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Holiday Memories
December 13, 2016
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Holidays and memories replay in our minds from childhood to the last breath we take on earth. Those feel-good moments turn back the clock for reminders of personal history. One of my favorite times was when I helped deliver Christmas toys on Christmas Eve in a station van.
Helping Others...
The station I was programming had received a request from a nonprofit organization needing more toys and presents. They worked with many local agencies, area churches, social workers, rest homes, and domestic violence shelters. Unfortunately, that year donations were down and the need for a lot of things was in high demand. Rather than calling for a staff meeting, I went around and got the opinions of everyone at the station.
Collecting Holiday Intel...
After weighing all the opinions, I decided we would help the organization get more toys and find a way to deliver gifts to listeners at their homes. It was time for separate meetings with each department; promotions, engineering, traffic, sales, the air personalities and the GM. I always found working with smaller groups worked better than station staff meetings; each department felt special and it also helped to avoid any alliances that might cause conflict and delays. The game plan was for sales to get clients to donate toys and other gifts, personalities and staff personnel would help deliver toys, the GM took our mission to the Chamber of Commerce & Rotary for support, and promotions teamed with the production director for creative recorded promos.
Truthfully, I could have issued a memo and just told everyone what we were going to do. However, I knew this was something the entire station could pull together on if allowed to contribute. Things went well and we had new and used toys and gifts rolling in from everywhere. To top it off, sales had several clients do point of location registrations for families wanting presents delivered to their doorsteps.
Santa's Helpers
Our meeting rooms looked like the North Pole with toys everywhere. The day before Christmas Eve, the GM had a bunch of pizzas delivered and the entire station worked side by side, putting together an assembly line for toy and gift distribution. The deliveries were headed to churches, local charities, children's homes, assisted living facilities, and 30 deliveries for listener homes. The plan was to complete all deliveries on Christmas Eve, which was the next night. We made one more change to the plan; it was decided someone should dress up as one of Santa's elves to add to the holiday cheer for the home deliveries. We put all the names in a hat and the winner was a part-time jock. One of the salespeople called a client with a costume shop and our elf was custom fit for our Sleigh/Station Van excursion. The guy who won was way underweight and needed a bunch of pillows to at least look like he was affiliated with Santa.
Time To Rollout The Christmas Envoy...
We had alerted the 30 families and organizations a few days earlier so they could prepare for our Christmas drop-ins. This was before GPS, but thankfully sales was great at finding places and everything was routed perfectly. We used both station vans and rolled out at 1p to make all the drop-offs. Everything went off without a hitch and the smiles on all the faces of little kids, teenagers and adults of all ages was a moment in time I always remember.
Happy holidays and cherish the memories.
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