Radio is losing one of its most outstanding content creators this week: Dave Ryan at
KDWB in the Twin Cities. Dave’s brilliance is when it comes to bits. (There’s a consultant who loathes the term “bit”, so I’ll use it repeatedly in their honor.)
Dave’s show has been a tsunami of bits.
One bit after another after another after another after another. Yeah, he has his three appointment time features, and that’s great. Every show has its three appointment time features.
It’s the bits around the features that best showcase Dave’s brilliance.
Just something new and unexpected every day or two. Dave has done so many bits that I’ve had to remind him of stuff like “Naked On The Roof” and “I’ll Drink To That,” and he’ll say, “Oh, right. I remember that.”
He’s been great at doing things that are immediately ripped off by half the shows in
Radio. “Ugly Kids” is a great example and something that he cooked up with the
assistance of Dan Seeman, who is one of the few Market Managers who wouldn’t have
run in terror from this bit.
One morning, billboards inexplicably went up around the Twin Cities that said simply,
“Ugly Kids.”
They were up for three weeks, and everyone was talking about them. I mean, what kind
of heartless person would post images mocking unfortunate-looking children?! I heard
the Hot AC station taking calls about it.
And then, one morning, they were quietly updated.
And there ya go. The Brilliance Of Dave.
For the record:
- “Naked On The Roof” had listeners, naked, going up on their roof and calling in
to the station. Dave would vector M.A. Rosko in the Channel 9 traffic helicopter,
over to confirm the nakedness, ie, “Dave, I’m on a roof of a three-story apartment
directly across the street from the Super America, one block north of University
on Snelling.” Later, you’d hear M.A. go, “Yep, Dave, she’s naked.” There
may have been prizes. - “I’ll Drink To That” had Dave or a co-conspirator going to club nights with a
breathalyzer and a minidisc. He’d get an unsuspecting drunk at The Mermaid, unleashing a vowel movement about their sister-in-law who likes the Packers, recorded, and
then he’d have them blow in the breathalyzer. The bit? He’d play the audio, and
then you’d have to guess what they blew.
And now, sadly, on with The Dumpage:
A Spin On Scrambled Jamz
From iPower in Richmond, where a hacker broke into the hard drive of the station and mixed up all the music. You listen for the collage of hooks, call in, and try to “Defrag The Tracks”.
Wedding Day Wipe Out
A station-to-remain-nameless has a new client who has come to town, who apparently does the Star Wars of tattoo removal, so, for June, when people get married, they’re going to help brides and grooms remove really awful remnants of weekend drinking binges in college.
Wedding Insurance
If you’re looking for a phoner for Taylor, talk to someone who handles wedding insurance. Think about it: big day, big stress, big investment. There are companies that sell policies for these events. With the daddy drama already trending with the royal wedding, you should find out what other kinds of wedding disasters they’ve had to compensate for.
“Things That Spin” for $500, Alex
We’ve done the infamous Wheel of Meat. One of the iHeart stations did a Wheel of Tats that resulted in the morning guy getting a Tweetie Bird on his ankle, and Ray at Mix in Cincy once used a roulette wheel to pick rides for listeners to go on at the local theme park.
Pitch In For Buffalo
I’d lobbed out something that Laura Daniels has started at WHTT in Buffalo, which is a campaign to collect used sports equipment like baseball gloves, for the Police Athletic Bureau. They’ll then make sure the stuff gets to kids who need it and probably can’t afford to go and buy it on their own.
Regarding her first collection, Daniels said, “My first collection was last night…an appearance at an outdoor patio restaurant from 4p-6p. Our AAA affiliate baseball team is doing their own collection for me at their game tomorrow, and next Saturday is my final collection. Just in last night’s appearance, I got about two dozen gloves, plus bins of bats, softballs, helmets, and even four boxes of unused, brand-new football uniforms that one listener saved from another organization that was putting them all to the curb. I’m blown away.”
The Burning Building Theory of Remote Breaks
When Strawberry was at Wild in SFO, he trained the street team on how to do call-ins when they were out in the community. He said to prioritize it. Think about what’s the most important thing and stick it up front. He used the example of a house fire. If your house is burning down and you have thirty seconds to get out, what would you grab?
