Opening Your Promotional Tool Kit

An Example Of Each Implement:

• Build awareness.  Million dollar cash grab.
• Force listening.  $1,000 song of the day.
• Create sampling.  Premiums:  t shirts, stickers, refer magnets.
• Packaging.  Thousand song weekend, lunchtime requests.
• Loyalty/regularity.  Points program.
• Coupon/Discounts.  Commercial free Monday, at work kickoff.

Before employing these tactics, always ask yourself what your competition will do to top it.

Be prepared for that response and decide if you will have to top IT as well as how and when you'll do so.

Bad Promos

No promotional announcement should ever be longer than thirty seconds.

Paint a picture.  Use theater of mind, metaphors and similes.

Start and end with your station brand name, but incorporate it authentically so that it doesn’t seem tacked on or “old school” radio in style.

Deliver a “promise” in the first sentence, pairing your brand name with it.  Make sure the target listener gets hooked by the “promise” before the brand is linked to it.

Use sound effects to enhance the mental picture.  Marketing is placing your product in the mind of the consumer so that they picture themselves using it.

Effective promos MUST sound superior to any commercial that will air before or after them.

There must be three to five versions of every promo to keep the working fresh and unpredictable.  Produce updates for each one that are time-dated (Sunday, tomorrow, today).

Use “reach” and “frequency” stats to calculate how many times to air one to be sure the majority of your target hears the message.  One they have, they’re going to mentally “tune out” if you overplay the message beyond that point.

The most effective promos are perishable.  Build fresh ones constantly and don’t recycle old ones unless you wait a VERY long time before doing so.

The Stages Of Every Radio Promotion

One of my early heroes was San Francisco’s Jim Gabbert.  I learned a lot listening to his radio and watching his TV station.  He is a master of self-promotion, having learned from Gordon McClendon and Don Keyes who taught many great radio lessons on how to stage and execute a big idea back when they owned KABL.

1. Start to sell in advance.  Tease.  Entice.  Don’t just tell me something is “coming soon.”  Take a lesson from movie and TV show trailers and get me interested by revealing what’s in it for me.
2. Launch.  Make a major event of the the day of unveiling.
3. Fertilize it.  Remind listeners often with new, intriguing updates.  Make sure that new listeners that were attracted by the buzz of the event also know all the things they need to fully participate.  Do this for the life of the promotion.
4. Add excitement.  Embellish continually during the life of the promotion by adding new prizes, bonus days, repeating earlier clues, new ways to win.
5. Keep tension high by keeping the promo announcements intense.
6. Memory.  After it’s over, summarize the event.  Thank listeners who participated and sponsors, make use of “winner audio,” but if you do that make sure that you have multiple versions including what it sounded like in replay of when they won, what it sounded like when they claimed their prize, later talking about how they used it, etc.

Skipping any of these steps hurts the potential of any promotion you do.

What Are You Planning This Weekend?

The first thing many listeners ask each other when they get to work on a Monday morning reflects how important discretionary time is to each of us.

When your talent begins a new week on the air, make sure they are equipped with a brief list of powerful station promotions, special local events, celebrations, holidays, concerts, theater, television, sports and community events.

All items on this roster should appeal to your target listener.  Check their social media pages to see what goings-on they’re planning to be at.

If they’re talking about them, you should be talking about them.

Excuse Me, Sir, But Do You Have Any Good-Ass Imaging?

One of the most venerable of Dallas production houses that has become famous for quality imaging parts and music is advertising a fresh series they just released.

First impression of the campaign:  obviously, this stuff's only for a self-important sports talk or old style rock station, not for a contemporary or female-targeted station, especially not country.

Then, I hit the Urban Dictionary to find out what the term really meant.

First rule of being a badass. A badass does not talk about being a badass. Period.

Maybe it is possible to be a country leader and still be a bad-ass after all, but please before ordering a package of imaging from anybody, read all seven of the unspoken rules of being a bad ass and take them to heart.

Disney's "Low Ride Out" Policy

Some years ago WAJI/Ft. Wayne PD Barb Richards attended Disney Institute and came away raving about many principles she learned and put into practice as a programmer.

