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…

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…

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…