Congrats! You did it! You survived the Summer. Next up? The extremely busy and target-rich 90 days known as the 4th Quarter, before we descend into the Giant Black Hole Of Nothingness known as the 1st Quarter.
After joining Cameron from Radio Ink to talk some 4th Quarter sales opportunities, I’ve got a few more for you. I’m just doing quick descriptions. Questions about any/all of these, shoot me an email at [email protected], and I’ll walk you through it in detail. If you sold one of these, well, what a great day, or Dane, it would be.
And again, as soon as I send this, I will remember 50 more.
Go. Sell. Make money.
Halloween
Midnight Movie I saw U-92 in Palm Springs put this together in less than a week. They did an NTR event with a local Cineplex that had a different classic horror movie on each screen. People came in costume. There was a charitable angle, blah blah blah
Crypt Crashing Go out and hit offices and workplaces on the 31st.
Pets A good online pet costume contest is easy and simple.
The Great Pumpkin Drop Kind of like this.
Safe Halloween Another mall promotion. If it HASN’T been done, this can be and is usually huge. Jamz in Birmingham does one of the biggest. Also done as Trunk Or Treat by iHeart in Toledo.
Model Listeners Do a contest in the new couple of weeks that will pick one or two winners to be the digital models for costumes and makeup from one of your Halloween theme clients.
Psychic Fair Call every mom-and-pop, rinky-dink psychic in the Yellow Pages and sell them a cheap, affordable sked to set up in a hotel ballroom on the Saturday before Halloween. Mrs. Paige, who is a bit teched in the heyud, dragged me to one of these things… and it was pretty damn cool. I will kill you, kill you dead if you ever tell anyone I said that.
Thanksgiving
Brackets There are a million to choose from. “Side dishes” would be good and sponsorable by a grocery client.
Best Rack Done by one of the Midwest CHRs as a gallery promotion: women with deer that they’d shot. Sellable to Cabellas or any outdoor kind of client.
Canned Film Festival Many of you do it. One of the Cumulus stations makes big money off it. I have a sales piece.
Turkey Bingo Client want an event? Very simple. You get a turkey. Some chicken/turkey wire. You chalk out squares on the pavement. And let nature take it’s course. Turkey plops in your square and you win.
Free Willy Biggest food drive ever. You get a turkey and you threaten to kill it if you don’t raise enough canned food. That was easy.
Canstruction For the client that “wants more then a sponsorship or a food drive.” You could also get Art students from the university to do it.
Emergency Food Response Team For a grocery store, deli, or restaurant that offers fully prepared meals. Everyone has a Thanksgiving meal disaster once in their life. You have a promo person in the vehicle on Thanksgiving morning, dispatchable to bring food to save Thanksgiving for some family where the stove broke or the dogs ate the turkey. (“Sons of bitches Bumpasses!”)
The Biggest Gainer Weigh in ten listeners on Wednesday morning, and then bring them back on Monday morning after the holiday weekend. The person who gained the most gets a fitness club membership.
Get Plastered For Hunger For a mall or other client that wants foot traffic, this has been done at Wild in OKC and ‘PXY in Rochester. Morning person is wrapped in a full body cast and is on display until a goal in canned food donations is met.
Grocery Store Dash The Mother Of All Grocery Store Bits. A listener and a personality each get a dial position number of seconds to run through the store grabbing as much food as they can. TV loves this stuff. The listener keeps their bounty. Air talent donates it to a food shelter.
Roof Sits WIOG in Saginaw did this with McDonald’s. Morning guy sits on a roof and freezes his McNuggets off, collecting money for the needy. Again, clear this with the morning show and Programming first.
Recipes Get holiday recipes from the airstaff, their moms, and from artists. Downloadable from the website and sponsorable by a grocery store or a food client. I have artwork from one of the stations if you’d like to see it.
Flee The Family Wednesday night before Thanksgiving AND Thanksgiving night are huge club nights as college students come home and people feel the need to get away from their family for a few hours. But it needs a vibe. It just can’t be your regular Wednesday night club gig.
Volunteer Drive Everyone is going to be on the air, begging for stuff. It comes with the season. In this vibrant economy here in the States, not a lot of people are going to be able to donate money or toys, or food. But time? They could do that. Have a client sponsor and an online listing of local charities that need bodies. Maybe incentivise it so that people who sign up to deliver meals or visit the elderly would get product or gift cards from the client.
