Group contests came up with a client, and the one thing that we agreed on was that they all sound the same. If promotions are the art of getting people to notice you, why would you do something that everyone else is doing?
While you’re obviously stuck with the methodology, in most cases, you can frame it any way you want. And sometimes $1,000 doesn’t have to be $1,000. It could be something else, like… tacos. A station in San Antonio did “Win $1000 In Tacos… Or The Cash Equivalent” and killed it. Who’d have thought that people in San Antonio liked tacos? I’m still waiting for a station in the Twin Cities to do “Win $1,000 In Lutefisk.”
Ben Davis at 99.7 DJX in Louisville is a certified genius with this stuff. Win $1,000 in Ceramic Cats outdid the rest of Alpha Media with an engagement metric. The imaging by Laura Daniels is brilliant. Great campaigns have great spokespeople. Eustis K. Ungerman can go head-to-head with Flo from Progressive any day.
And DJX’s current promotion acknowledges the biggest story going in pop music today.
What else is there that might cut through the $1,000 Clutter?
- Karen Cash. Because Karens need cash too.
- $1,000 F Word was done by KRBE in Houston.
- WTF (Win Thousands Free!) was done by Kiss in Dallas.
- Go Splurge Yourself! Pay your bills? Nah. Take the money and blow it on yourself.
- Buckets Of Cash. Win $1000 so you can cross stuff off your bucket list. Always wanted to go to Mardi Gras? Now you can.
- Win $1,000 in Pumpkin Spice Lattes.
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The Free Money Monkey from Kiss in Charlotte had a central character that evolved over the series of contests.
- Ben also created the Vigilante, who was a Superhero who paid people’s bills.
If we’re going to do these promotions, then it kind of behooves us to try and make them interesting enough that people will actually play them.
And now on with the Dumpage.
Co-Ghost
A few of you have done the “haunted station” bit for Halloween.
It’s coming to a morning show somewhere where they’re going to have a psychic in for some staged reason, and right off the bat, he will start making conversation with someone behind and slightly to the left of the morning guy. Host and co-host are going to be like, “WTF are you doing?” Psychic says, “You didn’t know about Matt?”
Matt has been in the building since before the station moved in. He’s lost. Not malicious.
The morning team started discussing a few odd things that had happened, like the time they went to the bathroom and got coffee, neither had their fob to get back into the programming side of the building… and yet the songs just kept playing. There was no technical reason why there shouldn’t have just been dead air.
That kind of stuff. They announce that tomorrow will be Matt’s last show, the psychic comes back, does a cleansing thing, and helps Matt over the threshold. Gary Spivey did this with a guy saying goodbye to his dead fiancée. I knew it was fake, but I was tearing up.
Family Five Packs
No one has ever done family four packs because Fred Jacobs did a study that showed an algorithm that rewarded prizing-in-fours. No. You do them because the circus gave you 200 tickets. So, to add ONE TICKET to the prize isn’t going to cost you anything, and it gives you a chance to acknowledge in the promo that A., you’re not cheap, and B., some families have more than two kids, and do YOU want to be the person to tell Timmy that he has to stay at home by himself?
I should note that WiLD in Tampa did Dysfunctional Family Four Packs, and you won three tickets and qualified for a tube of cookie dough for the kid that got stuck at home to eat while you were enjoying a fun-filled night with their sib.
Pick Your Treat
When we’ve had lots of tickets for multiple shows, we’ve often allowed the audience to “Pick Your Seat,” which is kind of fun to say on the air.
The Halloween version would be the week of the 24th to 28th, giving your winners the opportunity to pick one of the two or three prizes.
Download Your App-etite
The Hubbard stations in the Twin Cities and Seattle stand out in terms of incentivizing people to download their apps.
We are heading into a season of unparalleled gluttony. So if you have pies (or turkeys or hams or pretty much any addition to a holiday meal) for giveaway, people would probably, finally, heed your requests to download your app.
Football Moms
One of the stations honored a rotating genre of moms every week. This week, it’s “theater moms” who drive the kids to rehearsal, help with the sets, bring snacks, etc. You could do a web or social feature on moms who are active and huge supporters of their kids’ football programs.
Tic Faced
As exciting as keywords are, a great philosophizer once asked, “But couldn’t there be a little more?” Like having your Halloween-themed keywords delivered by an Ouija Board.
