I’m watching the Charlie Sheen thing on Netflix and am at the “tiger blood” part. I remember that he was out of his mind, and no one could get him to shut up. So, Radio did what Radio does. Stations were sending him emails asking him to be on the air.
“Bob at News Center 5” can’t film someone sending an email. So… in 24 hours, Kannon at Wired in Philly and I hired a banner tow (less than $600) to offer him a job. The first run in the morning was cancelled because Studio City was fogged in. The pilot tried later and was texting with me (!) and sent me a message, “He sees me.” I replied, “Who?” And he texted “Charlie. He’s waving at me.” At the same moment, my phone rings and it’s Kannon saying, “He’s on the (bad term) hotline!”
Charlie Sheen, the #1 news story on the planet, did 45 minutes uninterrupted during PM drive in Philly, and the video went global. I had news services in Greece, Malaysia, and Johannesburg emailing me for the footage.
Lesson? You need the “visual.” Like the banner tow.
And now, on with the Dumpage.
Thanksgiving Stuff(ing)
A preemptive Happy Thanksgiving to our friends in Canada who celebrate it in October. Poutine, Keiths, and hockey. The way it’s supposed to be.
Hopefully, you’ll find some usable stuff in this mega-email, which is a compilation of promotions that have been done around the chain for the past 30 years. As always, if there’s something that I missed, let me know. I’ve broken these down into categories, and like any Chinese Menu, I’d suggest choosing at least one selection from each column to make sure you’ve got yourself promotionally covered for this major holiday.
Food Drives
Every radio station in town is going to be collecting food this holiday season. Thus, if you’re going to do a food drive, it had better be pretty spectacular if it’s going to stand out from all the rest. Find a unique hook. KSFM in Sacramento collected formula, baby food and diapers for the division of the local food bank that serves the single mothers in the area. They called it Operation Baby Love, and it was pretty large. It was a niche that no one had filled, which is good. Keep that in mind.
“Free Willy” The BEST food drive methodology I know. This grew out of a brainstorming session I did at Hot 102 in Milwaukee, and about thirty of our stations have had a blast with it since. The concept was simple: the station got a live turkey, named him Willy, and held him hostage under the threat of execution unless a specific amount of food was raised for their charity affiliate. The turkey was kept in the studio at a couple of the stations and provided great background audio throughout the run of the campaign.
At other stations, they hauled him (or her) around to all of their appearances and let people meet him and get their picture taken with him. You could even sell photos with him to help raise cash. When enough food has been raised at a series of exciting and high-publicizable events, the Governor should call and issue a “stay of execution,” and Willy should be turned over to a petting zoo or similar facility.
The theater-of-the-mind potential is enormous, and the stations that eff it up are the ones who have it just evolve into a lame bag-a-thon.
Fill The Field This was Wild 106 in Albuquerque’s first Thanksgiving promotion. They had the morning show living on the field at the university’s football stadium. They stayed there, in a tent, until every square inch of the field was filled with canned and non-perishable food. You can also do this with toys for Christmas.
Marathon Broadcasts Instead of just setting up barrels at clients’ locations to collect food, do something that is notable and generates some attention. There was a guy in Charlotte who would go and live in a tent on the roof of his station every year and raise hundreds of thousands of pounds of food. His rooftop stint was the focus of everything on the station, and the local TV weathercasters would do their reports live from the roof with him. Get the idea? Where in your market could you set up for a three-five-day broadcast? If your studios are in a building with more than a couple of floors, have the PD “suspend” the morning show, and the next day they should hit the air live from a window washing platform outside the studio windows. Or hang the van with the jocks in it from a crane. Put a video feed in the van so that people on the ground can come by, drop off food, and view what’s happening above their heads. Have a cherry picker on hand to hoist TV crews up to the van to join the show.
This is a great time-lapse video of a food drive.
I’m a big believer in having a Risk Factor. Sticking the jock in a truck in a parking lot is all right. But it’s not like it’s life-threatening or anything. If there’s an element of risk, then it gives you your hook and makes it more press-worthy.
ALT 949 in San Diego has called theirs Can Diego, and the morning show lives in one of those storage pods.
Steve Murray Is High A great promotion has a premise. In Huntsville, Steve Murray pissed off the owner one too many times and was suspended… from a crane. They did this in the parking lot of a Kroger’s and set a market record for most food collected. Ever. And so awed the client that they got a cash commitment.
Grocery Store Dash One of the stations did this as a morning show bit a couple of years in a row, and it always generated a ton of press. They got one winner through whatever themed contesting they came up with, and that person had 95 seconds to run through a grocery store during the morning show, grabbing as much food as they could. They got to keep everything they snagged in the allotted time. Then the morning show did it, and everything they grabbed in their 95-second run was donated to a food shelf. The store was packed with people who came down to watch the races. Very TV-able.
