I had a meeting with a lot of the Pattison Media stations on Friday, and the question of “When should we get packages on the streets?” came up. My answer was “At least 120 days in advance.”
For example, the US is celebrating its 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration, so it’s going to be the 4th of July on steroids. A lot of the stations I consult had packages on the streets in February. Cumulus in Albuquerque has been awarding flags for the last six weeks.
(And they’ve generated a lot of revenue from it.)
If they had waited until April to start selling sponsors, you wouldn’t be reading about it.
And now, on with the Dumpage.
Summer On Demand
This is going to be Sumbrella Sumwhere. The presentation is going to be that everything the station does will be because their listeners demanded it. Timmy T tickets? People have been all over Facebook begging for them. A bus to a casino? Another listener demand. And of course, the request line should double as the demand line.
The Actors Breakroom
One of the stations is looking for an excuse to go out and hang in the offices. When I worked in Portland, the morning show did “Leave It To Beaverton” – the Cleavers had moved to the Pacific Northwest, Wally had lost his job in the lumber industry, Juny was a bit of a tart, Ward was a dunk, and Beaver was a student at Beaverton High. They had a new episode each week.
I’ve seen it done with soap operas as well as movies. You print out some lines from a movie scene, say, the picnic scene with the meatless burgers in Vacation, and go to an office and have three or four employees act it out. Over the next hour on Facebook, the audience votes on their performance and decides whether their entire workplace deserves movie tickets.
Sell This #1
One of the stations was looking to revamp “Stuff a Bus.” The OM’s observation: “It sounds very 2003.”
So, the client is on board and still wants people to come to their place to drop off supplies. The answer? Stuck On A Bus, which would have an actual call to action: a talent lives on the roof of a school bus until the bus is filled, stuffed, etc.
TV probably won’t cover a four-hour appearance. But they will cover some idiot in a tent on top of a school bus. There’s an art to getting coverage, and the hook is to give them a visual.
Blame it on the Dog
When Dom was at 92.3 NY, they did commercial-free Mondays and really had fun with the imaging. They had a promo from socialists declaring that commercials should be banned because it’s just air, and air should be free. They experimented with Subliminal Marketing Sunday, where barely legible advertising messages were masked into songs. And then they did a promo where their dog had eaten the commercials.
One of the stations had concert tickets and was looking for a weekend theme. No one ever had the prizes eaten by the dog. KDWB had NSYNC tickets get deleted by a virus. Power Miami had Nigerian hackers steal their cash. Then you just have your friendly Promotional Veterinarian “retrieve” the tickets every hour and preface that the tickets will be slightly chewed, but you talked to the arena, and they promised to take them.
Summer Interns
I saw a Promo Director on Facebook complaining about how he stopped by an event, and the staff was vaping.
KZIA has always done a stellar job of making the summer hires and interns feel like a welcome part of the team, and that includes giving them pics and bios on the On-Air page. They’ve also done a great job of having them recap their experience at the end of summer, as they did in this short video.
I have a street team manual if you’d like to see one that you can build from.
The Best Almost No-Cost On-Site Activity
Compliment Cam from B96, where they greeted the masses at Lollapalooza by shouting compliments to them.
Hits Your Parents Hated
For Queen Victoria Day in Canada, Hot in Ottawa did a music feature of requested songs that tick off parents. I first heard this on Power in Miami as “Music That Mom Hates.” It’s always big and fun; here are a few of the requests:
- Silk – Freak Like Me
- George Michael – I Want Your Sex
- Salt N Pepa – Let’s Talk About Sex
- Samantha Fox – Naughty Girls Need Love Too
- Madonna – Like A Virgin
- Madonna – Justify My Love
- Madonna – Like A Prayer
- Cyndi Lauper – She Bop
- Def Leppard – Pour Some Sugar on Me
- Missy Elliot – Work It
- Nelly Furtado – Promiscuous
- Boyz II Men – I’ll Make Love To You
- Alanis Morrisette – You Oughta Know
- Katy Perry – I Kissed A Girl
Divorcing A Friend
I have a very funny, wacky friend named Reed who has what she calls a mental shoebox that’s under her bed. When a friend ticks her off or betrays the friendship, they go in the box. I heard this very Seinfeld-esque thing on a station yesterday. A listener had a longtime friend who had emotionally drained her, and she didn’t know how to break it off.
So the morning host is going to.
Graduations
Graduations are happening. Rob of Rob & Joss suggests:
- Read the comments people wrote in the yearbooks of various talent on the show. Or even all the airstaff. Call and ID it as a “Drunk after a hockey game? Had to be Mauler.” Ding, it was.
- Laura Daniels at Mix in Buffalo redid all of the jock bio shots a couple years ago so they looked like they’d be from a high school yearbook, and it was pretty funny.
- Alternatively, you can replace your jock’s bio shots with their senior class photos.
