FREE FRESH IDEAS

Chris Byrnes

Canada Music Week has come and gone, along with the sore heads, late nights and great stories that are always told at broadcasting conventions. There were some excellent sessions, as well as a great deal of knowledge shared in the bar or over a coffee. In keeping with CMW tradition of having people return to their radio stations with lots of actionable ideas, I was invited to share a few promotional and marketing ideas, along with some of the best in the business, in a session called “50 Ideas in 50 Minutes.” Here are 13 of the ideas:

1. No Budget? No Worries! How do you create a big payday with no budget? The lottery came to a Mid West US City. Local radio stations capitalized on the excitement of a new lottery game offering a 5 million dollar payout by creating radio contests with large payouts that were insured by Lloyds of London. A smaller radio station in the market with limited financial resources took this idea and created a clever image promotion. "The $20 Million Giveaway " awarded a dollar-a-year for 20 million years to one lucky radio station listener. The station based its creative production around this one thought: “When money is no object and the object is no money!” In order to ensure strong win-ability as well as word-of-mouth, the station paid the first 500 years up front by awarding $500 cash and two tickets to Las Vegas. The promotion was the only one of all the local radio promotions to get front-page editorial coverage in daily newspapers. The promotion proved creativity can influence your target audience sometimes even better than money.

 

2. You’ll Have Only Ten More Chances To Do This In This Millennium. Just about a year from now on March 3rd will be the next time when the month, date, and year will all be the same number 03-03-03. On that day only, give away prizes in threes, three CD’s, three pair of movie passes, three hundred dollar bills, etc.

 

3. Think Of Creating Formatic Elements That Mimic or Reflect Pop Culture. Using the soft drink Sprite marketing campaign stations came up with the line "image is everything, obey your ears". Other ideas Enjoy The Experience of Now.. .. Today’s Hit Music is on 98.5 KRZ… Catalog this memory sensation in your brain... new music now (first) from (artist) on The Z.

 

4. Hire A "Secret Shopper" To Make Sure Your Station’s Customer Service Is Up To Standards. Have the secret shopper do the following:

• Call the radio station’s request line looking for information about a commercial that played 15 minutes previous.

   

• Call the radio station’s request line with a request.

 

• Call the radio station’s receptionist asking about a promotion.

 

• Visit the station on remote to meet the announcer.

5. Learn What Madison Avenue Has Known For Years; Music Creates Emotional Bonding. It’s "Credibility By Association". That’s why they use so many great songs in commercials! Develop imaging on this premise … invite listeners to submit stories about what certain songs mean to them. Create imaging using those stories … "My husband is in the military and right now he’s serving over in Afghanistan. The song that always makes me miss him most is "If You’re Gone" by Matchbox Twenty.” Remember, imaging is a commercial for your radio station. Don’t just say your name, but say something about who you are as a station and what you mean to your listeners.

 

6. Early Morning Whack-Off: Have listeners take their phone and whack something with it. If you can figure out what they’re whacking they get nothing. If they stump you, send them a prize. People were taking their phones and whacking: construction hard hats, eggs, refrigerators, ceiling fans, even a school bus. (This may not be right for every radio station. If you do this, execute it early in the 5am hour.)

 

7. After the Tone: Start an answering machine contest and invite listeners to record a new greeting mentioning your morning show and radio station. Then they call, fax or e-mail the station with their name, number and best calling times. The station calls several numbers each morning to audition them. They select the three best and let the audience vote for 1st, 2nd and 3rd place. Offer good prizes and the response will be amazing, and you will create some market buzz.

 

8. The Day of 10,000 Prizes: Pick an important day such as your station birthday. Organize a free concert at a local out-door venue. As each car arrives they are given a prize [one per car] providing it has a [Station name] sticker on it. If they don’t have a sticker you have a sticker squad who place one on their car. It ’s not that hard to generate 10,000 prizes, by selling the event to people like McDonalds who supply 3,000 meal vouchers, and Coke who give you cases of product, movie companies who give you family passes. You only need a few major prizes to make this event sound huge. You can build this into an annual event.

 

9. Morning Show On Vacation? How To Avoid Oblivion. Solution: Keep your audience from tuning out and encouraging new listener’s to tune in. “Adrenalin” has created a fantasy dream team for male-targeted morning shows – The Playmate Radio Team, a hand-picked broadcast team selected to step in and provide a unique element of excitement to radio stations around the world.

 

10. A Music Suggestion: Using music schedulers like Selector or Music Master, encode songs with a code either as a sound code or type sequence that signifies the core sound of the station. When reviewing the log in the manual scheduler use the Alt H function to high-light those songs with the core sound designator. This way you can see that every quarter-hour or in some cases, every other song sells the core sound of the station.

 

11. Develop A Relationship With A Scalper (They Prefer "Ticket Broker"): Work on building a relationship with one (preferably one who operates a legal and reputable business). That way, when your competition is presenting a big concert, you’ve got great tickets to give away.

 

12. Call Five Listeners Per Day From Your Station’s Database and Ask Them "How Are We Doing?" Have each announcer do this after/before their show and you could reach 20 listeners per day … 100 a week … 5200 a year … and all of them will remember that you called.

 

13. Station Newsletter: Most radio people are terrible communicators when it comes to keeping our family members and significant others informed about what’s going on at work. The solution is to create a monthly staff newsletter, which has all the news of what’s going on at the station, events that are coming up, announces the Employee of the Month, or other things of interest. The trick is that the station mails one to the family home. This increases the chance of the newsletter making it to your family home each month, and being read by your family, so they have a better idea of what’s going on at the job that probably keeps you away from your family 50 to 70 hours each week. It helps build the bond between you and the radio station.

Thanks to the following people for allowing their ideas to be shared in this newsletter: Perry Goldberg, Harv Blain, Steve Jones, Liz Janik, and Elesha Pollon.

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