A Ton Of Turkeys That sounds like a lofty goal. It would be about 100.
Canned Food Festival Renie Hale did this when he was at Jamz in Dallas. The station hosted a series of movie screenings, and the cost of admission was a can of food. This is perfect if you’ve got any premieres the week before Thanksgiving. It’s on its way to the Cliché Aisle, but if it hasn’t been done in town before, then it’s new. For one of the markets, it’s a cluster-wide deal and is arguably one of their biggest promotions of the year.
Stuff The Mayflower KUBE in Seattle did this several times. The first year, they raised 7.5 tons of food. The next year, the station hooked up with a Cub/Boy Scout food drive. Over 7000 scouts brought their stashes of food to the KUBE event. The station set up a Mayflower moving van at a Fred Meyer’s store parking lot and used that as their broadcast/collection site. The morning show in Greensboro did a Stuff The Bus promotion that had them move into a bus and live in it until it was filled with food. Which leads me to…
Winnebago World Tour In Sacramento, Davey and Chris moved into an RV and stayed on the road, cruising around the market for over a week, stopping and broadcasting at various locations while people dropped off their donations of canned food.
Hunger Hotline So now you’ve done one of the above promotions and have more canned food than you know what to do with. What’re you going to do with it all?? My suggestion: do something tangible. People are more likely to donate to a cause if the target of the giving is something that sounds real. The Greater Bay Area Metropolitan Emergency Food Shelf Relief Fund. What the hell is that?! Most radio station food drives benefit “charity” or some organization that the average listener knows nothing about. Why not get on the air and say, “All the food that you drop off at our giant food drive extravaganza this weekend will be personally delivered by our staff to members of our listening family who are having a tough holiday season and could use a bag of groceries.” Or perhaps something a little more succinct, and then that.
Set up a Hunger Hotline and during the 10-15 days prior to Thanksgiving, have listeners call in and tip you off to a family, friend, or co-worker that could use some free food this holiday. Go through all the calls you get and put together a list of a couple of hundred names, and on the day before Thanksgiving, take all of the food that you collected (doing whatever it is you’ll do) and deliver it to them. You’ll need more than just your staff and the station van(s), so get someone like Dominos who has a fleet and get them involved with the distribution. This is much more real and tangible than collecting food for some charity that you have absolutely no idea where it goes or who gets it.
It sounds huge on the air. This is Paige’s Pick for Thanksgiving promotions. Questions? Give me a call and I’ll walk you through it.
Military Families This could be your hook for 2025. Whatever you choose to do, make local families who have loved ones/parents deployed the recipients of your campaign. Or have the audience “adopt” them and take care of their needs, both material and emotional. With everyone else collecting stuff for the homeless, this would be the hook that would make your promotion stand out. Plus, they’re going to need support this holiday, so this’s a good angle to take. WEUP in Huntsville did a dinner for a dozen of these families and it was amazingly impactful. The owner emailed the next day and said it was maybe the most moving night he’d ever seen his station host.
Don’t Feed Big Ant! This was a takeoff on the Don’t Feed Andrew campaign that WIOG in Saginaw. WEUP put their PD, Big Ant, on a diet of nothing but pork rinds until they reached their goal of 103,000 pounds of food. They also posted wanted posters in restaurants all over town, warning people to PLEASE not feed Big Ant. His colon is still in recovery. The midday person at Q-104 in Halifax does this every year. They determined how much food it would take to feed 1004 families, and she lives on a bed in her PJs in the middle of a mall, until it’s collected.
Collecting Humans For Turkeys Since every station in the world is going to be collecting turkeys for humans, why not do the opposite? There is a real need to volunteers this time of year. Every charity and organization is out there begging for people to help them. So do a recruitment drive and sign listeners up to help out and volunteer with various local groups. Pay them off with a giant “thank you” turkey dinner. Or give every listener who volunteers 20 hours during the holidays a free turkey. Power 96/Miami, KOB/Albuquerque, and KDWB/Minneapolis have done this for 9/11 anniversaries. Got listeners donating their time, not just their money. Huge.
A Canned Beer Drive The name says it all. A good opportunity for the morning show to mock everyone else.
Coat/Blanket Drive
A word of caution about clothing drives. You’re going to get truckloads of really ratty, worthless clothes that people were just going to throw away, and now you’ve given them an opportunity to alleviate their holiday guilt by dumping all their crappy clothes on you.
Coat drives are another story. These can be massive. A number of stations, including WPGC, have done really successful coat drives in past years. In Washington D.C., they put collection boxes in clients’ locations and directed people to drop off their donation of a new or used coat. They call the campaign “Coat Drive 95” (their dial position is 95), and they get a client to donate trucks to pick up the coats around town. In Houston, 97.9 The Box hosted a mini-block party and used that event to collect coats. People who dropped off coats got discount coupons to buy a new coat at a retail client of the station.