Well, the stuff that’s most important to you. Like your Hummel figurine collection. Or your phone. Or family photo albums. Or all the thumb drives in an envelope taped under your desk. Or your wine collection or your golf clubs. Maybe the kids.
So a Facebook Live popped up in my feed on Friday. It was a morning guy who set up a remote at a convenience store. He pointed out they had coolers for sale, the ice locker was packed, with discounts on certain brands of soft drinks. Freshly made deli sandwiches, a huge assortment of chips, and you still have time to come down and register for Ed Sheeran tickets.
Yeah, the lede should have started with Ed Sheeran and that detail should have been repeated ad nauseam. But it was still such effective messaging that it sounds like at least a dozen turned up for the tickets.
Sell. This.
Hot 100.5 in Norfolk did probably the best Back To School giveaway in Radio. Great prize + great methodology = homerun. From Paul McCoy:
When a helicopter client offers you use of one, the answer is always ‘yes!’ We decided it’d be fun to drop numbered golf balls from a helicopter from a few hundred feet. (We happen to have a restaurant client that has a big open grass field next door) The numbered balls were awarded on air over the course of two weeks, which allowed plenty of time to not only promote the event, but also to give our sponsors a fair amount of mentions as well.
The day of the event, you make sure you have plenty of stuff to do while people wait for the actual dropping of the balls. And most importantly, plenty of video of the event from every angle possible…Not only is it fun to watch later, but it also has value for selling into it year after year.
Phone Juice
I heard “Is it alright to take the blanket from a plane?” on WCCO in the Twin Cities and that morphed into taking creamer and sugar packets from restaurants and then into “relatives who steal (stuff)”. It had legs, in golf terms.
Good To The Last Note
Another “name the last note of a song” contest that is about to pop on a Rock station somewhere. We’ve all done “Name The Hook” or collage a bunch of first-notes together. Why not the last?
Undercover Office
Since Marconi was an intern, food delivery to at-work listeners has been a staple of our Promotional Diet. And why not? It’s a great prize and it’s an excuse to be out with the talent, marketing to the people who nest in cubes and hopefully listen to the radio for staggering lengths of time.
Usually the methodology is pretty simple. We call and tell you you won and then we show up.
If we tasked one of the Jimmy’s or Monty Hall with doing it, they’d probably do what Q-105 in Tampa does:
- Alert us to where you listen.
- We might stop by.
- If you ARE listening, bing, everyone eats for free.
A Horror-Themed Version Of Hidden Cash
Rob Mise sent this to me. Remember in 2014 when “Hidden Cash” was a thing and we learned that hiding $100 would jack things up for an afternoon?
Someone, someone brilliant, in Mirimachi, New Brunswick is going and hiding money around town. But they’re doing it under the name of “Roman Dungarvan”, an Irish cook who, by legend was murdered at a logging camp in the 19 th century.
Take a look at the story and how they’re taking a standard Radio promotion and draping
it with themes and characters. And for the record, you don’t need to do something that dark (and no one is seeing it like that anyway). A jilted bride who sold her ring and is dropping money around town.
As an example. This is a great line: “I don’t think anything of this magnitude has ever happened in Miramichi,” said Adams Robichaud, a high school student. “And we just
absolutely love it.”
Stencils
Still is one of the best ways to own an event. You can make your own, as Hot 99.5 did in DC.
Or you can buy them from companies like these.
Spray chalk isn’t exactly cheap. I think it’s around $12 a can, so one of the promo people MacGyver-ed his own recipe.
The following ingredients are approximate. You may have to adjust accordingly to get it the way you want.
- 2 cups of water
- 10-15 spoons of cornstarch
- Your choice of food coloring
- Mix all contents into a jug and shake well (until corn starch clumps are gone).
- Pour into a spray bottle and go to town. You will need to shake the spray bottle
continuously while using it to keep from clogging the line, and clean it out, including the
straw completely after use, as it will clog. Get multiple spray bottles. Even with the
shaking and cleaning, the corn starch will most likely clog a couple of them up, and they
usually won’t last past a couple of uses.
Sell. These. Today.
Door hangers are great and pretty off-the-radar for a lot of stations. What kid didn’t have one on their bedroom door? (I still do).
Book covers. Yes. Kids still use them, and they and parents will gladly take them from you. You can make your own or have someone else do it. But you could Nascar the heck out of them.
