CPR Promotions Paige Nienaber - 7/11

What Would The Jimmy’s Do?

Posted by: Paige Nienaber In: Business of Radio, Promotions 14 Dec 2014 Comments: 0 Tags: chrit, morning shows, promotion, radio marketing, radio promotions, seasonal promotions

I think you can really separate and weed out the Great Stations from the Not So Great Stations when you look at what they do when something like Sandy Hook occurs. Or, when you look at their promotional calendar two weeks before Christmas.

This is it. Our the mid-point of our Meat & Potatoes promotional season. Halloween into Thanksgiving into Christmas into New Years. One amazing opportunity after another after another to market the station, make money, create buzz and close out the year with a bang, not a thud.

I was following up with my client in Grand Forks, Z-94.7 and Nikki Rush sent me a really impressive schedule of contests and events and happenings for December. I replied with some kind of “Wow, that’s fantastic!” and she shot me back “I’d like to see more happening.. we have a couple weeks.”

I got a little misty for a second.

Radio used to be the creator or bits and “stuff that people talked about”. In 2000, the Ice Bucket Challenge would have been the brainchild of WBLI or Wild in Tampa.

You should really monitor the Jimmys, Fallon and Kimmel, every night. They get it. Their acknowledgement of Christmas would not be a “Here’s what to do in Houston this holiday!” list on their website.

So, what would they probably do if they were on the air and doing mornings at your station?

The Carol Frey Theory of Broadcasting In Blizzards

Posted by: Paige Nienaber In: Promotions 15 Nov 2014 Comments: 0 Tags: morning show, radio, radio promotions

Blizzards generally are not a surprise. They don’t sneak up on you like a tornado or an earthquake or a rash 10-14 days after attending a bachelor party in Las Vegas.

On New Years 2011, Fargo was going to get nailed. This was not a surprise. They’d been calling for a snow storm for several days. So on the morning of the 31^stwe got on the phone, tore up the schedule and on six hours notice re-wrote the battle plan for that night. Every warm body was mustered to the station, they got a webcam going and when the snow hit at 7 pm and the city shut down, they had a big party on the air, on line and on social media.

While all the other stations in town had to resort to syndicated mix shows and countdowns because they hadn’t prepared, Y-94 was live, local and having a raucous party in the studio. At one point they had 63 houseparties webcammed on their site, and they added photos of the DJ’s puckering up so you could have someone to kiss at midnight.

It was flat out huge. When people are blizzarded in, what do they do? They sit on social media and HOPEFULLY listen to the radio. Read more…

The Jenny Murphey Theory Of Receptioning

Posted by: Paige Nienaber In: Promotions 22 Oct 2014 Comments: 0 Tags: radio, radio station employees, radio station reception, radio station receptionists, receptionists

Several years ago I was on the road and having beer and chilidogs with a General Manager, who was one of the all time great GM’s. At one point she got a philosophic look and asked “So, you work with all of these amazing stations. What do the truly extraordinary, the ridiculously successful stations all have in common?”

WOW. What a great question. How would you answer it? I kind of had to think and then I started laying out some stuff I’d seen over the years.

1. They’re a team. They would voluntarily hang out with each other and do when they’re not at work.

2. They have fun. They know that this is supposed to be a fun job and when you walk in the door…BOOM…you can feel it.

3. There’s longevity. You’ll see people on the staff who have been there 30 years.

4. They are so tapped into the community that it would be hard to unwind, unravel, extricate or otherwise unplug them from the lives and lifestyle of the audience.

5. When you listen to them, they don’t even have to ID the market: you can “hear” it in everything they do.

6. They will call an audible and change the game plan on a moment’s notice.

She was nodding along and seemingly agreeing and when I wrapped up with “And they always have a great receptionist” her eyes got wide and she said “Oh my God, you are so right.”

