CPR Promotions Blog - Page 4 of 12

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 Chinese Menu Theory of Christmas Radio Promotions

Posted by: Paige Nienaber In: Uncategorized 22 Nov 2017 Comments: 0

Growing up in the rough and tumble western suburbs of Minneapolis where life was cheap and good men died like dogs in the gutter, the height of swank for my family was to go to the Foo Chu restaurant on Excelsior Blvd. in St. Louis Park.

It was old school and not some strip mall space-occupying joint. It actually looked Chinese from the outside. Or what a 9 year-old in Minnesota kid imagined Chinese to be. They even had a lounge: THE PAGODA LOUNGE. It was like getting a high ball with Mao.

You walked over little bridge from the lobby into the dining area, past a very realistic faux waterfall and were led to your table, where the real fun began. Why? Because they had a menu with columns. Pretty fancy huh?

You chose a big item from Column A, another shareable entrée from Column B and then an appetizer for the family from Column C. I fantasized that this was how the Kennedy’s dined on New Years day.

We’re on the cusp™ of a season where there are a lot of potential menu items (promotions) being shoved down our throats by servers (advertisers) and no one has ever won when they get everything on the menu, ie, you have 63 promotions on the air in December. You don’t win because it’s a morass of Win-A-Gift-Cards and the clients don’t win because their promotion is sinking in the morass. Read more…

When Disaster Comes To Town

Posted by: Paige Nienaber In: Business of Radio 03 Nov 2017 Comments: 0

In my years in Radio I’ve been a part of relief drives for everything from apartment fires to earthquakes to tornados and hurricanes and mass shootings. But I’ve never been in the position of needing assistance like they’ve gone through in Santa Rosa. So instead of trying to pretend that I have a clue, I’m turning it over to Joss from Froggy 92.9. And I should let you know off the bat that Rob & Joss are a couple that have been together for years, in case you’re kind of wondering what the deal was with them living together.

In the early hours of October 9th I was sound asleep when Rob burst into my room. I heard “Jocelyn” and I sat right up. I was a bit surprised to hear my name in the middle of the night. He goes “It’s Rob” – the light was on. I was looking at him…he’s fully dressed for work and looking at me. I look at the clock thinking that I overslept for work and he was coming to get me…but it was like 1:15am. He goes “There’s fires all over Sonoma County and they are evacuating my mom” I lept out of bed going “We have to get on the air!” He goes “yes!” So I throw clothes on thinking “Good Lord -we just covered the Vegas shooting last week! What now?” 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…

Disaster Relief For Radio Dummies

Posted by: Paige Nienaber In: Uncategorized 05 Sep 2017 Comments: 0 Tags: disaster relief, hurricane, natural disaster, Radio dummies

With Texas slowly draining and Irma now threatening the east coast, it’s maybe a good time to review one of our medium’s greatest strengths: being able to change the plan and be of assistance during crises.

Great radio stations have seminal moments. Those click-over-to-10 moments when they just hit and never looked back. I can’t name one of these moments that involved “giving stuff to people”, ie: contesting. Jamz in Greensboro was a caravan to help Hurricane Andrew victims in Miami. The Boxx in Houston was the same promotion but with the LA earthquake.

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…

The Helmer Johnson Theory Of Bone Throwing

Posted by: Paige Nienaber In: morning show 10 Jul 2017 Comments: 0

Mancow was one of the oddest but best morning guys that I ever worked with. One of the things that impressed me was how he basically schooled himself in some kind of mental crash course, in everything “Bay Area”. We’ve all heard new talent from out of the market miss-pronounce a street or community name, but in San Francisco, Oakland and San Jose, there’s nationalities, neighborhoods…just a lot of things you can screw up and lose credibility.

Every market has that suburb that it’s all right to make fun of. Even the people there acknowledge that they live there but will semi-seriously qualify it as “I live in the nice part of Anoka.” Mancow was able to, the first weekend in San Francisco, zero in on Concord as THAT place. So creating bits around this East Bay community became part of the repertoire and the Concordians….loved it. Read more…