(By Paige Nienaber) The Fugitive is up-and-running at a couple of my clients, and one of the keys to making your chase successful is to continually update the promos. Most promotions will have one piece of imaging that runs for six weeks and is indistinguishable from a promo for a sales appearance for Massengill at a neighborhood Rite Aid. They’re just that exciting.
One of my favorites involves a French/Canadian fur trapper who has come down to search for the elusive Fugitive, and he is using all of his tracking skills to find his quarry. Tracking is important to the promotion because, to win and recover the loot, you need to track the clues. “Tracking” is a key element to great contests: forced listening to follow along as people make guesses or information is given.
Good examples?
- Ticket Tag. To win, you need to know the name of the person who was the last winner, and the next person then needs to know your name, and on and on.
- High/Low has been done a million different ways. Mix in Cincinnati has done “Cool Beans,” which is the image of a jar full of coffee beans. Guess the number using previous guesses and “higher” or “Lower” prompts from the DJ. NOW in SFO did it for a Gaga trip with Red Hot candies the week before Cinco de Mayo.
- Secret Sound is another very successful tracking promotion. It plays to the 96% of people who aren’t engaged in our fun ‘n games. The sound sucks them in. I walked into the bank in my little town, and the three employees were huddled over their phones, trying to get through to Cities 97 while scanning a list of previous guesses that they’d been tracking and writing down.
- Match Game is nice because you have a visual of a grid. Call and pick two panels. The talent tells you what was revealed. Match two and win. And you need to listen to write down that behind panel 36 was a $20 Kohl’s gift card, and behind panel 41 was a pair of Swing Out Sister tickets.
Adding “tracking” to your promotion will rarely fail.
And now on with the Dumpage.
One Scream Cinema
Halloweenth haveth arriveth, at least in terms of client requests. 104.1 in Hartford has done One Second Cinema. One second of a famous movie. ID it and win. If you have tickets to Halloween attractions, well, there ya go.
Or you could do it as iScream and have it sponsored by some place like DQ.
Halloween Parade
I literally live some John Mellencamp song every day. An elderly guy who’s kind of a community fixture where I live just celebrated his 90th birthday, so the town rolled past in a parade to wish him a great 90th.
It was such a home run that later that afternoon, they decided to do it for all of the seniors in town on Halloween. And it was a smash. Over 30 people/families/businesses decorated their vehicles for kids AND seniors to stand outside and wave. Because it’s Scandia, the crowds were evenly spaced and not just packed together at the four-way. And the senior citizens loved it. They really look forward to having the kids come by every year and throw themselves into decorating.
You could do this as a community thing but could also do it as a Sunday afternoon thing where you go past elderly living communities.
Hauntourage
As exciting as Family Four Packs™ are, some of these places are more adult (or at the very least teen), so doing a group of tickets under that moniker would work.
Sell. This.
The crack Promo staff at Magic in Colorado Springs is already looking at Black Friday and things they can be doing to engage the masses of nutjobs camping out for deals. Coffee deliveries have always been great. Holding spots in line so listeners can enjoy dinner with the family is great. But what do people crave? Juice. Electricity for their devices. Having a charging station would be large.
Sell. This. v2
Flat Stanley is kind of like Flat Fritsch, where listeners of Q-102 could take Fritsch from the morning show on Summer vacations and post pics of her adventures around the world.
“Live With” is great. Twenty or thirty insane and intrepid listeners carrying cardboard cutouts of the morning show for a month to win a prize.
The Thanksgiving version would be “Eat With.” Download/print a pdf of a morning host headshot off the site, set him/her up in a chair at Thanksgiving dinner, and post and share with the hopes of scoring™ a fully prepared Christmas meal from a valued client.
Gourd-geous
Halloween photo galleries have begun to pop up. What if you had listeners makeover their pumpkins to look like celebrities? Wig. Nose. Makeup. Piercings. Post and vote.
Dog House Monday
Part of being a guy is that we are inherently dumb and prone to doing stupid things that really upset the women in our lives.
This could be a Sales package with a weekly prize on Monday morning for the guy who most effed up his weekend and SERIOUSLY needs to get out of trouble with the Miss or Mrs. The station and its valued clients will help in the damage control by giving him dinner for two, maybe a spa package, and a night out. Ask me about my first Valentine’s as a married guy.
Thanksgiving Groceries
First, a reminder, at least for the CHRs and Rhythm stations: be sure to sell a club night on Wednesday the 23rd. It’s a HUGE night for clubs. Make sure to get on it.
Thanksgiving + Food = In the last week a bunch™ of stations have had clients requesting promotions for the holiday. So…
- Grocery Dash – The Lord God Mother of all promotions is having a listener take a dial position number of seconds to run through a store and grab as much food as they can, which they get to keep. This is followed by the morning show doing the same thing and donating all their grabbings (?) to a food shelf.
- Turkey Bowling – This has been done by many stations but most successfully and most recently by Mix in Cincinnati. They always get TV, and it’s totally sponsorable.
- ‘Tis The Season To Binge – Done by WPGC in DC, where the morning guy documented everything he consumed between 5 pm on Wednesday until showtime on Monday. On video. Guess the total caloric intake without going over to win a mess ‘o food for Christmas.
- ER, Stat – This requires that you would have someone available on Thanksgiving, but no one has ever NOT had some form of T-Day disaster. Have pre-prepared meals from a client ready to bring ASAP to listeners whose holidays hinge on your rescue.
- Hot/Rooms – Whether you have a digital venue or phone line available, most chains have ‘experts’ who they love to tout as helpful and resourceful for elements like health and recipes. Have one or two who can help with audience members who are trying to discern what “two parts vanilla” actually means.
- At Work – Who would want to market to people who sit and listen to the radio for 9 or 10 hours at a stretch? That’s crazy talk! The worst Thanksgiving ever was when I was in college, my family lived in California, I was the only person left in my dorm at the U of M, and I spent the holiday working as a hotel desk clerk. I treated myself to an Arby’s turkey sandwich that I’d bought the day before and saved. Have the client sponsor food deliveries to the poor folks who have to work.
- High/Low For Some Gro Gro – iHeart in Springfield, Mass, was the first to do this. Terry O’Donnell went and filled a grocery cart with random items he pulled off the shelves on a Sunday, he had the load scanned, took a photo of the cart full of stuff, and posted. The next week they did a high/low contest to nail the total to the penny to win a gift card presented as “food for a month” because gift cards suck.
Paige Nienaber insults/consults more than 100 radio stations on Fun ‘N Games (Marketing & Promotions). Find him at CPR Promotions. Read Paige’s Radio Ink archives here.
