I’m an unrepentant lover of Bill Murray movies. In What About Bob?, he offered this wisdom: “There are two types of people in this world: Those who like Neil Diamond, and those who don’t. My ex-wife loves him.” April Fools is kind of that way.
And I get it.
I don’t judge. If you aren’t into it, that’s cool. I’ve just seen great, amazing brands like KINK in Portland and KSON in San Diego that just consistently, year after year, do amazing things. In San Diego, they covered the City of La Jolla’s new ordinance that diapered seals. In Portland, it was the new civic tax on tattoos.
“We don’t lie to our listeners!” Have you ever invited the listeners out for “food and fun” at a car dealer? You just lied. No one has ever had fun at a car dealer.
Honestly, in 45 years in Radio, I’ve only twice seen stations step in it and only because they were f*****g idiots.
So, if you want a metric fool’s ton of thought starters, email me at [email protected] and say something complimentary about my hair, and you’ll get a bunch of stuff.
And now on with the Dumpage:
Pluck A Duck
Sometimes your next contest methodology is as close as the strip-mall-parking-lot carnival at the Walmart down the street. Q in Memphis had a hot tub to give away. It was filled with 107 rubber ducks. The qualifiers would each step up and pluck out a duck. One of them had “You won!” written on the bottom.
Tree For All
Earth Day is April 25th and is arguably one of the most under-utilized of the Hallmark Holidays. McDonald’s in the Twin Cities does something every year that is pretty freaking amazing. At every one of their metro area, 11 county locations, while supplies last, come in and get a little sapling/seedling.
These are the people who do them. They’re the Bag & Tag Promotional Trees, and you can get customized artwork, ie: CLIENTS.
Baseball Cards
One of the stations has a AAA franchise in town that wanted the proverbial and very non-specific “something”. I haven’t seen a station do baseball cards for the airstaff in about a decade. The cards could be couponed or barcoded for ticket discounts to games.
Summer Interns
When you’re hiring or screening for the summer, it wouldn’t be nuts to find someone who has some creative writing skills. During the revenue bloodbath that came to be known as 2009, the CBS stations in Florida had an emergency meeting in Orlando. The consensus of the 40-50 people there was that, at the end of the day, great copy sells spots.
So they went and found some people who were already interning or otherwise in the building and who loved to write, and I think they got $50 for every spec spot that sold. And they were thrilled. There was a girl named Diane in Promotions at Wired in Philly who paid for Spring Break with her spec spots. Sales and the clients loved her. Hot in Knoxville has a pretty consistent history of getting buys with concepts.
Again, great copy sells spots, so who is churning out your great copy?
Dentists
This came up because one of the stations has a client who wants to be involved with a bridal fair.
I have two female friends who are exceptionally funny and both are in pretty long relationships with guys who I have pointed out never seem to smile in their photos on social media. In both cases, they replied that the men are sensitive about having bad teeth.
Well, there’s your hook for June and “wedding”. Give some couple a marriage that they can smile about.
And while you’re at it, giving some guy dance lessons so he won’t look entirely foolish at his wedding would be another client promotion.
Text What’s Next
One of the all-time great remote games was CD Scramble and was the hook du jour for KSFM in Sacramento to get people hanging around their booth. Basically, it was set up like a casino game, and you “bet” what the next song was going to be. (I can explain more if you are interested.) But it always built a crowd, and it also trained people in music.
The next level or new generation of that would be a Programming contest. At either a cue or an appt., you take texts from the audience, predicting, guessing what the next song will be. If you texted in “Don’t Want To Fall In Love” by Jane Child, and gosh darn it, for some reason the station actually played that, you win.
Pimp Dad’s Car
First, prom is going to fall on just a couple of nights in your town. And every limo within 500 miles WILL be booked. To even have one on lockdown puts you at an enormous advantage in terms of leveraging the teens. You’ll be able to get them to do anything to win it, as happened with KGGI when they did Loco For Limos. As the GM put it, “Actual local, not group, cash contests didn’t get this response.
The next option would be to give a kid (which is why you’d want to start the legal work…now) a Jag or Porsche or SOMETHING better than what he would otherwise be taking her to the dance in, for the night.
For the record, me?…a Ford Matador. Which explains why Gretchen excused herself midway through our fancy dinner at Steak & Ale, and never returned.
Slogan Shirts
In 2026, it’s increasingly hard for brands to get consumers to wear shirts that are simply blatant advertising for them. It requires some subterfuge and cloaking to get the logo in there and still have it be something creative that people will want to wear.
Michael Martin when he was with CBS in San Francisco, about eight years ago was at his daughter’s college in Santa Clarita and noticed that students were wearing shirts with just weird phrases on them, so he went back to 99.7 NOW-FM and redid their wearables so they would say something cute, have a logo too but too obtrusive…and the audience loved them. And wore them. It was also about the time that iCarly started dressing the stars in similar shirts, a company called Penny Tee’s started churning them out, and the viewers bought them by the truckload.
Since then, some of the stations have started doing this with phrases like “Keep Boise Boring” and “I Only Love My Bed And Utah. Sorry.” Terry O’Donnell in Albany has done that and the listeners love them. Something like “Dance Contest Loser” and a logo down and to the left of it. “Hannah Montana Destroyed My Family”? They couldn’t print enough of them. And that’s the sign of a great t-shirt. People want them and will wear them.
St. Pump-it’s Day
The Max Media stations in Denver did Gallontines and were all over town doing free gas. So, why not declare that March 16th is St. Pump-it’s Day in honor of Patrick’s, Michael’ O’Pumpit, and do some gas?
Munch Madness
Social media is all about kids, pets, and food, and people’s opinions about them seem to make up a lot of the content you see on places like Facebook.
BEN in Philly has done Mutt Madness in March. Tell me that people wouldn’t barrage you with pet pics if you asked.
Conversely, Audacy in St. Louis did Food Fights and every week battled it out between different genres of local restaurants like Chinese, steaks, Mexican and wings. Sponsored and random voters got picked for gift cards.
Crock Stars
Some regions are most definitely Crock-centric. Minnesota is one place, and apparently so is Cincinnati. Hubbard hosted a recipe contest sponsored by a grocery store.
Community Cruiser
This came up during an auto dealer meeting on Tuesday. It was initially done by CBS in Pittsburgh, where they had a wrapped and branded SUV from a client that was available for charities and organizations that needed an extra set of wheels for their annual event.
You could go to the site and, for free, reserve it. Then a station employee would show up on the day of and help pick up stragglers from your 5K, or put out cones along the route, or pick up donations from dropoff locations. Whatever your event’s specific need was.
