CPR Promotions Promotions Archives

Double Your Ratings In 2018

Posted by: Paige Nienaber In: Business of Radio, Promotions 08 Apr 2018 Comments: 0

On the advice of my counsel, the best darn lawyer with the kiosk at the Walmart in Forest Lake, I’m going to add that mileage may vary, and that this does not include tax, dealer fees, plates and undercoating.

But, using rudimentary math, it would figure that if we can get more than 4% of people to play our contests and maybe even get that number up to, say, 8%, then we’ll be doing pretty well.

There’s a reason we can’t get that number over 4% and that’s because most of the contests that we clutter the airways with are really just wallpaper. I would categorize most group contests that way. They’re just….there. They’re not compelling, they don’t play to anybody other than the 4% of people we have hyper focused on and they rarely accentuate or build your stationality.

So how could you possibly get that number above 4%? Read more…

Revisiting The Promotional Genius of MTV

Posted by: Paige Nienaber In: Contest, morning show, Promotions 16 Mar 2018 Comments: 0

There’s no doubt that there’s a generation of Radio People who the significance of the first decade of MTV, would be totally lost on them. That’s cool. I get it. Ed Sullivan and Wolfman Jack were kind of lost on me. I got the cultural significance and the effect affect they had on my older brothers but the true impact and why? I didn’t grasp.

I was actually late on stumbling on it. I’d heard about it, people were talking about it, but if you lived in the last corner of Portland, Oregon to get wired for cable, you were kind of screwed. So it wasn’t until I was 21 and doing Spring Break with some friends in Breckenridge that I was able to binge on it for more than about two videos. My memories of that week are clouded and we’ll leave it at that, but it feels like “Come On Eileen” (poor Eileen’s parents) ran in heavy rotation, or, about every 9 minutes.

MTV was basically Radio. But with a visual. The programming was based on Radio. The people who created it and 4 of the five first VJ’s were all from Radio. JJ Jackson BROKE LED ZEPPLIN IN THE US. Mark Goodman had been at WMMR and WPLJ and when the music video channel started, sent a four page memo to one of the VP’s where he outlined, among other things, “The audience of MTV will not be like the average TV audience. In many ways, they will be more musically aware than many of the people involved in this project.” Kind of sounds like the Millennials, which is an audience that communicates visually. Read more…

The Kent Dorfman Guide To Getting A Gig

Posted by: Paige Nienaber In: Business of Radio, Interns, Promotions, Street Teamers 14 Feb 2018 Comments: 0

When I go around and do Street school with the radio stations every spring and train in their promo teams, one of the things that I highlight at the very beginning, is that when you meet somebody on the street they interviewing you for the job of being their favorite radio station. There are 1 million books on how to get a job and how to do interviews but the one thing that they all seem to agree on is that you have about eight seconds to get the deal done. Eight seconds to get their attention in a positive way and if you achieve that, you will have their attention for the rest of the interview.

That’s really good criteria for when you’re trying to get a job. If there is one position open and 800 people driving hard for the hoop, what are you going to do to be that person, that applicant, that will get their attention for more than eight seconds?

The Cool Carl Paranski Theory Of Cool

Posted by: Paige Nienaber In: morning show, Promotions, Street Teamers 19 Jan 2018 Comments: 0

There was a morning guy who I was working with who I think might have thought he was in a different field. It wasn’t just the name or the hair or the bio or the photos: it was the whole presentation. He was that kid in high school who was trying hard to be cool.

With age comes wisdom. And liver spots.

Looking back at high school you realize that really, there were maybe one or two people who were actually cool. And they were cool because they didn’t try to be cool. They were kind of above all that stupidity. They were just themselves and if you didn’t like them, well, that’s alright.

There were some people who were cool for their accomplishments like sports or debate (my mom said I was super cool because I was able to effectively defend the Smoot Hawley Tariff Act) but the shine wore off.

Cool? That’s just something you are.

The 90’s Strike Back

Posted by: Paige Nienaber In: Business of Radio, Promotions 16 Dec 2017 Comments: 0

I liked the 90’s. My hair was strong, “Clarissa Explains It All” was the voice of a lost and restless generation and Radio was doing actual, wait for it, fun and compelling ‘stuff’.

And then…something happened. Someone who had failed at 4^th grade math decided that less was in fact more and then PPM came along and everyone freaked out. Because that’s what we do. If Radio ran the most popular restaurant in town, we’d change the menu because the newspaper got a new food critic.

102 Jamz was the #1 station in Orlando for about 12 years and I can tell you the absolute moment when they lost. Dave Ferguson sent me some copy that they’d emailed over for him to voice. It was for a Universal Halloween Horror Nights ticket giveaway which, in that market, is GOLD. Dave asked “What is this shit?” in regards to a 17 second straight-to-the-point promo. I reached out to the Promo Director who replied (PD) just wants to get to the important stuff and get out.

This is a station that won Addy’s for contest promos. And then they became…unremarkable. Read more…

The Small Town America Beer Display Theory of Radio Wars

Posted by: Paige Nienaber In: Business of Radio, Contest, Promotions 12 Oct 2017 Comments: 0

The first five days of any radio station are the important in its life cycle, which seems to be lost on quite a few people. You can either merge slowly and cautiously onto the freeway and slowly get gobbled up in the traffic, or you can audaciously blast down the ramp, weave through the traffic and leave everyone in your rearview mirror.