And at least in that regard, I am. Think about it. Have you ever worked at a station that didn’t have a superstar person up front? These game-changers, these intangible employees are often right in the heart of the demo, are usually true fans of the product, they meet more listeners than all of the other staff combined, and they literally establish the vibe when you walk in the door. Read more…

Making Less Sound More

Posted by: Paige Nienaber In: Promotions 01 Sep 2014 Comments: 0 Tags: morning show, morning shows, promotion, radio promotions

First, with rare occasions such as golf and cologne, less is in fact not more. One of my favorite Clear Channel GM’s referred to that pogrom as “Our self-inflicted gunshot wound.”

When teaching Street School and discussing signage at events I always remind the promo kids that there are thousands of words in the English language that can be arranged like Scrabble tiles to create millions of sentences. But the sentence, “Tim, I was at the Katy show and you put up too many banners!” does not exist in the English language.

We need to be “big” and sound “big”. And to do that, sometimes we just need to be creative.

I’m a fan of semantics, theater, smoke, mirrors and even smoke ‘n mirrors.

Maybe my first experience with playing around with truth was when I was a van drive for WLOL in Minneapolis circa 1985-1986. (I was 11 and Emmis had notoriously lax hiring practices.) We had blitzed the market with a direct mail piece that included two bumper stickers, and magically one day, seemingly 1 in 2 cars had an ‘LOL sticker on them.

So we started a campaign of spotting cars and pulling them over to win $99. We did 2 winners in AM drive, one in the middays and two in PM drive. When I was out I was always “Paige in Spotter Van #14’. We only had one station vehicle but even the most casual listener would have been left with the impression that we had fifty vans on the streets.
Read more…

Paige’s top 10 selection of greatest radio promotions of all time

Posted by: Paige Nienaber In: Promotions 12 Aug 2014 Comments: 0 Tags: morning show, morning shows, promotion, radio promotions

I remember sitting through corporate meetings in LA when I worked for United Broadcasting. This was a company so mired in forms and Legal that even by today’s eff’ed up standards, they were freaking nuts.

As we broke out into meetings, and I was with all of the Promotion Directors and Marketing Directors, I suggested that really nothing great has ever been achieved in a conference room and since it was the middle of Winter and we were at the Ritz in LA, why not take it to the pool and do it in the sun.

You would have thought that I’d suggesting putting puppies in a blender.

The majority of our promo meeting, after we labored through some lame mission statement, was to try and create a form (they so loved their forms) that we could use to grade our promotions and events.

My thought, which was totally lost on the sheep, was that Promotions serves so many masters and that “success” or “failure” is really subjective based on what department you come from, that this seemed like kind of a waste. They looked at me like I had eels crawling from my ears.

I get that a lot. Read more…

When The World Is Watching

Posted by: Paige Nienaber In: Business of Radio 22 Jul 2014 Comments: 0 Tags: #MonctonSpirit, #monctonstrong, Moncton Spirit, Moncton Strong, morning shows, power of radio, radio news team, social media

Radio is seemingly at its best when we’re “real” and drop any pretense of trying to be cool and funny. The great stations, the truly legendary stations are the ones that will drop everything when some big, important and impactful occurs in their community.

So, when the whole world is watching your market because of an unfolding news story, what will you do? Newcap in Moncton had that dilemma when a mad man on a shooting rampage held the city hostage for a day. This week’s blog is guest post written by Adam McLaren from Newcap.

When The World Is Watching

We knew we had a great team of people working for our radio stations, and everyone proved it as our city went through a tough & scary crisis. It was a beautiful late summer evening in Moncton, and the station was empty. Reports on Facebook started to surface about an RCMP officer being shot in the North end, quickly followed by reports of two additional shootings. This was serious. Just as I learned about the stories, I received a call from news director Mike who confirmed this was true. Mike was heading into the station to do live updates, and I was following in to op the reports. By the time we arrived at the station, the RCMP had officially stated that a manhunt was under way, and Mike had sent Cathy from the news room to the scene to do reports from the center of the action. Read more…

Have You Been Served?

