I was the Promotion Director at Wild 107.7 in San Francisco when I segued into this gig, working with Jerry Clifton and providing ideas and content to his clients. In the beginning™, the daily stuff went out via fax. It’s been upgraded a little over the years.
The first Christmas that I was doing the job, the fax for holidays was four pages long. That’s grown to a staggering 24 pages of unique ideas, features, and contests. It would be sadistic to bury my clients in all those at once, so I’ve been spacing them out.
Email me at [email protected] and tell me what rock band shirt was a favorite of Dr. Johnny Fever on WKRP, and I’ll hit you with the first two compilations of these Christmas promotions.
And now, on with the Dumpage.
Wine
Obviously, as a Mennonite youth pastor, I forsake alcohol, but I know that there is a fringe segment of society that enjoys fermented grapes. I pray for them.
myTalk 107.1 hit Gold with a wine thermos that they’ve sold in their holiday pop-up shop.
Hot 99.1 in St. John’s holds first Wine on The Water events and debuted their branded glasses.
A station “somewhere” is going to use “Cloud Wine” as their name for monthly gatherings of their audience to drink and socialize.
KKLZ in Las Vegas had a W.I.N.O.S. event at a screening of the new “Hocus Pocus” movie a couple of years ago. It stands for Women in Need Of Sanity and they have Glasses On The Green as an upcoming theme: women putting around while sipping selected spirits.
Crying Kids
There have been a million holiday gallery contests, but no one has ever done one with crying kids sitting on Santa’s lap. That’s about to change. As the Sales Manager said, “I love looking at awkward photos of people on Santa’s lap! We’ll get a good prize to entice our listeners!”
Wheel…Of…Horror!
Spinning SFX are assumed.
100.3 Jamz did a cool thing for New Year’s, where they were involved with four different New Year’s events that were kind of all over the market, so when you called and won passes, you could pick a party that was reasonably close to you.
FLO in Denver was involved with a BUNCH of local Halloween attractions and had people spin a wheel on the air to determine which one they won passes to.
Whose Rear End Is It?
This is kind of like getting on the air and announcing that someone is going to win a baby: it makes you want to stick around for the full explanation. At KSON in San Diego, they did tickets to a really high-powered local Halloween attraction by having people ID the artist whose song they played the last few seconds of. Why? What did you think it meant?
“I Never Got To Do (Activity) As A Kid”
How do you think I got Steve Meade in a girls’ cheerleading outfit, cheering a game in Charlotte? Or JoJo Wright joining a sorority? Because they never got to live out their dream of being a cheerleader or being in the Greek system. It was a premise. Not just some lame setup.
Like “going to prom with a DJ”. 99% of the time, this is a played-out and usually REALLY egotistical-sounding bit. Which is why when Dave Morales did it at Wild in SFO or Angi Taylor did it at KDWB or Johnny Waiver did it at KZIA in Cedar Rapids, there was a reason for them to be soliciting dates: they’d never gotten to go, and it tortured them all these years.
A morning show-to-remain-nameless will use The Premise as his excuse to ride along and pay for gas money when he joins a bunch of college students going to Florida next March. What other things could you have missed out on, and now are looking for someone to help you finally live out your dream?
- Going trick-or-treating. Maybe your parents were strict Christians.
- Being a Best Man or Bridesmaid. Best done by doing the opposite of whatever your gender is.
- Been to a strip club or gone to a bachelor party.
- J-Kruz at X-107.1 on Grand Cayman has never ever had a drop of alcohol. Seriously. So he’s going to “Take a shot for the team” and do a shot of booze if they reach some upcoming fundraising goal.
- Sat on Santa’s lap. (Again, the Christian parent angle)
- Gave the valedictorian speech. You were supposed to, but got mono.
- Kissed anyone at midnight on New Year’s.
Premises. It’s usually the hook that most promotions miss. The reason for doing them.
Sleighing Songs? Good. Slaying Songs? Bad.
One of the stations has a car dealer with a budget for November/December. Normally, the station does Stuff The Bus there, but for various reasons, THAT will be elsewhere. But dude has money. Dude wants a promotion. Dude will allow the station to back-end some big prizes out of the budget.
The Secret Sound has been around since the Dawn of Man. The Black Box about half of that time. What if you hung a sleigh from a crane? A Santa-quin in the driver’s seat. A stack of wrapped presents in the back. The Secret Sleigh. SFX of the presents online, additional clues posted at the dealership. Guess all 8 or 9 items and win it all.