After a few months of “establishing our music position” and playing 10,000 songs in a row with no talent or commercials, you’re just another station.

When I know that someone is going to launch on a client, the most important thing that I stress is that they need to keep them off-balance and in boxing terms, don’t let them get their feet planted because it will then be 1000X more difficult to knock them down. And this is a fight and at the end someone will keep their job and someone won’t.

The Rock City Theory of Marketing

Posted by: Paige Nienaber In: Promotions 17 Sep 2017 Comments: 0

I once asked a group of street teamers and promo people, “Who understands the value of bannering better than Radio People?”

Blank stares.

I answered my own question, “Pretty much everyone. But especially realtors. They treat everyone as if they just landed on here from Planet Xethon and use their street signs to lead people to their open houses.”

That was my metaphor because the previous weekend it had been Everyone In Minnesota Sell Your Home Day and the first sign for the open house down the road was 13 miles away. Unless you were blind (and if you are, why are you driving?) the Edina Realty signs would take you right to the door.

In my little corner of extreme northeast Washington County, our annual Summer festival is called Taco Days. I’m not sure why since the Hispanic makeup of the market is about .0002%. But it’s a tradition and you can’t argue with traditions.

It’s always the second Saturday of September which is opportune because the State Fair is over, people have just returned to life and school and are already beginning to regret it. So they escape to the scenic St. Croix River Valley for a day of hiking and eating and boating and climbing and the Daze folk, while owning the locals, always look to pull heavily from the tourists.

How do they do that? With signs. Simple signs. Read more…

Miss Peregrines Home for Peculiar Promotions

Posted by: Paige Nienaber In: Promotions 29 Aug 2017 Comments: 0

Dom Theodore has a great term: “wallpaper”. When he was in New York at CBS, one of the other stations in the company was doing something called, wait for it, “The Payroll Payoff”. Based on their history of doing easily forgettable contesting, he sighed and said “Ugh. Wallpaper.”

Great stations usually have the intestinal fortitude to just throw caution to the wind and do something a little off-center.
Why? Because that’s the best part of being huge and successful: doing stuff that breaks the mold. It’s a freedom to have fun.

Hot 89.9 in Ottawa is a great example. For them to have more listeners, they’d have to wait for their current audience to breed. That’s how many they have. So a few years ago when female air talent were submitting tapes to fill in for Kelly on Regis & Kelly, they did the opposite. Mauler from the morning show was transformed into “Molly” and “her” tape was “her” at events and on the air, dubbed by Jenni his co-host. He was an actual runner-up. And because God has a sense of humor, he actually made it as a Regis replacement. Read more…

There Ain’t No Party Like A Holiday Season Stripper ‘N Hooker Party

Posted by: Paige Nienaber In: Promotions, Uncategorized 28 Jul 2017 Comments: 0

I’d been at the station that was soon-to-become Wild 107.7 in San Francisco for about a month when Halloween rolled around and the consensus was “We need to find a way into the Exotic Erotic Ball”. I asked what that was and they rolled their eyes and said “Sneak us in there and find out.”

That was intriguing enough for me, so with a little subterfuge and creativity we Rambo’ed the biggest Halloween party in the US.

To paraphrase Cotton McKnight, I’ve seen the Great Pyramids of Egypt. I’ve seen a grown man satisfy a camel. But I’ve never seen anything as improbable as 50,000 mostly naked people partying in SOMA.

The Exotic Erotic Ball ran for 3 decades and was the confluence, the result of a fundraiser for some nudist movement and the annual holiday bash thrown by/for the sex industry employees of the Bay Area.

You’re asking yourself, “But how does this relate to Radio promotions?”

It doesn’t. It was clickbait and thanks to Dashboard Mailchimp I can tell the name and email of every single person who read this piece. And like J. Edgar Hoover, it’s info that I’ll hold close until such time as I need to use it.

In addition to the proliferation of skin, the hook that the Ball had was huge, ginormous cash prizes and themed activities. It was a spectacle.

Promotions is the Art of Standing Out. And with Halloween that can be hard since every bar, legion hall or other establishment with a liquor license, on the planet, will have a party. And most will be as exciting as their regular Tuesday night “2 for 1 PBR Tallboys!” special with a $50 costume prize thrown in. Read more…

Phenomenon And Transcending Formats

Posted by: Paige Nienaber In: Promotions 22 May 2017 Comments: 0

I can deal with assholes and I can deal with sleazebags and I can handle when promotions don’t go perfectly but the thing that just makes my head do the whole Star Wars Death Star Blowed Up Thing is when stations miss opportunities to market themselves.

And when I say “miss” I mean it in the context of not changing up the imaging, doing something on the morning show, doing some social media posts, maybe some web graphics or a weekend theme, or even just showing up for it.

The reason that a station in Chicago missed the Bears in the Super Bowl was that “Our CHR audience doesn’t care about football.” In Chicago. Maybe the biggest grouping of sports nuts on the planet. Read more…