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CPR Promotional Check-Up
January 8, 2010
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Superbowl Survivor
Any station can be boring and give away a trip to the Super Bowl. "Here's your plane tickets and here are the tickets to the game. Bye!" Yawn. A station did this in 2000 when they sent some winners and a jock on a cross-country drive in a piece of crap car with the goal of trying to sneak in to the game. Wild 94.9 did something similar a few years ago and Big Lou's call-ins from along the way were priceless. Get your winners, go out and drop $200 on a car, re-paint it with graffiti'ed logos and send them off with a big rally in the station parking lot. Give them one-way tickets back...if they in fact even make it to Miami. Power 102 in El Paso did this in '99 and sent an RV with some winners for a road trip to Miami. It sounded great...which is a good criteria. Already 'in the works' at a station-to-remain-nameless.
A Calendar That Made A Difference
My challenge with Radio charity efforts is pretty simple: we ask for people to give us money, food, clothes, toys and blood...and we don't give them a product or service or reason to donate. When I hear this being done I'll ask the PD, "Why should they make the effort to contribute?" and they'll usually say, "Because we asked them to."
Not good enough. If we can't get 2% of people to call and try and win $1000, well, do the math.
(Then there are the KLUC's of the world with their scaffold sit. They are lightyears beyond everyone else. But they're in the minority.)
So let me tell you about life in a small town in Minnesota. When someone in the community has a family medical crisis, they do a fundraiser. Usually pretty small. A dinner with a cash bar, and a raffle and karaoke. It's pretty rare to be at the bank or liqour store or market and not see some flier posted.
A local girl named Jenna had a fundraiser a couple weeks ago. She's 16 and has gotten cancer for a second time. It's very serious. When she was 13 she had it the first time and was also a youth volunteer at the program my wife ran for inner city kids. She was bald, sick from chemo, but out here helping. COOL kid.
I doubt most of your club gigs get as many people as were at the Community Center that night. Being a Promotions Guy I can tend to critique these kinds of efforts. It was MAJOR market. Multiple things happening, raffles, auctions, live entertainment, skating for the kids...and about 2000 people.
But the reason I'm sending this? They, here in little 'ole Scandia, did something that most PD's would come up with an excuse not to touch.
They borrowed the bit that the little old British ladies did and had twelve community members pose semi nude for a calendar. Black and white. Excellent quality. Good stock paper.
Tasteless? You kidding me? This is the heart of the neocon nation. It was little bald Adrian who runs the liqour store posing in front of a beer cooler with an 18 pack strategically held. He had that football card photo look. Raised leg, arm held out to ward off imaginary tacklers. Pretty much a lot of people who you would never in a MILLION years imagine doing this.
They called it Scandia/Marine Au Natural and they were selling these things for $20. They sold at least 800.
It wasn't dirty. It wasn't profane. It was tongue-in-cheek, professionally done (better then 90% of Radio calendars I've ever seen) and it raised a stupid amount of money for a young girl who is fighting for her life.
In radio we're supposed to NOT take ourselves seriously. We're supposed to have fun. THIS was fun. It takes a lot to blow me away. I am beyond jaded. This did it.
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