“Writing stuff on your face” doesn’t just have to be for Post Malone. You could encourage your listeners to get tic-faced and write your keyword on their face, shoot, post, and share.
A Twist To Halloween
Most stations have done the sleepover at a haunted house or business. That’s good. Often great. But there are only so many times you can revisit that well, so to speak. Channeling, when done well, is some of the most riveting Radio you will ever hear. I’ve heard morning show chats with Jack Ruby, JFK, Nicole Simpson, Chris Farley, and Jon Benet. If you’re a Classic Rock station, you have no shortage of artists who would be fun to have in-studio for one last interview.
“Pets” are a Mother of a Hot Button. And there are, yes, Pet Psychics out there. I know because Mrs. Paige ain’t quite right and actually hired one to read our Golden Retriever. Don’t get me started. One of the stations brought one in, and there was a LINE AROUND THE BLOCK of listeners and their animals waiting for the session.
You And Your Boo
Damn, Joey Tack and his cool contest names. This would be any weekend in October. Call, boo, and win tickets to whatever Halloween attraction you have tickets to.
Halloweek
The Beat in Austin once did Toy Week, the week leading up to Christmas. Every morning, they did a different “hot” toy for that year. KSFM in Sacramento did Love Week leading up to a Friday Valentine’s. Something different each morning. From bawdy© to romantic to edgy to warm/fuzzy to dirty.
I was discussing Halloween with one of the morning shows last year, and they couldn’t decide which bit to do. As they said, paraphrased, “There are too many to choose from.” So they mixed it up and did one a morning.
If I were doing mornings (and it’s good that I’m not), I would do:
Monday – Pumpkin Drop
Tuesday – Have vampires in to do blood taste testing.
Wednesday – Solicit pics from listeners of retro costumes. One listener is picked for a full Halloween makeover.
Thursday – Have ghost hunters in to talk about local haunts. Sleep over séance at a listener’s home/business that night.
Friday – Show from the listener’s house and do a past-life regression with one of the team
Or you could ignore it, or have the stunt boy pretend they misunderstood and go trick-or-treating on the wrong day. OMG, that’s funny stuff.
Claus Or No Claus
One of the stations has $1,000 in gift cards for a mall. Obviously, we’re in Show Business, we are the Masters of Semantics. We call it Christmas Cash. We call it a Shopping Spree. We call it a Holiday Bailout. But I digress.
As exciting as it would be to qualify people and then have The Morning Nutz™ draw a winner, what if you got your ten qualifiers through pricing games or some other kind of morning feature, and then have them join you at the mall, where they will be presented with ten mall Santas? They each step up and pull on a beard. The one that is real, attached follically, and doesn’t come off, wins the prize for the listener.
Kara-jokey
Not one but two comedy tour promo requests came down yesterday. For tickets, “Kara-jokey” would have the DJ start a joke but leave off the punch line. The first person to complete the joke with the intended line wins.
To Add To Your Halloween Morning Show Content
An iHeart talent throws out, “Does your kid have an imaginary friend and does that kind of freak you out?” and the phones blow up. A morning cohost who shall remain nameless was a little worried about her daughter and the “man who she talks to” and put that on Facebook, and a TON of her friends have similar worries about their kids’ invisible play friends.
Guess How Much The Pumpkin Weighs
90% of Radio contests can be traced back to either a 4th-grade birthday party or a carnival game. We’ve smashed pumpkins. We’ve rolled pumpkins, we’ve worn pumpkins (more on that tomorrow), and here is a station where they have one on display at a client. Guess the weight and the closest without going over, wins.
Promotional Antagonists
I took a film class at Portland State University because I thought it would be fun to get credits for watching movies. We didn’t watch movies. We watched films.
One of the things that I walked away from it with was that you need an antagonist. Someone to dislike. Look at Reality TV, which is staged so that there is conflict. Everyone getting along would be boring.
Rob Mise created “John”, an angry resident of Ottawa who was suing Hot 89.9 to stop The Fugitive promotion because it was disrupting his life. KUBE in Seattle had members of Stop Hurting Innocent Turkeys picket the station in reaction to their turkey drop.
And Mix in Canton has angry dentists from ILD: Incredibly Litigious Dentists, outraged that they’re giving away money so that winners can afford to buy BIG candy bars this year. Not the tiny sample sizes.