For example: "When they put in a new ride, they take out the one with lowest ridership."

If you are a popular station, you probably get lots of requests to be involved with events. It's hard to say no -- and the next thing you know you're over-committed. Rather than adding and adding to the calendar, look at the events that give you the most exposure or the really big image builders. Keep those, move some smaller events in and out. Say no to the rest. Don't be afraid to move on to new things when you sense an old one has run it's course.

We kick off our "95 Days Of Summer" with a water-park party.

There's just no other way to start the summer in Fort Wayne. Unfortunately in the years we have done this event, the weather has been crappy more times than not. We used to do a rain date, but discovered that it was really hard to keep up the enthusiasm. So we decided if the weather was bad, we would just cancel.

Still planning on doing it next year, but thinking about what we can do as an alternate. How can I make this event still work with our lousy, unpredictable Indiana weather?

Ask yourself when someone wants the station to become involved if this is the best decision for the station. How would you feel if you heard it on anther station? Would it bother you not to be there?

These questions can help you decide if you want to be involved.

Promotions are great, for so many reasons. But they have to work for the organization or sponsor, and work for the station.

The Space Heater In The Well House

Water to my home comes from a well, and several years ago during a winter cold snap the pipes from the well froze. So, of course, I "winterized" everything. Insulation on all pipes. Heaters in every location possible.

Thankfully, we've never had our pipes freeze again in spite of a few days each winter of bitter cold temperatures.

Yesterday, a lovely mid-70's summer day, I discovered that the space heater in my well house has been keeping the temperature in there in the mid-80's, driving up my utility bills, for at least the last 90 days, if not longer.

Do you have any "space heaters in your (programming) well house?"

• That 60's and 70's weekend music show which worked very well when 60's and 70's variety was important to your strategy, a decade ago?
• A value-added short form feature you agreed to run when a prospect dangled big bucks in front of sales, but the client no longer remembers that you run it to get his business?
• Morning show benchmarks which seemed like good ideas once upon a time, but haven't been freshened or tested in a very long time?

Summer started this week, so it's too late to encourage you to do "spring cleaning" of your features, contests, promotions, mentions and other programming elements.

Instead, like I did yesterday, maybe it's time for you to turn off a few "space heaters" that only cost resources and have outlived their usefulness.

July 4 Ideas

1. The biggest Independence Day 'blowout' of all time. Award a prize to a listener who can blow out all 235 candles on an "America's birthday cake."

2. Have a 'red, white and blue picnic.' Every food item is colored either red, white or blue (food dye).

3. On air fireworks - accompany local displays with patriotic tunes at dusk.

4. Boombox parade, with station t-shirt-clad listeners.

5. Uncle Sam Lookalike contest.

OK, what have YOU got going?

Before We Move On

"I'm a big believer of stations sounding real....no, best, most, baddest w/ blips, bips, zips, growls, and zaps.....that is soooo over......just communicate the core values (listener benefits) in as real and as brief a fashion as humanly possible....people are so burned on hype.....if at all possible let others speak about you, instead of speaking about yourself...attached is an example from actor Shia LeBouf.....all we do is identify him at the beginning, and that's it.....the rest of the "co-signing" is all on him....if we added anything else here it would have been piling on and way too much.....make your station sound real, listener focused, and genuinely fun, not goofy, not dated with lasers, and no chest thumping copy......is it any wonder we are a TSL challenged medium, a majority of stations continue to insult the intelligence of their listeners by still insisting they sound like 1986.....younger demos coming up today, just don't give a shit.....so please don't drive them away from our medium.....you are are free to disagree here....I will just close with this.... I travel a lot, and hear a lot of stations driving listeners away...if you are in a PPM market you know how important brevity, sincerity, and creativity are.....yup even more important than they were in the diary system.... " -- Jimmy Steal, VP/Emmis/Los Angeles

Do It Right "Orr" Else

Paul Orr: be certain what goes between your songs stands out ... in only the "best" ways:

