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.
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.
Progressive signage to promote appearances and events and even simple cash contests. A line of cheerleaders spelling out a phrase is more likely to get a morning commuters attention than a quick 17 second promo that is indistinguishable from a spot for Maggengill in its energy and excitement level.
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.
The best part of being huge and successful: doing stuff that breaks the mold. It’s a freedom to have fun. Peculiar doesn’t have to be bad. Promotions is about getting noticed and being a little weird never hurt.
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. What you need to do, to win, is to get the Professional Costume Crowd. So it’s a really good exercise in problem solving: how are we going to do something, like a food drive or a toy drive or a Valentines wedding or a Halloween party, that will crush everything else? Because why would you ever want to do something that wasn’t remarkable?
Every market has that suburb that it’s all right to make fun of. I’ve seen the same thing happen numerous times and with numerous morning shows. They intentionally or not threw a little attention at an oft-ignored corner of the market and became stars. It’s always good to know what community that is. And then test the waters occasionally to see if they have a sense of humor and then, who knows, you might move a whole town over into your win column.
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.
Missed opportunities suck. Write that on a post-it and stick it on your office wall.
The audience has the attention span of a Golden Retriever. So get a calendar, write in what you know you have coming up and start filling in the blanks. Like a row of dominoes.
When a listener feels they can get away with not listening to you, it will be hard to get them back. That’s what happens when you lose your Dang.
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