Posted by: Paige Nienaber In: Promotions 07 Jul 2014 Comments: 0 Tags: airstaff, bad customer service, customer relations, customer service, morning show, morning shows, promo staff, social media

Have You Been Served?

One of the obligations I feel we have to our promo staff and even the airstaff, is to give them initial and then updated training on how to greet, meet and otherwise “work” the audience when we’re out at events. As great as giving college students additional reading material in the form of manuals, nothing beats a quick class.

I think, especially with the Summer hires, it’s important to remind them that they’re the first line of defense and that most people are far more likely to meet them than one of the talent and that life is too short to piss off even one listener.

I always use the example of Jo Jo Wright at KIIS in LA and John Hines who is now at CBS in Minneapolis.
Two very successful guys who have made a career of shaking hands and leaving people with positive experiences. This stuff? Pays off. Read more…

When Nature Hits, We Still Have Radio

Posted by: Paige Nienaber In: Promotions 26 May 2014 Comments: 0 Tags: Bosnia floods, floods, future of radio, humanitarian help, natural disasters, radio

Radio, as an industry, doesn’t seem to play well with others. Maybe it’s because we’re populated with people who were traditionally chosen last in 6^th grade phy ed team activities.

When I was a Promotion Director at a station we were approached by the local Boys/Girls Clubs to have our airstaff play the talent from another station in town in a charitable softball game. My PD was apoplectic: “What if we lose?”

I replied, “Fire everyone and actively recruit broadcast students who can drive the ball to right and turn a double play.”

Think about it; when was the last time you joined with other stations outside of your cluster for, well, anything?

After Katrina every station seemingly did “something”, which, don’t get me wrong, was great. But you had ten or eleven different relief drives all competing for dollars, water and attention. Dan Seeman was a GM at Clear Channel in the Twin Cities and successfully brought every station in town together for a morning show broadcast on top of the Washington Avenue bridge, which metaphorically bridges the Mississippi River.

It was large.

So, you may have seen that regions of Europe have been suffering from weather of Biblical proportions, and you probably don’t know that stations from all of the countries affected by the floods, have come together to aid the millions of people in distress. Read more…

Reality Check

Posted by: Paige Nienaber In: Promotions 05 May 2014 Comments: 0 Tags: Great Radio contests and Promotions, programming, promotion, radio promotions, reality tv

One of my favorite and most surreal conversations was with a morning show last Fall as we prepared to set up and launch their inevitable food drive.

The OM had already acknowledged some concern that “There are going to be like 7 or 8 other food drives happening” but the morning guy was undeterred.

I suggested hooks. Niches. Angles. No. He wanted to do a beg-a-thon.

Me: “Why are people going to give you food?”
Him: “Because I ask them to.”

Right.

So I came up with a story. Read more…

What Would The Jimmy’s Do?

So, what would they probably do if they were on the air and doing mornings at your station?

The Carol Frey Theory of Broadcasting In Blizzards

The Jenny Murphey Theory Of Receptioning

The Fur-Bearing Trout Theory Of Marketing

Making Less Sound More

Paige’s top 10 selection of greatest radio promotions of all time

When The World Is Watching

When The World Is Watching

Have You Been Served?

Have You Been Served?

When Nature Hits, We Still Have Radio

Radio, as an industry, doesn’t seem to play well with others. Maybe it’s because we’re populated with people who were traditionally chosen last in 6th grade phy ed team activities.

Reality Check

One of my favorite and most surreal conversations was with a morning show last Fall as we prepared to set up and launch their inevitable food drive.

The OM had already acknowledged some concern that “There are going to be like 7 or 8 other food drives happening” but the morning guy was undeterred.

Radio, as an industry, doesn’t seem to play well with others. Maybe it’s because we’re populated with people who were traditionally chosen last in 6^th grade phy ed team activities.