• Use local lifestyle for imaging content
• When imaging flows into the music, you have extra momentum
• Listen to your competitors for claims that you might turn 180 degrees and use against them
• Use hooks as themes for imaging
• Hot new thing: produce jingles for song stamps so the integrate with your music and don't sound like "old" jingles
• For random audio: clips from remotes where the talent is very excited, after Listener Advisory Board panels
• Listeners doing imaging adds to ‘personal’ feel of station.
• Set up listener comment line to collect comments
• Sound real; communicate the core values and listener benefits in as real and brief a fashion as possible.
• Listeners are burned on hype; let listeners talk about you instead of us talking about us. No chest thumping.
• Think: brevity, creativity and sincerity.
• Use artists (or listeners) to explain a contest
• Add random but related copy to attract listener attention.
• Archive artist audio for music and contest promos.

Nick Michaels' Philosophy

If you've heard or seen Nick anywhere, at a seminar or even on his own website, you've no doubt been exposed to at least a part of his approach to imaging anything today:

"The secret of all great radio is great story telling. Great radio is made when intimacy and emotion are used to connect the audience to what is coming out of the speakers."

Understanding radio and what makes it different.

1: Emotion

Radio is an emotional medium. More than television, more than print, it is best at conveying emotion.

Radio messages work best when they are driven by an emotion. Take full advantage of radio's emotional nature by writing for it. The power of emotion over facts is evident on radio.

Save the facts for print. Print is where facts can be enjoyed, perused at leisure, re-read and referred to.

2: Give it a face and a name

When writing an image ad for radio, always try to personalize it by giving it a face and a name.

Instead of "When the weather gets bad , turn to News-Radio 1100, First with weather facts and school closings."

Try to build the message around a person not a concept.

" This is Marie Jenkins, her twelve year old son Ronnie has kidney disease. He needs dialysis or he could die. When Marie needs to know about weather, she turns to News-Radio 1100, Because to her, the weather, can be a matter of life and death."

This stresses the user benefit of the station and the personal nature of the message does not cause listener tune out.

3: In an over communicated world a whisper becomes a scream.

The environment into which your message is sent is hostile. Your message must factor this in from the very beginning or it is doomed to fail. Too many messages means only a few get through. Is yours one of them?

4: Don't burden the listener.

Never forget that the listener can only take home one thought. Trying to make the message carry more weight than it can causes the listener to be burdened.

5: Words are the enemy in a message.

Too many words. Wherever possible establish mood with sound not words.

6: Write powerfully, read humbly.

If the words are powerful, you do not need to add any power to them with your voice. Lose all the additional vocal power and let the word power shine through. If the words are not powerfully written, get better writers.

7: Creativity is perspective

Deliver your message from a different perspective. Be different.

Tomorrow: Journal Knoxville PD Paul Orr takes this all one step further for stations in competitive situations.

Stationality: Who Is Your Listener? What's YOUR "Word?"

Yesterday's post included a slide from Daniel Anstandig's 2007 presentation at Dan O'Day's PD Grad School, because Dan made some evergreen points so perfectly.

#1: choose YOUR ''word."

"Comfort," the one that resides in the center of his example bullseye works perfectly for a Christian AC or other soft format.

What one word gives expression to everything you want to stand for in the mind of your audience? Choose thoughtfully.

It is imperative to understand the target listener’s world of experience.


Successful stations give listeners a sense of belonging by validating their values and lifestyle.

It is impossible for us to “out-technology” new technology.

Creative distribution can’t hurt us, but the bottom-line for continual growth is cultivating relationships through your programming.

How can you make a one-on-one connection with your listener in a way that they believe you’re talking to them on a personal level every time they listen?

It’s not only about what your radio station does. It’s about what your radio station means.

Tomorrow, another audio communication expert, Nick Michaels, on how to make sure that this happens on your radio station.

Elements Of Stationality

What parts of your radio station do you employ to develop "stationality" listeners can consistently experience?


.... Everything!

.. with thanks to McVay New Media's Daniel Anstandig.

