Last week, I had one of those moments that gave me hope for the future. One of the clusters that I consult did a meeting they titled “The Holiday Hack.” It was an all-Sales staff (with any of the talent that was available at the God-awful time of 9a) meeting to discuss promotions that could be used to extort money from advertisers for the Thanksgiving and Christmas seasons.
The team brought 26 different clients to the table, covering every genre from weight loss to zoos to HVAC to autos to malls to mental health to “closets.” And together, the brain trust churned out ideas for all of them. Imagine if they landed even half of these; what a wonderful 4th Q it would be.
If that’s something that you’d like to do and if I’m not already in your market, I’d love to help. Email me at [email protected].
Join Paige and Radio Ink’s Cameron Coats on August 20 at 2p ET for Quarter 4 Your Thoughts, a free, fast-paced webinar packed with sellable holiday campaigns. RSVP here.
And now, we continue with the Dumpage and my Top 100 list of No/Low Budget Promotions:
- Closest To The Pinhead – You have a prize. You have a morning guy. You pad him up like a police bomb defuser. You stick him on a driving range and a dial position number of listeners each hit one numbered golf ball at him. Closest without actually hitting him wins.
- Festival Spritzers – Interns on rollerblades, wheeling around a festival spraying down sweltering people with chilled misting bottles.
- Misting Tent – Sell it, sponsor it, but for summer festivals, it’s your hook vs. the stations with the prize wheels.
- Indentured Slavitude – Nubile interns serve beer and wings to a guy and his buddies as they watch the Super Bowl. Or like WiLD in Tampa, where the airstaff went and did all of the yard and housework for a family on Father’s Day.
- Proposal Enablers – We’re in Show Biz. We have all of these resources available to us. Help some guy propose with some panache.
- Periscope For A Pair – The lovely and weird Elizabethany at Hot in DC went, sat in public, periscoped her location “vaguely” and the first listener to figure out her location, go there and ask, got tickets.
- Rate Your Date– A place on the site for the audience to rank and rate places/things to go/do on dates.
- Congraduations – A scroll of messages from parents, sibs, and friends to grads in early June.
- Homework Zone – Have some secondary ed clients on-line on Sunday nights to help kids with their homework problems.
- Psychic Chat – People love psychics. Have an open chat forum for the audience to grill them online, ie, “Is this a rash and should I tell Charlotte I got it from wearing wool pants on a hot day?”
- Fish Fry Finder – In places like Pittsburgh, these events are just a part of the culture. Enter your zip code and get locations to the closest.
- Karaoke – Have lyrics and music on your site for people having parties or are just bored. I can pull up “Seasons In The Sun”, bang, there are the lyrics, I click the arrow and the music starts playing.
- You Clicked It, You Caption It – Post a stupid photo and ask people to come up with a caption. I’ll start: “The circus and step on it!”
- Beer Scrabble – Post a semi-complete word that refers to drinking. _ O _ _ T . The first to post “Vomit” wins.
- Bed Head – Snap a photo of your significant other as they wake up, post, and maybe win them a day at the spa or hair place.
- Lick It For Tickets – Give out a theme, object, or genre each morning and people post/share photos of themselves licking it. One is picked each day to win.
- Coasterthons – A basic “how to get press” universal. If you stick a DJ on a carnival ride, you will get TV coverage.
- Gas Wars – Take a money-can’t-buy prize like backstage passes to Taylor Swift and offer them to the gas station that will pump gas for the lowest prices for three hours on a Friday morning.
- Bad Dad Bods – Solicit pics of out-of-shape dads to win gym memberships and new clothes.
- Best Spot At The Mall – Award personalized, stenciled, parking spots close to the doors at malls every weekend in December.
- Back To School Backpacks – Collect backpacks and have listeners and clients stuff them for Back To School in late August.
- All Access For A Year – One winner gets laminates and tickets to every concert the station does for a year.
- Reality Radio – When in doubt, take listeners and torture them for the voyeuristic pleasure of the audience. The best promotions in the world could/should be a Reality TV show.
- National Night Out – August 5th. It’s one of those nights when you know where TV crews will be. We missed 2025, but file for next year.
- The Q Crew – As done by Q-102 in Philadelphia. One Saturday a month, the audience is invited out to help and join in on a community service project like cleaning up a park.
The grand finale is next week. Here’s 1–25 and 26-50.