Living Homeless Jerry Hart went and lived on the streets for three days in Fresno when he was doing mornings at B-95. He used his stint on the streets to kick off a major blanket drive that collected over 400,000 coats for a high-profile local group that aids the homeless. This was a home run for the station. If you’re up to it, this is an amazing promotion. One of the stations did it with a DJ living under the station canopy outside a client. That’s not really living homeless. That’s living outside with access to hot water and a private toilet.
Get Plastered For Hunger Scott Spezzano at 98PXY got wrapped in a full body cast and put on display in a mall. Listeners could sign that cast for a donation, and when it was covered in signatures, it was cut off.
Homeless Awareness Week This was a week-long series of events in Cedar Rapids that KZIA acknowledged by having the morning show producer move into a cardboard box for a weekend. She decorated it ala Thomas Kincaid, and it was called Heather’s Hutch. Think about it: every winter, you will see TV covering church youth groups living outside in tents on the front lawn to call attention to the issue of homelessness. They’ve done our research for us; this gets press.
Jock Challenge One of the stations did this and had the jocks competing to see whose listeners would collect the most canned food. A pretty cool idea, especially since anytime you can get the jocks sparring amongst each other, that’s fun. Unfortunately, the station added the stupid element that the winning jock would get a paid day off, which has absolutely no listener appeal at all.
Coats For Kids If you’re concerned about doing something that targets just the homeless and you don’t think that your audience can relate to it, then collect coats and warm clothing for children and coordinate with a community center that can insure that the clothing gets to kids who can really use it. And don’t forget that there is a growing number of families who are living on the streets. Everyone thinks of drunk, old men when they think about homeless people. Get an expert on the homeless in the studio to talk about the women and families who are living on the streets.
Blankets For Admission [email protected] in Phoenix did this one Thanksgiving when they charged a blanket to get into a couple of evenings they hosted at a local drive-in theater. A unique concept that netted them a ton of donations
Turkeys & Other Menu Items
Promotionally speaking, at Thanksgiving the world is your turkey. Anything you can do with a pumpkin at Halloween or a tree at Christmas, you can do with a turkey in November. You can overthink prizing: giving away turkeys the 2nd or 3rd week of November WILL get a response.
The Cue To Call Cook a turkey. Take it out. Facebook Live it and when the little red button pops out, that’s the cue to call.
Turkeyhead Get a listener to wear a turkey, a la Monica Geller, for a day of work.
GOAT Greatest Of A Turkeys. Solicit recipes from listeners.
Turk Out! My corneas! From Big Dave at B-105 in Cincinnati.
Hand Turkeys Make those drawings people’s entries.
Turkey Drop It’s been done over and over, but there’s always a way to make it fresh. We once parachuted someone in a turkey costume into a food drive event to kick it off. Use this as a starting point and work from here.
The Running Of The Turkeys KOB-FM did pig races with Green Day & Ham. A bunch of turkeys racing through an obstacle course? There are two n’s in CNN. This was done 9 years ago with a leaf blower at KLUC and a pile of numbered little paper turkeys.
Emergency Food Response Team Who hasn’t had a holiday meal go south on them? Burned. Power failure. The Bumpasses’ hounds from next door. This promotion has the van showing up with either a cooked turkey or certificates so the whole family can go someplace that’s open. Like Denny’s. (My disaster was the first Winter we were at the farm… and the propane ran out an hour after starting the turkey.) Have a hotline where people can call for a quick response.
The Day Of 10,000 Turkeys True story: in 2013, Power 96 got their hands on ten THOUSAND turkeys, gave a location, and handed them out en masse.
Flipping The Bird They did this at 107.5 in Memphis when they flipped people a free turkey just for flipping them off. One of the jocks was out on the streets in a blue car. That was the only hint that was given. Listeners were instructed to flip off every blue car, and hopefully they’d flip off the right one and get a turkey. Lots of fun and, surprisingly, no road rage shootings.
Recipes Have your airstaff call their moms on the day before Thanksgiving and have these celeb mothers pass on their secrets for baking a great turkey. This could also be a morning show bit. Have listeners call in with their own personal secrets and tips for making that special holiday turkey. This could apply to stuffing and pies, too.
Turkey Eating Contest This came up at a brainstorming session. This would be a great contest for any remotes or appearances that you have the weekend before Thanksgiving. Another idea that came up at that session was a Cranberry Sauce Wrestling contest that you could do at either a remote or at a club.
Kiss The Bird As done by Island 106 at a mall with ten listeners kissing frozen turkeys to try and win $1000 from the mall. (Everyone got to keep their birds).
JUST the tip (of the iceberg). When it comes to Thanksgiving. But it should get you started.
