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Ticket to Trouble – The Time That Legal Got It Wrong
Posted by: In: Promotions 05 Nov 2020 Comments: 0

This post is a reminder that it’s entirely possible that sometimes, even your Legal Dept. at the corporate level is fallible.

 

I’ve always had my radar up for things that my station or clients could jump on and in the Spring of 1991, my radar pinged a target. I was at the late GREAT Kiss 102 in Charlotte. That station was a monster. Jo Jo Wright was doing Nights and Mark Shands and Erik Bradley had one of the tightest, most amazing Rhythm formats in Radio.

 

I was on my way to an event and a few people were up at the front desk giving one of the AE’s wads of cash. A drug deal! Cool! Count me in!

 

No, sadly, he was on his way to Pittsburgh for a family event, there was a state lottery in Pennsylvania and he was making a ticket run for staff and our friends and neighbors.

 

When everyone else has something and you don’t, it makes you want it even more. Like a state lottery.

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When Promotions Attack #6: The Time A Platinum-Selling Artist Performed For 11 Kids In A High School Auditorium
Posted by: In: Promotions, Street Teamers 07 Oct 2020 Comments: 0

I’ve always looked back at my career in Radio with lots of very happy memories. But as I continue with this blog, I’m beginning to have blocked memories crawl to the surface. PTSD will do that to you. As my Hutterite German father once said, “Feelings are bad. Bury them deep and never speak of them again. Focus on the harvest. The potatoes don’t pick themselves.”

So, yes, there were a few Mary Richards Parties along the way. The Production Director at WLOL used to refer to failed promotions as “Mary Richards Parties” because on the MTM show, all her parties were disasters.

 

In early 1987 I was the Promotion Coordinator at Emmis’ late, great, helped-pay-for-the-Mariners CHR, WLOL in the Twin Cities. And Programming had been really fortunate to have established a relationship with Limited Warranty, which was a local boy band with an EMMENSE and rabid following who would go anywhere and do anything to see the guys. It helped that they were very talented and also, well, good dudes. Read more…

Can I Have A T-Shirt?
Posted by: In: Business of Radio, Promotions, Street Teamers 14 Sep 2020 Comments: 0

For about a month in college I tried telemarketing which, if it’s possible, crushed my beaten-down self-esteem even more.

 

It was brutal.

 

I remember one client the firm was working for wanted to send free diapers to people and they’d somehow procured a subscription list from Parenting Magazine. So we had a pretty good list of contacts for people who might want some.

 

It should have been easy. You’re a new parent? We’d love to send you a free box of diapers and when you’re done with them, just fill out a card and mail it back telling us what you thought.

 

Easy peasy.

 

Outside of being in Little League, I’ve never been screamed at so many times in my life. Read more…

Death Defying Tales From The Radio Trenches
Posted by: In: Business of Radio 13 Aug 2020 Comments: 0

In 2010 I was consulting a station and it was pretty evident early on that the General Manager didn’t like me. This would have made my mom apoplectic: “How could she not like you?!” My services had been foisted on her by corporate and frankly, she was stuck with me.

 

During one meeting she asked, in all seriousness, “How many listeners have you killed?”

 

This question would have been offensive to some people but I took it as a compliment so I leaned back, looked thoughtful, put on a face of “deep contemplation” and finally replied, “Killed? No….(more thoughtful consideration)…no…never have killed anyone.”

 

To be honest, I did have a contest winner ski into a tree and have an asthma attack in West Virginia, and a trip winner got cut by flying glass when Hurricane Iniki blew out her hotel room window on Kauai.

 

But killed? Nope.

 

When I was at the Emmis CHR in the Twin Cities we did a series of events over three summers where we probably fed 10,000 people. Actual darn DJ’s preparing and servicing actual darn food and not one casualty. I’ve always been kind of stunned by that.

 

Me? I haven’t fared as well. Read more…

The Worst Radio Promotion…EVER
Posted by: In: Promotions 24 Jul 2020 Comments: 0

 

Radio Life is about stories. It’s about friends and coworkers and rehashing the highs and lows of our careers. And just about everyone has had their own disaster tale, and when someone tells me that “Nope, never had a contest calamity”, I’ll suggest that maybe they’re not trying hard enough.

 

Great homerun hitters go up to the plate and they swing. And they usually have the most strikeouts on their team but, when they connect, the stands erupt and they’re mobbed at home plate.

This is not one of those moments. This is the kind of experience that, years later, you still kind of get involuntary full-body shivers.

 

This is….The KDWB Blimp.

 

“Hold on…I am vomiting in my mouth…give me a minute” – Buck McWilliams, July 2020

 

It had it all. Mystery. Intrigue. A cast of characters. Prizes. Prizes, I tell you! An attempted hit on one of the principals in the promotion. It just didn’t have a blimp.

 

“That blimp idea cratered the radio station…there was no blimp! WTF?” – Greg Thunder, July 2020

 

In the Summer of 1987 I was Promotion Coordinator at Emmis’s CHR in the Twin Cities, WLOL. It was literally and figuratively a monster. The previous winter we’d actually cracked a 10. The station had a legendary morning team with Hines & Berglund, a booming signal, we owned the streets and because it was Emmis, we did BIG promotions. Read more…

W.W.L.D. (What Would Listeners Do)
Posted by: In: Business of Radio, Contest, Interns, Promotions 04 Jul 2020 Comments: 0

I always enjoyed taking the interns out for pizza late in the summer before they all fled back to their dorms, and thank them for their hard work but also pick their brains for ideas. They hadn’t been in Radio long enough to get screwed up or have their minds polluted with “This is how stuff is done because this is the way we’ve always done it” thought-boxes.

