Hitmakers was one of the many trades that folded while I was writing for it. It probably wasn’t my fault.

One Halloween I asked a lot of PD’s I know to share their scariest promotions, or, the promotions that turned into nightmares. Someone at the mag forwarded me an anonymous fax that they got saying, “What a joke. I’ve never had a bad promotion!”

In the next issue I lead with a note to my anonymous fan suggesting that maybe they hadn’t tried hard enough. Because, honestly if you swing enough, you’re going to have some strikeouts.

If I looked back at my biggest disasters (and there would be a lot to choose from), they were all done “as requested” by the client. These were promotions that I should have stood my ground and said, “This isn’t going to be good. Let’s fix it and pitch them something that will work for them AND us.”

And every station does have stuff that their audience just won’t do or participate in. Hot 99.5 in DC is a fantastic station but their audience will not submit photos for gallery promotions.

When training new Promotion people I always warn them about two things:

• “Write Our Jingle!” contests.
• And anything revolving around the clients spokesperson.

Why?

• We can’t get more than 4% of people to try and text and win $1000. No one wants to write a jingle.
• And while the client may have a lot invested in their spokesperson, honestly, no one cares.

I’m sure that Dave with Wendy’s was a lovely man with a kind and generous heart. So it came to be that I was at Kiss 102, the #1 FM in Charlotte and an agency brought us a promotion that would have people writing letters to Dave and if we read their letter on the air, they got $25 in Wendy’s food.

We had a fantastic NSM and I told her, “No one will enter.”. She sighed and said, “This is what they want.” I said, “Well, I want them to (an act that is possibly illegal in Alabama and Mississippi) me, but they won’t.” I offered some solutions. She pitched them and with a ton of $$$ on the line we did the Letters promotion.

To add to the list of things that we don’t want to do is:

• We don’t want to do a contest that another station is also doing.

And five other stations in Charlotte were doing the promotion.

Between six stations we must have run 3000 Sales promos and…there wasn’t an entry in the market.

And of course, in Wendy’s eyes, it was our fault. And it was. We did their stupid promotion.

There was an upside to all of this: I was left with $2500 in Wendys coupons and the next month I got hired at United Broadcasting in San Francisco. Mrs. Paige and I feasted like kings on the drive out and for quite some time afterwards.

Next? “Go Public With Doritos” which was another gem of a Sales promotion.