“Home openers” are hurtling towards us like a runaway golf cart, bringing in a relief pitcher from the bullpen. This year will have the earliest Opening Day in MLB history, with your professional team either playing on March 25 (if you’re in NYC or the Bay) or March 26.
Marketing is about knowing where the listeners are and then finding an excuse to be there. A million years ago, we broadcast from on top of the Metrodome for the opener, which was a trip. It was held up by air, so to get up there, you had to climb up a tube with about a thousand pounds of air pressure trying to shoot you out of it like a cannon. Good times.
Elizabethany in DC is a huge baseball geek and is always looking for excuses to be down there and have some presence. Then you just need a hook or activity for on-site. I saw a station have a net and a radar gun: you stepped up, hurled the ball, and they shared an image of your “speed” on your social media. It was pretty freaking cool.
And now, on with the Dumpage:
Spring Bake
If you have tanning to give away, you have your name.
In The Beginning, There Was Shock Collar Karaoke
These guys have tens of millions of YouTube hits, so they clearly have stumbled on something when it comes to providing entertaining content and getting people to market them to friends and family.
What’s In Your Drawers?
This came up during a morning show meeting on Friday when we were talking about “universals”. Things that apply to a majority of the listening audience.
And one if universal is that people have, well, stuff. Concert ticket stubs. Old matchbooks. Old keychains. Stuff.
So the idea would be that one morning a week, at an appt. time, just lob out something like, “A betting stub from (local race track)” and out of everyone who posts a pic of one they found stuffed in a drawer, closet, or box before 5p, pick one for a prize.
Promposals
Hot 104.5 in Knoxville offered up a copious amount of prom-related prizes for the best video of a listener asking his date to the dance.
March 8th
It’s International Women’s Day and the JACK brands in Canada will flip for a day and go heavy on female artists. If you have a person-centric brand in your cluster, this could be a nice acknowledgment of the date.
Secret Sound On Crack
Since the dawn of time, Secret Sound has been successful because it plays to the non-contest players. It sucks them in and engages them.
The Ten Secret Super Stars is Secret Sound, but with celebrity voices, each contributing a word to create a phrase. Be the person to get all ten and win. You always want to mix it up: a couple of artists, someone local like a TV anchor, some actors, and then one that will be the tough one. The person who is sort of off the radar. In Vancouver, it was Jamie Lee Curtis.
It’s coming to a station this Spring. Here are a couple of samples from past contests.
Pickleball!
Beasley in Philly needed an activity for the Home And Garden Show, so one talent from each of the stations will participate in a pickleball match. Go to the station sites and bet on which DJ you think will win it all.
For Our Friendly Clients In Savings And Loan
From Tommy Chuck and Mix 100.7 in Tampa
Laura Diaz has an endorsement for a local credit union. They wanted a content integration. Laura came up with the idea of doing a simple trivia game called “Carline Classroom” where she gets moms w/ kids on their way to school on the air and asks the kids simple trivia questions about money/finance/savings. The kids each get $100 to put in their piggy bank.
“Dong?! Grandpa’s Talking To You”
Most guys in Radio stopped maturing emotionally in about 7th grade. Which is why words like “wood” and “bald” make us crack up. Did you know that the Vietnamese currency is called “Dong”? Yep. And a million Dong is worth about $62? So a station-to-remain-nameless is going to do Vietnamese Millionaire using “Dong Or No Dong” as the methodology. Priceless.
Incommunicado
Jeff McCartney at KZHT in Salt Lake City tips us to a Today Show bit with massive morning show potential. They took away a guy’s cell and email for a week. He went nuts after 40 hours.
Blarney Phones
Several stations have hit gold with versions of the Cash Blast from Power 96 in Miami: you open the phones at an appt time and for 20 minutes EVERYONE who gets through wins. KAJA did it for a George Jones show when they had 300 pairs of tickets. KDWB did it with Last Chance Summer Dance. Hot in Houston did it with qualifying people for the Robin Thicke Pool Party in Vegas.
One of the stations has a buttload™ of St. Patricks-themed scratch off state lottery tickets. So they’re going to do Blarney Phones, open them up and take winners. And lottery tickets MELT the phones.
St. Pedi’s Day
I was stuck in a hotel yesterday and my ride for the night (sounded better in my head) was delayed two hours while getting her nails done.
Mani/Pedi? That’s a great prize. Theme a day of giveaways around them.
Are You As Smart As A Speaker?
A tech version of the yugely popular “Are You Smarter Than Staci?” at KS95 in Minneapolis. Scott Sands at iHeart in Toledo done gots him some Echos to give away. He’s going to take a caller and ask them a question like, “What state has the most shoreline?” He’ll then ask an Echo, which will answer “Alaska.” If the listener got Alaska, they get the Echo.
Wiki Wednesday
I remember that the PD at Power in Miami was spotchecking other station sites and noticed that Power’s jock bios were pretty much identical to everyone else’s in town: “Paige will wake you up with a smile as he brings his own unique brand of family-friendly humor…”
So he had the audience rewrite them. It was great and funny and just an excuse to do something stupid. Look at this thing.
You could either have the audience create your Wikipedia page and do it semi-funny with some little things worked in, “Following her early release, Elizabethany was brought on board in 2014…”
Or do it straight, and once a week, make a minor edit. Have the audience give you a word like “moist” that needs to be inserted into it. Wiki Wednesday?
Sherri with Hot 93.5 in Sudbury was thinking of having a listener every Friday rewrite the morning show’s bios just for that weekend.
The Smoking Gun
There is a tremendous amount of pressure on a lot of you to continually churn out content on your sites and social media. Smoking Gun is a massive repository of documents and pop culture stories.
And a ton of artist riders, like an early Bieber dressing room demand.
They also have a time-waster page with games like matching the convict to the crime.
If you troll enough stations, you’ll see that 90% are posting the same stuff. Why would we? There should be enough on SG to keep you busy and content-filled for a while.
Prom Food
One of the stations has a client who wants to sponsor something in May. And this is for a Hot AC. So I think they’re going with a Prom Food bracket: sixteen restaurants that their listeners might have gone to for their proms. Here, for me? Camelot. Forepaughs. Northstar Room. Eddie Websters.
People have opinions about food, and they love nostalgia. This would do it.
