The metaphorical halfway point to 2027 is upon us, and there are going to be skads™ of opportunities to pad the revenue goals in the 4th Q. One constant in radio is that Ideas Sell Spots.
So, with that in mind, last week I joined in on something called The Holiday Hack with one of the clusters I work with. This is the second year they’ve done it, and it worked spectacularly last year.
The concept is simple: all of the sellers in the region will ID two or three clients that they hope to extort money from with their Christmas station in December. The list is distributed, and we all try to come up with one idea for each client. Then, there’s a group meeting, and they’re all presented. The goal is that every advertiser is presented with a couple of promotions to choose from.
This year the clients ran the gamut from auto dealers to jewelers to “healthy drinks” to patios to electricians to malls to furniture to med spas to an aquarium to mental health agencies. The ideas that were saved are being typed up and getting ready to present next week to the clients.
Your advertisers are finalizing their holiday plans now, so to present Bob The Car Dealer with a Christmas promotion in October is going to be a little late-to-the-game.
Wanna do this? If you’re in a non-competitive market, email me at [email protected] and let’s do it.
And now, on with the Back To School, which is the next thing on your dance card:
Back to School
Your clients are planning their BTS programs, so your head should be there too. And sadly, most stations ignore it except for the prerequisite remotes at CVS. And Back To School is really an all-formats thing since you all probably have parents listening. Hopefully. So here are a few things to consider.
If you’re going to do any kind of School Spirit contest, there are two time periods when they’re most effective: September and January. Any other time, and they’ve got too much other crap going on. “High School Survivor” is the best methodology that I know of, and starting in 2009, it began being done as Last School Standing. If only because it’s still fresh and hasn’t been discovered by the rest of Radio. Questions? Call me. “Pennies From Heaven” (as done by 98PXY and Power 96) and The Can Jam (done by KUBE) basically awarded concerts to schools that collected the most pennies (for charity) and aluminum (for recycling). Normally you’d want to offer a concert. That’s the best prize. But even having someone come out and spin for a dance, they’d be thrilled. Seriously.
App To School. Not only should you be encouraging kids heading out to college around the country/world to take you with them, but if possible, have them log in and let you know where they are. On a map, post little school pennants to show where you have people listening on the app.
I have a great sales piece from iHeart in Birmingham’s Laptops For Learning drive if you’d like to see it.
Shoes and haircuts. You can overthink prizing. If you had shoes or haircuts to give away in late August, boom, you’ll get some engagement.
Hands down one of the best Back To School contests awarded $1,000 in shopping at an outlet center with balls from a balloon at Hot in Norfolk.
Project Pencil Case. This was the name for JACK-FM in Vancouver’s contest that awarded $100 to teachers so they could buy supplies. 96.1 NOW awarded skydiving to the educator who raised the most supplies. How cool is that?
Bracket To School. Social media has done all our research for us. If you get on and start talking about your favorite school lunches, people will pile in or on. So Rob & Joss at KyXy in San Diego did that in 2021, and it was sponsored by a grocery store. Random voters got gift cards to the client, and one of the people who voted for what was chosen #1 got it prepared for them by Joss. The next year, they did it with Back To School fashion, or what their 42-year-old female listeners were wearing when they went to school. Sponsored by a mall.
Charitable campaigns. Most stations miss the boat on doing stuff that either helps high school students or rallies them together to do something big in the community. Sweet in Omaha did a drive to collect used musical instruments for local kids. They called it “Band Together,” and it was focused on helping kids who couldn’t afford to buy or rent instruments for participation in their school’s music programs. School Supply Drives are invariably large.
Most School Supply Drives are vibeless entities that are just another lame begathon with no premise or purpose. The setup in Orlando was that the school district was running Y2K compliance checks on their computer…and it kicked out Paco’s name. He’d never returned “Yes, Billy, Your Body Is Changing” in 6th grade. The fines were up to about $18,000. They’d look the other way if he could help them with getting needed items for students from low-income families.
Be prepared for ALL of the listeners posting photos of their kids going off to school for the first time. A smart station would do a gallery on FB and solicit from proud parents. Mix in Wilmington did it, as has Y in Fargo, where they called it Sidewalk Heroes.
High school newspapers. If you email them a press release, they will print it or post it. So if some 11th grader won the front row tickets to your concert, send a press release to her paper. And your night jock should be on the distribution list for all of these papers. It’s always nice to have this info handy; it’ll make you sound very tapped into what’s happening in the schools if you can mention star players, teachers and accomplishments by name. Power in Miami regularly sends movie tickets to school papers. The kids are thrilled to be able to see and review a movie for free, and Power gets all kinds of love in the printed reviews.
Back To School is a BIG financial hit on families. So what if you did “Back Pack To School”? For a reasonable price, through the station website, you could purchase a logoed-like-a-NASCAR backpack. You could get creative and fill it with individual packs of snacks, school supplies, or a gift certificate for a haircut or for back-to-school fits. Honestly, there are probably twenty other clients you could get in there, just make sure you make a cash donation for every backpack sold to a school lunch program.
Limos. Anytime you can send a kid to school on the first day of classes in a limo, that’s big. What would be bigger? How about doing it with your station vehicles? KGGI in Riverside called this “Loco For Limos,” and the phones imploded with kids trying to win. Power in Miami delivered them in a convertible.
High school football. I would hope that this is something you don’t need to be reminded about. And don’t limit yourself to one game a week. In theory, you should be able to hit four or five if you plan correctly. The call-ins and the visibility are why you do this. And spread it out: don’t hit the same schools over and over. I’ve done these patrols sponsored by Pizza Hut and later by Pepsi. One station has it sponsored by a local bank, and every Friday night, some kid at some game is taken out on the field to attempt a field goal for a $10,000 scholarship. Like a lot of stations, 99.7 NOW in San Francisco goes out and does High School Takeovers on game days.
Cheerleaders. Get them on the air every Thursday night. Be sure to press release the school papers in advance, and try to get something prerecorded by the night jock, on their morning announcements that morning, to remind them. Like, “Hey, Forest Lake, this is Ryan from KS-95, and be sure to be listening tonight at 8, when Staci, Dan, Sonia, and the rest of the FLHS cheerleading squad are in the studio with me.” Or something to that effect. Instead of having them come to the studio, go do the show at a cheerleader’s home.
Don’t forget colleges and universities. They’ll usually have lots happening the first week or two of classes, and it’s great to get tied into this stuff. Wild in Tampa did The Back To School Bunker, which had them living and broadcasting from campus housing for two weeks last year. Singularly one of the biggest things in that station’s history. A couple of stations are going to be greeting the new students on “move-in” day and, using the street team and jocks, will be making friends for life when they help the kids and their parents unload and move in.