Holiday Parades
Many of you will have the opportunity to have a float or unit (I said “unit”) in your city’s parade. As exciting as having the talent dressed up and waving at the crowd would be, how about putting a big doghouse and a piano on the trailer and having all the airstaff recreating the dancing auditorium scene from A Charlie Brown Christmas? Music blaring. Dancing. Everyone knows that movie.
The Best Valentine’s Promotion That No One Has Done
I consult a station in India, and they have a very popular dancing-with program over that, but with “normal people”, not celebs. And they need a promotion. Yes: sales requests are worldwide.
One idea that could be done here, if you are one of many stations that have a wedding to give away, would be to do a topic on couples who can’t dance. Get ten couples and THEN pop the bit: they’re each going to be assigned a dance instructor, their process will be posted, and eventually, with a competition and the audience voting online, one couple gets rings, service, reception, and honeymoon.
Ed Scaring
A couple of years ago, Power 96 did Carving for Kanye and awarded tickets to people who changed their profile pics to pumpkins they’d carved to look like the artist, with a station logo tossed in.
- Ed Sheeran has orange hair.
- Ticket giveaways are hitting this week in scads™ of markets.
- Hoot, there it is.
Duck, Duck, White Elephant
One of the iHeart stations has an appliance center client that is going to do a white elephant event and gift exchange a couple of days after Christmas. What if the gift exchange was based on a giant game of “Duck, Duck, Grey Duck”? When the emcee announces “white elephant,” you grab the package closest to you or the chair that is closest to you, and you get the crappy gift that it designates. And, hopefully, it’s not the salad shooter that you contributed to the promotion.
Office Hottie
This was something that came up over lunch at The Beat in Vancouver circa 2005. Over lunch, one of the women referred to a Salesperson as “our office hottie.” I replied that as a Mennonite Youth Pastor, I was deeply concerned with the direction the conversation was taking. She said, “Every business has a hot employee. Mindy is ours.” And boom, there was a promotion on the air the next afternoon. Sold, no less.
It’s been done by several stations, including KLUC and Hot in Ottawa, but basically, it’s a battle-of-the-workplaces with each sharing a photo of their attractive co-worker. Most votes win a prize that all of the employees can use and share together.
Walk With What You Wear
I was at Jamz in Orlando when an AE came in and asked/demanded that we do “something more creative than a prize wheel” at a weekend remote at a clothing store. So, I quickly came up with “Walk With What You Wear.” Basically, one winner got 102 seconds to put on as many articles of clothing as they could. “Put on” was defined as getting an arm or leg through at least one sleeve or pants leg. It was fantastic. Great visual and a great recap video of a frantic woman grabbing stuff and pulling it on.
Giblets Or No Giblets
In case you need something for the weekend before Thanksgiving, maybe at a remote, how about getting 30 frozen turkeys, each with something stuffed up in them, and 30 qualifiers, one-by-one, plunging their hands in and seeing what they pull out. In addition to whatever is inside the turkey (at least one should just be guts), they get the bird for Thanksgiving.
Crypt Crashers
It is pretty much a given that a large segment of your audience will either be attending or hosting Halloween parties. Promotions is about knowing where your listeners are and going out, courting and romancing them. If your listeners are at Halloween house parties, then that’s where you need to be. Though leaving your vehicles locked in the station parking lot is GENIUS. KZIA in Cedar Rapids used to do Crypt Crashing on the Saturday night before Halloween. Ric, Scott, Heather, and the airstaff would dress up in costume and hit parties all night. Call-ins are essential, and with the emphasis on web hits, you’ll want to take scads™ of pics and post them on Monday.
Guess What I Am Now
Many stations will acknowledge Halloween ON Halloween, or will miss it entirely. A very wise morning show is working on Halloweek. A different “thing” each day for the 28 – 31. Like:
- Creepy things listeners’ kids have said.
- Cheap, last-minute costume ideas.
- Listeners ghost stories
- Having a paranormal person in to talk about the most haunted places in the market.
- And one of the cohosts is going to go and work a haunted attraction for a night. The woman who was the 2nd Fugitive at KDWB was “Sister Scream” every October at the Mall of America’s Camp Spooky. She started wearing a cup. Apparently, frightened people kick. One of these out-of-work thespians would be a great guest.
- And then wrap up on the 1st with recaps of people scaring their friends and coworkers the night before. Scott Mahalick with Hubbard in Seattle sent me some clips of his staff trying to scare each other flatline. YouTube would be a lonely place without this kind of content.
Another option would be to do Speed Costuming. Create a costume in 30 minutes using ONLY stuff you find around the station. Post the photo and the first person to comment with the correct guess, Ferguson Darling from the acclaimed 90’s Nick program Clarissa Explains It All would win.
