, setting up, cleaning, customer buying the meat inside the store, participation in the Grilling Rodeo, meat dept selling the meat, meat rep chatting with customers, customers showing off their purchase, customers visiting the kiosks inside the store.
• Six (6) “Engagement” Photos – staff sampling the meat, distributing recipe cards, engaging with customers, sampling action inside the store (if applicable). Please don’t snap photos from a bird’s eye view or when you are standing behind the staff member. It should be at ground level.
In closing, for each event day, you should be submitting at least 8 photos per day, except on the first day, which requires more. It would be great if you are submitting anywhere between 12 – 15 quality photos for each event day. More is better than less. Always provide a nice mix of photos.
Life is too short to present your station as friendless and looking like your staff might have something contagious.
And now on with the Dumpage.
Our Friends At CPR…
I sat in on something really cool yesterday called an Endorsement Rally where the AEs went from talent to talent in a performance room and got schools on their likes, passions, customers they frequent, things they want to try (like learning to golf), food they love, etc. and then will put together a hit list of clients that would fit in terms of endorsements.
The goal is to add two new endorsements for each personality. The talent is going to be going on all of the calls. There’s a 41% close rate when the talent comes along versus 9% when they don’t.
A Car Dealer Event
One of the stations is doing a day-long event with one of their dealers that is kind of a version of the Fire Department Open House out where I live. One evening every October, there are free hot dogs, chips, and drinks. All the vehicles are polished up and on display for the kids to climb on. They have a portable unit that resembles a small house, and kids can crawl through it with fake smoke so they learn to stay low.
There’s a demonstration of them putting down a fire. They had a Life Flight chopper come in, and you could sit in it. The kids could put on a helmet and shoot an actual fire hose at a target.
It was geared at kids 2-12. And with that demo… you get the parents.
The thing in Scandia was a MUST for my kids. We go every year. They get to crawl around on a pumper truck. Try the hose. And did I mention the free food?
The said station is doing this at a dealer. Which is perfect because what do car lots have? Space. And while the kids are meeting Fire Pup and getting balloons, the vultures will descend on the parents.
Win A Baby
Hot 89.9 in Ottawa was the first station to award In Vitro treatments under the moniker, “Win A Baby.” I remember bringing it up to CBS almost immediately as, “this amazing warm and fuzzy promotion for couples who were unable to conceive.” The reaction was similar to if I’d suggested putting bunnies in a blender.
But iHeart took the baby and ran with it: it’s been done at Hot in DC, ‘ZHT in Salt Lake City, and it’s back again with Mojo in Detroit.
Fridge Art
One of the stations thinks they have a grocery store that will pop for $500 for a grad party. Cool. Great prize. But how to pick their winner? They’re going to go with fridge art from when the grad was a kid. Best wins.
Fakebook
This came up in an email exchange last night. Think of it as the social media equivalent of Fugitive.
You create a resident of your market and a Facebook page for them. Get them some friends. A profile. Have them like a bunch of local stuff… and then alert the audience that someone in the city has (amazing tickets or artist experience). All you have to do is start friending everyone you can find, and ask them if they’re the (Station) Fakebook.
At KOB-FM in Albuquerque, there were 700 people who eventually stumbled on the right person, and they drew from them for No Doubt meet and greets.
Mom Madness
They did this for JoBros tickets at one of the CHRs. The Final Four is pretty omnipresent. By Friday it’ll be superdooperomnipresent. If you had something that a mom would want to win for their kid, have them come and shoot free throws, like the above-mentioned station did.
Best New Summer Umbrella…
…InstaSummer from a very cool Promotion Director at a very cool station who shall remain nameless until late May.
It will be all about social media coverage of everything that’s happening in this market, where it snows 8 months of the year. Insta Parties (like Flash Mobs but with food, beverage, and music), Insta Satisfaction (prize delivery), and a lot of Instas to be determined.
Garden Stores
One of the agencies I work with has a garden center that sells seeds, tools… all the stuff for home and farm gardening.
In most markets, there’s a food shelf that will take produce. So…the idea that they’re pitching is this:
- Use Radio to highlight the stats on the number of people currently needing food assistance.
- Solicit groups (school, civic, religious) that would grow vegetables for the cause.
- Get them set with seeds, mulch, and other needs.
The Pollination Station
Not since ’09 have there been pollen issues like this Spring. First, I have a great Pay Your Bills promo from Hot in Houston, where they referred to The Outbreak. And somewhere in a particularly hard-hit market, they’re giving away car washes and Kleenex this weekend.
Misting Tents
It appears that after last summer’s abbreviated-but-we-still-pulled-it-off summer, this year will be more wide open. A cluster has a community fest that pulls about 300,000, and didn’t want to just have a canopy, a table, and a prize wheel. They have an equally sized space adjoining them to use too.
And it will be hot.
The first misting tent I ever saw was at the California State Fair. It was about 2000 degrees, and people were packed under it. Honestly, the water barely made it down to head level before evaporating because it was so hot, but it was literally 20 degrees cooler under there.
There are a dozen varieties you can rent, and this could easily be sold to a sponsor.
The next level was what a station did at the Minnesota State Fair a few years ago with a freezer truck and big rubber butcher shop curtains to keep the cold in. You could step in and get your core temp down to 150 and then step back out. It was brilliant, and I think they got it from a grocery client.
Charging Stations
I was at the Beale Street Music Fest in 2018, and the station had a little fenced-in compound, and because of their speakers and broadcast equipment, they had a power strip. People who had been there all day had devices that were low on juice and were passing their phones through the fence for a quick charge. I went to Home Depot, got two more strips, and the next night, there was a line of people waiting to get 5 minutes of charging. Some were actually getting frantic.
Joey Tack made and painted his own charging station in Knoxville using an old 8-foot promo table.
Forget prize wheels and shirts: people want juice. And you could sell/sponsor this for the entire summer.
VIPee
There is one Universal that we forget about: people pee. REM was right: Everybody Pees. And the porta-potties at fests are funked up by noon.
When Michael O’Shea was at KUBE in Seattle, they had their own, private, fenced-off Pottie just for winners. They dressed it up with a little white picket fence, and inside they had a counter with mints and fragrances and a mirror like Planet Hollywood.
You can overthink prizes: give people a clean(ish) bathroom on a hot festival day, and it’s Gold.
