CPR Promotional Check-Up - Jun 30, 2021

Six Degrees Of (Talent)

One of the stations’ morning show is coming up on their 20th anniversary. The anniversary is cool but the thing that has really established them is that they have had an overwhelming presence in the community. Seemingly everyone knows someone who has met them, if they haven’t in fact met them themselves. John Hines at ‘CCO in the Twin Cities was that way. Dollar Bill at The Bull in Birmingham is that way. Rob & Joss when they were at Froggy. Chet Buchanan. Orlando Davis. Jeff & Jenn at Q in Cincy.

If you have one of those jocks, then create a bracket on the site and let people have fun filling it out. “We’ll trust that you’re not just making stuff up to win a pair of movie tickets…”

1. I met someone at Skyline Chili in Cincinnati who went to elementary school with a cop from Covington.
2. The cop’s son mowed the lawn of my neighbor.
3. My neighbor is a realtor who sold a house to a guy who works at a bank.
4. He approved the car loan for the daughter of a lady who sells tropical fish.
5. A sales person from Q-102 sold her a remote
6. The Sales lady works with Jeff and Jenn.

Also done as Sex Degrees Of Separation where you attempt to connect yourself to a celebrity? Me? Three steps away from a former Presidential candidate.

Marriage Advice

Summer is marriage season and one of the cohosts is getting hitched. As exciting as finding an engaged couple and doing love counseling to prep them for the big day might be, what if you found two listeners, male and female, who had been married the most times for their gender, ie: Jimmy’s walked the aisle eight times and Juanita, seven. You put THEM and your engaged couple in an airport motel room for a weekend of marital advice.

Programming Helping Sales. What A Concept.

Hubbard in Minneapolis and iHeart in DC both do weekly meetings where people are invited, not required, to come, hang out, talk, brainstorm and see if there is anything happening in the market that they might be missing.

I don’t see Sirius doing this.

Herb Ivey at Townsquare in Portland, Maine shares this idea. It’s so obvious, so simple. But truly great:

Here’s something we do in Portland that has helped a ton. We have a daily “creative meeting”…9:30a. We have Brand Managers-Promotions Managers- and a rotating cast of creatives...digital people, personalities, etc. We will talk creative stuff for our 5 brands for that day….imaging, blog posts, social, but we STOP when a salesperson comes in to give them our full attention. Then we help them with a promo idea…even campaign and copy ideas BEFORE they hit the street. That’s the key. So often, we’re jamming the square peg in the round thingy because we’re dealing with decisions already made. The way we do it, the salesperson leaves with a better idea that Programming has already approved and usually absorbs into the station brand much better! It also breaks down the wall between sales and programming…so important. With local sales, it’s often more about the great copy or promo idea than something ratings-based that gets the buy. Sales knows we have their back as we are a source for ideas for them! And programming people love it when an idea they came up with pops for a client.

This 9:30 meeting might last 5 minutes or 30. And your newsletter is usually up on my screen to help. But sales knows where to find us for logistics and ideas every day. I find it much more effective than the old-school weekly 90 minute Promotions Meeting where after 25 minutes everybody wants to jump out of a window.