 

I’d ask them about events and contests and remotes and procedures and what would they do differently? How would they make it better? And they never ever let me down and I think really helped the stations improve as we moved forward.

 

The best idea I ever heard was from an intern named Katie who suggested that the station have water coolers and free water at the State Fair booth. “Everything here is so expensive, you can drop $20 before you get in the gate, it’s always so bleeping hot. It would get people to stop at the booth for a moment and maybe get introduced to the DJ’s and the music.”

 

Brilliant. Freaking brilliant. And NO Radio Person would have ever suggested something as insane and reckless and dangerous as free Dixie cups of water.

 

The station implemented it the next year and it was a homerun. Read more…

The Best Promotion Ever?
Posted by: In: Business of Radio, Contest, Pandemic, Promotions 02 Jun 2020 Comments: 0

Among the questions that I’m asked, like “Have you been drinking, sir?” and “Who does your hair?” is “What do you think the best promotion was?”

 

That’s subjective. If you asked a GM and a PD and a talent and a Sales Manager and a listener that question, you’d get five different answers. And they’d all be right.

 

My answer, today, at this moment, on a sunny afternoon in Minnesota as I take a break from trying to discern the directions for a new hammock, would be “The Xtreme Radio beach house in Honolulu.”

 

There was a point in history when MTV played videos and they did contests that should have been on the Radio. Giving away a pink house? Please. Totally a radio contest. Having Prince come and take you to a movie screening? Radio contest. So when they did a beach house in 1998, I immediately thought, “radio promotion” and quickly lobbed it at all of the Clifton stations.

 

It took a couple of months but Xtreme Radio in Honolulu took it on and hit it out of the park.

 

  1. They got a summer rental on the north shore from Memorial Day to Labor Day. And it was pretty amazing. It was surrounded by a wall, had a pool and grotto, was three terraced floors high, and had a basketball court and a huge lawn.
  2. They did one shift a day from there.
  3. 300 listeners were invited to come out and hang out every day.

Read more…

The Summer Of ‘20
Posted by: In: morning show, Pandemic, Promotions 12 May 2020 Comments: 0 Tags: , , , , ,

Photo by sergio souza from Pexels

As opposed to the brilliant Herman Raucher coming-of-age book “The Summer Of ‘42”. If only because it doesn’t end with me becoming intimate with an alluring, older war widow neighbor. And I live in Scandia, Minnesota, not Nantucket.

Except for those elements, it’s exactly the same.

First, let’s reflect on what an interesting Spring this was.

Pause. Deep breath. Move on.

As some semblance of what is and what isn’t normal returns to our lives, we need to look into the near future and start ramping up plans for the summer.

The Summer Of ‘20

It’s assumed that there will be more mingling and consequently sales appearances and remotes could return. This is an excellent guideline from a state association of farmers markets on how the set-ups should be handled.

There are actually some correlations between farmers markets and station remotes that make this something you should look at.

Since mid-March we have become the Masters of The Virtual. We’ve virtually done everything from hair cutting classes to proms and soon some graduations. Read more…

Possibly The Oddest, Most Successful Radio Ad Campaign Ever
Posted by: In: Pandemic 16 Apr 2020 Comments: 0 Tags: , , , , ,

In the middle of the bloodbath that was 2009, 102 Jamz, the #1 station in Orlando had $4000 on the books. This was about the point where CBS had an emergency confab of all their markets in the state at a hotel in Orlando to try to figure out what they could do to stop the bleeding.

 

The #1 answer from that meeting was that “great copy sells spots”. And not a lot of training had gone into teaching the sales team how to craft a great spot, so some of the stations started trolling for interns with writing skills. And they churned out amazing, masterful copy that did end up selling some schedules.

 

One of my favorite creative people was making starvation wages in Glens Falls and started writing ads for my clients at $50 a pop. That’s how she survived.

 

So….

 

….in about 2002 I was at a youth sports event and for some reason a guy jokingly yelled “Hurrah!” Without batting an eye, my friend Cathy did a little tap dance and said, “And the name of the store is Hurrah…3…4.”

 

It was the tag line to one of the most successful Radio campaigns in the Twin Cities for a chain of young women’s clothing stores in the mid-late 1970’s. Read more…

Make This “Radio’s Finest Hour”
Posted by: In: Pandemic 25 Mar 2020 Comments: 0 Tags: , , , , ,

 

In June 1940 Winston Churchill addressed Parliament and referred to the previous month’s decimation of superior German air power by an inferior force as “Our finest hour.”

 

And on March 13th Jerry Clifton posted “This is Radio’s last chance to EVER win back the hearts and minds of our listeners.”

 

Tying Clifton into a Churchill moment is something that I never thought that I would do.

 

But Jerry is right: we’ve become this vibeless, passionless entity that seems to think it can be a better music delivery system than an MP3 or iPod or Sirius. We can’t. But what we can deliver is relevance, entertainment, information, comfort, engagement and help as our listeners face the biggest “threatening experience” in their life.

 

People are locked down, quarantining and are scared. So maybe there are things we can do to help them through this.

Read more…