Clients are like kids. You’re supposed to love them all equally, and you usually do. But there’s the kid who stayed out on Halloween, shot paintballs at the Lutheran Church, and grabbed the entire bucket of Dots that the elderly neighbor left out for all the kids to share.
My wife has done a terrible job raising him.
One of the clusters I do is a ball. In 2026, they’re still doing great, great radio, and part of it is that they’re always looking way down the line. They were “on” the 250th birthday four months before everyone else and made a metric poo ton of cash off it.
Taylor? How do you miss Taylor’s wedding? They didn’t. They were working on it six months out and had a great and lucrative event (which is always nice).
I mention them because the new thing they’re working on is a rare alignment of the planets: Valentine’s Day and the Super Bowl are falling on the same day. With a lot of markets, that would mean heavying up on exciting autoposts about Dua Lipa’s aversion to coconut and Rachel Bilton’s big game plans.
My client is working on an event, and I’ll leave it at that. But now that it’s on your radar, my work here is done, and we can proceed with the Dumpage:
A New Spin To Holiday Shopping Sprees
A station-to-remain-nameless is getting $2000 from a client and will be soliciting letters from teachers, looking for four kids who deserve to spend a day shopping with the morning guy (a play on his name and “Santa” are the hook) and some elves. The sleigh will be a limo, and they’ll spend a day at a mall, loading up on presents.
Science!
We’re heading into cold weather season and one of the traditional “plays” is to stick a bottle of water or can of soda outside the studio window and then check in on it until it explodes. Fact: don’t do beer. The alcohol slows the freezing. You want pop/soda.
Must Love Dogs
If you’re a pet person, then you’re usually REALLY a Pet Person. And when you’re single and “out there”, well, that’s a consideration. KZIA in Cedar Rapids has done every possible permutation of dating bits. Wanted to reinvent something or do something new. My suggestion was a dating night where people brought their dogs. If the dogs get along, whew, that’s one hurdle accomplished. This might be a fun hook that taps into a hot button.
Light Up The Tree, Light Up Their Life
When you do any kind of “drive”, you want to have some barometer that tracks or shows the volume of donations. Like what United Way will do outside their offices with a big thermometer.
A PD-to-remain-nameless has access to a massive tree. Was wondering what to do with it. What if you decorated it in lights? 15 layers of them. For every 1000 toys or bikes that get donated, a layer is lit. Until it’s lit all the way to the top. Great visual for TV.
The Night Before AND Thanksgiving Nights
Are annually the biggest club nights of the year, so if you have a gig, don’t allow it to go un-tweaked. One of the stations called theirs The Kiddy Table last year, but my favorite was Yam Jam. Could easily be “(Station’s) First Class Reunion Of 2012” because that’s basically WHAT it is.
Balls
96.1 in Poughkeepsie was part of the tour of all the big Jingle Balls. The imaging was all about how some people are happy with two balls. We have 7! God bless the silly people.
The Island Of Misfit Giftcards
The beauty of Christmas programs is that they have, over the decades, branded certain elements and songs. So we should be ripping them off left and right. Like KOB-FM, where they rewrote a part of The Grinch as “The Wii’s down in Wiiville” for some contest imaging way back when.
One of the stations has a bar-and-grill with gift cards to give away. So, the idea is to do a White Elephant exchange where people would bring down their “WTF, why did you give me $15 to The Yarn Barn?” gift cards and exchange them for an equal-value card from the client. THEN, the regifted cards that people didn’t want will be given away randomly to designated callers.
I’m caller #9; the talent reaches into a stocking and pulls “$25 at The Pita Pit” out of a stocking. Score!
The 101’s
This was a promotion from Schulte & Swann at KZIA. Football 101. Every fall, they took a bunch of women who knew nothing about the sport, gave them some classes and learning, and then took them to a game. They followed it with golf. Classes. Instruction. And then letting them loose on the links for a day. I love the concept of helping listeners experiment and discover new things to enjoy. It’s kinda sorta, but not like the idea of “virgins” and finding people who have never gone to a theme park or sat on Santa’s lap or been to a concert.
Christmas Coupons
This is something that families have been doing for years to sidestep the materialism of the season.
There was an episode of “The Middle” where Brick found a shoebox of unused coupons that his parents had never redeemed so he tried to fulfill them all in one day. Hilarity ensued. One of the PD’s on a call the other day mentioned that her kids had found some old ones and were kinda pissed that she thought so little of them as to not redeem them.
What if the morning show gave out a random coupon (written in crayon) every morning in December? Things like bed-making and dish-doing and car-washing.
Appy New Year
I discovered that a family member is an App Pig. Kind of like a Prize Pig but with nicer clothes. She had NO apps three months ago and then discovered that if you download the Famous Dave’s app, boom, you get a free dessert or sandwich. All Hell has broken loose, and she now has the apps for every chain restaurant in east central Minnesota and is constantly monitoring them for deals and free food.
We (Radio) learned a long time ago that we could activate people with free food. So, why not app-ly that to your app on New Year’s?
There is often a void of messages the week after Christmas. Unless you have a station event, it can be kind of quiet.
Cool: pound Appy New Year’s. Download the app and on New Year’s Day, get free breakfast. Or coffee. Or since it’s a big day for going to movies, free popcorn. Taking the fam skiing at After Alps, get free hot chocolate and chili. People love free food. We love when they download the app. Whoot there it is™.
Max-imize Your Holidog
If you were looking for a gallery contest or something for social media, ask listeners to GENTLY tie sticks to their dogs’ heads, take a photo, and post.
Or… get a foam one and do an event where people can bring their pets down for a photo.
Turkey Bowling And Other Sports Banned In North Korea
Jay Kruz at Hubbard in Cincy has bowled many a turkey and has garnered more TV coverage from it than most stations get in a lifetime. He offers this sage advice:
- We use an ice rink, so the turkeys slide… don’t do it on a street since they’re not perfect spheres.
- If your market has temps above freezing… be warned the turkey might start to thaw and you’ll be dealing with some liquid grossness if the package gets a tiny tear in it. (We haven’t encountered this problem since it’s usually pretty cold at the end of November for our event)
- Be prepared for the possibility that PETA or some other group shows up and complains that you’re desecrating animals and/or wasting food that should go to homeless people. (Our event raises money for a food bank/homeless shelter.)
- **Make sure the TV cameras know about this. We usually get on at least 1-2+ channels.
- Banner the sides of the “alley”, directly behind the pins (ground and wall), and directly behind where the person is throwing from to make sure the logo gets on TV and in print.
“Failure To Lunch”
Yes; food deliveries are very different based on where you are and corporate policies right now. But… they work (“damn it!” is implied). One of the stations has a pizza place that wanted to do free product but with a hook. The hook is going to be people emailing in mid-afternoon, lightheaded and starving because they got dragged into an HR meeting, they were stuck in the elevator, or any of the myriad reasons why people miss lunch. And the station and client will dash over and rescue their afternoon.