A Cautionary Tale

(click here to read the entire story) A former KVI-AM, Seattle promotions coordinator was charged Tuesday with first-degree theft for allegedly rigging a radio contest to pocket some of the winnings, and 14 others allegedly involved in the scam were charged with second-degree theft.

Yes, it's illegal. Of course, it's illegal. But, worse, do you want to see your name (and probably your face too) on TV, on competing radio stations, in the papers?

There's a word for this: S-T-U-P-I-D. Enough stupid to go around, from the top down.

Stephen Colbert Gives Us A Lesson In Powerful, Creative Teasing

Stephen Colbert has deployed to Iraq for a USO tour entitled "Operation Iraqi Stephen: Going Commando." He will perform his shows in front of the troops for the next week, according to Comedy Central.

While there, Colbert will host Deputy Prime Minister of Iraq Barham Saleh and General Ray Odierno, commander of the Multi-National Forces in Iraq, among others. The show is taking place at an undisclosed military base in conjunction with the USO, and promises to boast "shout outs from notable figures in society."

Anticipation (get excited in advance about what you're going to do), Realization (create word of mouth by standing for something relatable and important) and Memory (don't let them forget what you did) are in full force at Comedy Central. Watch and learn how it's done.

Lured By Sammy Simpson's Great Ideas

Like these: People are brought together through a variety of shared interests through social-networking sites like LinkedIn, Twitter, Bebo, Facebook, and Myspace. Such sites promote the person and the relationships they have with friends who are connected with them.

Some people have hundreds, even thousands of connections linked to them. However, experts believe that about 150 “friends” is as far as our capacities can take us. Gen Y research has shown that 1 in 5 even say they have "best friends" through these sites which they have never met!

Solicit listeners with 150 friends or more to participate in a Social NetWORTH contest/promotion.

Have them make you a friend for their page, so you can view all of their connections. Randomly choose someone from their list and put the two "friends" together on the phone.

Now, have them participate in a "How well do you know me?" quiz. For each answer the friend can answer, they win cash or a prize.

Visit www.lured.com for some questions to use to determine their true Social NetWORTH (Share this idea with a friend and encourage them to join lured.com. I just did, with YOU!)

KUUB's Tim & Malayna Broadcast With A 9 Year Old Cohost

Cub Country 94-5/Reno assisted one of their younger listeners yesterday with a toy drive to aid children who lost everything in the recent Fernley, NV floods as nine-year-old Ashlee Smith joined the Morning show for three hours to collect toys, cash and gift cards. They collected enough during the show to fill the back of her family's truck. The on-air drive is part of a larger toy drive for the flood victims. Tim & Malayna will assist Ashlee in distributing the toys later this month,

WSOC's "Stout Pull"

The promo:

" .. the first ever 103.7 WSOC Stout Pull, our idea of what a guitar pull should be, featuring Jake Owen, Lee Brice, Keith Anderson, and Trent Tomlinson on Wednesday, January 23rd at Coyote Joe’s, located at 4621 Wilkinson Blvd., in Charlotte. Doors open at 7p.m. and the show will begin at 9p.m. Ladies get in FREE and guys pay only 3 bucks and all proceeds will benefit the Loaves and Fishes food pantry..."

Why call it a Stout Pull? You'll have to ask OM DJ (Stout).

Sammy Simpson's Newest Idea-Sharing Blog

1. When you giveaway a vehicle, have the dealer change the chrome vehicle ID to match your brand.

2. Turn a grand opening or other function into an interactive event, office-golf.

3. A great way to generate traffic for a trade show or any traffic generating need, longest kiss.

4. Make it a Cinco de Mayo they will remember. Turn someone into a human pinata.

See photos of these and more (including the "undy 500").

Idea File

Watch the latest web video from Lynch & Meyers as they prep their show for The Brew, Milwaukee. Thanks for Sean Lynch for sending it along.

WSSL, Greenville, was the first station (almost 15 years ago now) that I heard put their daily morning show promo on the station's music on hold, so everyone who calls the station hears a plug for tomorrow's morning show while they wait for their party at the station.

OK, what have YOU been up to?