Christmas
Brackets Retro toys. Local retailer Santas.
Batteries Batteries are a great prize to give away en masse from the van for the two or three days after Christmas. Q-102 in Philadelphia once bought 10,000 batteries, blew them out on the streets. It was large. Giving them out at remotes is a nice post-holiday hook.
Shopping Mall Shuttle Service 102 Jamz in Orlando did this. They used golf carts to run people and their presents out to their cars at a busy mall. For a fee, of course, and the money went to charity. In Bakersfield, KKXX once did Ballet Parking at Christmas and had jocks in tutus parking cars for shoppers on the day after Thanksgiving.
Note: if you can get your airstaff to do this, you are a far better Promotion Director than I ever was. Several of the stations, like KYLD in San Francisco, have had major homeruns with the golf cart bit. It’s a great service for the mall and a hook to just being out there doing a broadcast.
Psychic Santa Z-102.9 did this and had a psychic at their remotes, telling listeners what they were getting for Christmas. Another opportunity to put the prize wheel away, if only for a little while
The Twelve Days of Christmas This is an old bit, which is basically a pyramid-style contest that uses prizes donated by 12 clients. The contest begins 12 weekdays before Christmas Eve. On the first day of the contest, the winner (whom you can pick through any method you want) gets a prize. The next day’s winner gets one of the previous day’s prizes, plus another prize is added on. And so on and so on until the 21st (Christmas is on a Tuesday this year), when that day’s winner gets a whopping 12 prizes. It’s best when the morning show gets into it and sings the “12 Days of Christmas” song, replacing all the gifts with the names of the prizes that are donated by the clients. One client will supply 12 smaller prizes, one client will supply 11 slightly bigger prizes, and so on, with one client supplying one REALLY BIG prize for the final day of the contest.
The Giving Tree B-95 in Fresno did this at Weinstocks, which was a major department store in town. On the morning show, listeners call in and tell stories of needy families and individuals who are having a tough holiday season. The names of these needy families go up on the Giving Tree, which is located in the center of the Fresno Weinstocks. Listeners are encouraged to go by the store and take a name down from the tree, thus “adopting” that family or individual. As the “adopter,” you’re supposed to try to take care of that family’s special needs this season.
Santa Calls This is another B-95 promotion. With this contest, winners get a call to their kid from “Santa”. Clients are involved, and listeners are directed to go to their locations and fill out an entry form. There are spaces on the form for the name of the kid, brothers/sisters, best friend, favorite pastime, and three items that are on the kid’s Christmas list. At each client, 25 names are drawn to win a call from Santa. This was actually a B-95 jock doing the call, armed with all of the info on the entry form.
Stop. I know what you’re thinking: but doing it with a text would suck the life out of it.
Pet Photos KUBE did photos at a client’s location with a Santa… and people’s pets. Very popular. A major hot button for the listeners, their pets.
Santa Babies A great gallery contest for clients: infants in Santa hats.
World’s Largest Office Party This is a major fundraiser that Hyatt hosts at their hotels all over the country. There were always a bunch of media sponsors. Call your local Hyatt and see if they’re doing this in 2025. If not, then re-initiate it. Kiss in Memphis did this at a club on Beale Street in ’99 and emailed invitations to their at-work database. I’ve done this as a club event for listeners whose employers were not having staff holiday parties. Bacardi was the sponsor when I did it in SFO.
Toy Assembly Line You could do this as a remote at a mall or a similar client. Help people put their kids’ presents together. Everyone has experienced instructions that are written in every language, including Sanskrit, except English. And don’t forget the proverbial missing piece!
Toy Review Once again, you could use a box store client for this. Get them to bring a load of their toys to the morning show. Also have a bunch of kids, representing both sexes and various age groups, in the studio to try out the toys and review them.
Ring My Bell Don’t forget that the Salvation Army is out there doing their Red Kettle campaign. Get the jocks involved as celebrity bell ringers at the malls. I’d do it with the airstaff and employees from a client, ie, Dez, Wes, and Crisco, are joining staff from our friends at Taco Bell today and will be ringing bells for the Salvation Army at Ridgedale
Lingerie/Jewelry Seminar Sell remotes to lingerie and jewelry clients that cater towards men (like me) who are totally helpless when it comes to shopping for this stuff. Maybe have beer and wings to ease their tension.
