CPR Promotional Check-Up

We've Got Spirit Yes We Do, We've Got Spirit Blah Blah Blah

The first true "school spirit" contest I did was in something like 1987. Pepsi sponsored it and the school that sent in the most 3X5 cards that said "We love WLOL and Pepsi!" won a concert. 400,000 cards later, Elk River High School (the Yankees of School Spirit Contests: they won a show by Will Smith courtesy of KDWB a decade ago and yet another show by The Baha Men) won a show from the local version of Duran Duran; a band called Limited Warranty.

A year later I was hunkered(c) over a conference room table counting Trident Sugarless Gum wrappers that were being sent in by schools in the hopes of winning a show by Expose. And on and on.

If you have any dreams about doing one of these promotions, now is the time to do it. Before the kids are burned out and tired and apathetic and hooked up.

What do you need? A concert. It DOESN'T have to be something that happens before Christmas. Winning a show at their school is big. Don't NOT do this because you can't get a confirmation for an act that will play in the next 60 days.

I'd have secondary prizes for the runner up schools. Maybe a party in the lunchroom. Emceeing their homecoming dance. Something. Anything.

Don't just stick this on the air and hope for kids to magically discover it and want to participate. You need to politic this in the schools. Get the cheerleaders (who are the actives in High School Society) working it. Get on the morning announcements. Make a big deal out of reporting the nightly totals. Totals? Totals of what? Totals of votes.

The basic premise has always been "the school that sends in/collects the most" wins. KUBE in Seattle did The Can Jam and the school that collected the most aluminum for recycling (all the money went to charity) won a show. "Pennies From Heaven" is becoming a pretty cliché bit. The school that collects the most pennies for charity gets a show. Text messaging would be another, EASY way for kids to vote for their school.

Or...vote off. I've referenced Highschool Survivor a few times. Instead of voting for your school, you vote off a rival school. The last school standing (maybe that's your name) at the end of four weeks, gets the show. Wild in San Francisco formed alliances between schools who voted off other schools and planned to share the show if they won. Voting is done on the station website. In San Francisco they got 1.8 MILLION votes. Every night you tabulate the votes and a school or two are deleted. When KQKQ in Omaha did it, it was simple. Go to the website. Click on the link and you were immediately presented with a list of every school in the rated counties. Click on your rival school and you had voted. You could vote up to ten times a day.

Like this at Hot 107.1 in Denver http://www.hot1071denver.com/high_school_survivor.php

One of the other clients went and added in the element of having to register and sign up and blah blah blah...they got less then 10% of the total votes that they did in Omaha.

Why do we do these promotions? To "activate" the 18 year-olds. To nest market to these trend-designators. To get them reattached to the medium. And, of course, to hang out with highschool cheerleaders.