Single Parties I don’t even know why I bother sending this because I’m sure you never have a client asking for a club night idea. But just in case, how about doing something for people who are newly single and are pissed. Not a “singles night” because “single” often has a leper-like connotation. When I think of a singles night, I think of this thing that I walked in on in a ballroom at a Holiday Inn. Yeesh. Or what my church does on Tuesday nights.
But do it with an attitude. If you target women, have male strippers. You can have people bring in all the old Christmas presents they got from their ex and deposit them in a bin to be donated to charity. Embrace their bitterness. Wired 96.5 called it “The Unattached Bash.”
A Wrapping Party The KSFM Promotion Director and some of her staff went out, set up tables at malls, and wrapped people’s presents. It turned out to be a pretty big promotion, and they generated a lot of goodwill towards KSFM. You could do a charity angle on this and charge a couple of bucks per present.
The $102,000 Present An SCA insured bit. The Mother Of All Mall Promotions. As done by 102.5 KSFM, clients in a mall donated $1,000 worth of their products or services that were put into 102 boxes. One box per retailer and the extra 50 or so boxes filled with prizes that could be bought for $1,000. And one box had a faux check for $102,000 in it. One winner picked a box and got what was inside it. All of the clients with unclaimed prizes “got theirs back.”
Elf Races/Tossing Baby crawls are always great. They are inevitably large. But present it as being elf races. Dress the kids up, and let them go. Have them crawl for a shopping spree at a toy store. Wild in Tampa once took a diminutive street teamer, dressed him as a leprechaun, and had large men hurl him for distance at a club gig on St. Patricks Day. Elf Tossing is a natural extension of this. Another nice way to dress up a club gig or remote in December.
Personal Shoppers WPGC did this for the Fourth of July. The station went out, bought all the barbecuing supplies, and then delivered them to families. Your morning show could do this with Christmas shopping and save some winners the pain and headaches of dealing with the malls. Sponsored by a Temp Service?
Mistletoe Marathon This is a terribly under-exploited holiday element. Could be done for a jewelry client. Malls or any other large venue would work. Could be a good morning show stunt.
Database Incentivising A brilliant suggestion from the Promotion Director at Mix 100 in Denver, who suggested doing a drive to add listeners and members to whatever you call your VIP club. During the month of December, pledge to donate X amount of money for each new member to whatever the station’s charity of choice is.
Candy Cane Lick Off Something visual for your holiday club gigs. Could be a series throughout the month.
Stand-Ins Literally. For one winner, offer the services of a jock who will go down and stand in line to return gifts at the mall. Red Bull would be a fun sponsor
Blocks Of Music Some of the stations have done this and dropped all their spots for Christmas. Power 96 in Miami dropped all their spots from 6 pm on the 24th through noon on the 25th, and mixed in some fun holiday music. Every hour is sponsored by a different client.
Personal Parking Spots Similar to the shuttle service that San Francisco and Seattle did in the past, KSFM finagled the best, closest to the mall, parking spots and gave them away on the air. A station in NYC did this and took it to the next level: they stenciled the winner’s name in the spot. Could be done at pretty much any client
New Years Eve
You should be at a club. There. That was easy. (But also really lame if that’s all you do).
Invasion Of The Party Crashers This is a huge night for house parties. That’s the true vibe of NYE. I’ve seen stations have this sponsored by Pepsi, Miller, Red Lobster, Domino’s, and KFC (seriously). It’s really Rocket Science. You solicit the times and addresses of listeners’ New Year’s parties online. And then you hit 20 or 30 of them and drop stuff off and do some calls. You’re imaging the client as the food or beverage that no party should be without.
Last Baby Of ‘25 Everyone does the First Baby. Celebrate the last baby of the year. Get call-ins from the hospitals. Put together a basket of swag from multiple clients. Stuff that new parents would want/need.
First Breakfast Of ’26 Denny’s. Perkins. Any “family restaurant” kind of place would be a great broadcast location for 7-9 am on the 1st.
Noon Years Eve The Mother Of All Family Bits. Chuckee Cheese or any similar client is the location for a party from 10 to 12 (noon) on the 31st.
Hotel Rooms There simply is NO better prize for on-air the week after Christmas. Either a client buys a block of rooms and sponsors this, or you work with a hotel.
The Hangover Mix Bayer. Pepto Bismal. Tums. Goodies Powders. Go “National” and see if you can extricate some dollars for the sponsorship of a music feature on the 1st that is based only on soft, quiet, non-thumpy tuneage.
