If you get a bunch of Programmers together, inevitably someone will bring up the time some AE agreed to do something atrocious or committed the station to doing something that, well, was a really bad idea.
But I might have the winner and 34 years later I’m still having night terrors about it.
There are a million analogies between Taylor Swift in 2023 and the New Kids in 1989. Just a staggering number of similarities. The passion. The insane lengths that people will go to try and just PURCHASE the tickets is amazing, so it can sometimes be soul crushing to see a station just waste a million dollar prize for a seemingly tiny sales opportunity.
While I’m typing this one of my clients locked down a $100,000 buy for an on-air Taylor ticket giveaway with on-site elements. THAT…is not wasting the tickets.
Conversely there was a Facebook Live in my feed from a station where they were at a remote at a convenience store with a registration box and a pair of Taylor tickets for a drawing at the end of the broadcast.
First thing that was wrong was that the breaks were all about all of the products and prices and, “we also have a pair of Taylor Swift tickets.” Taylor is and forever shall-be the A. Taylor goes up front. The discount on diet soda falls in behind her.
Also, it sounded like there were six people there. They could have been giving passes to the circus or car show.
This caused me to flashback to July 1989 and my first full day at Kiss 102 in Charlotte. I’d come from WLOL in Minneapolis which was a station that spent hundreds of thousands on promotions and marketing annually, to a station that had about $300 a month. For everything. (The company had just spent 83 million for K-Earth and it had to come from somewhere.) I knew this going in and it was going to require creativity and smoke and mirrors and making the most of every opportunity, client or not, that crossed my desk.
So imagine my shock when I found…wait for it…TWENTY FIVE PAIRS of tickets to see New Kids On The Block.
Holy Muther of Balls. Jo Jo Wright started that day also and when I told him about the cache of tickets, I could see his brain start spinning. I went back to my little dump-of-a-hotel on Independence Blvd., found the bar and sketched out six weeks of contesting. It would start with a banner contest along the busiest road in Charlotte, followed by a morning show “New Dad’s On The Block” promotion that would make one dad a hero for his kid, by dressing up AS one of the kids. That would be followed by a song-of-the-day contest for a week, which would roll into a contest that would reward a girl for narcing out a sibling. Six contests over six weeks. This was going to be a nuke. I’d announce my presence with authority. A quote from another Nuke.
And so I went into my first department head meeting the next day feeling like a team coming out of the locker room for the kickoff of the Superbowl. I was ready. I’d spent years hanging banners at remotes. This was my time. This was my destiny.
As the new employee they started with me. I went through my spiel, introduced myself to the people who hadn’t been in the previous day, and said that I’d put together a plan that was going to just be a promotional tsunami (this was before tsunami’s had a super bad connotation) and said, “It’s all about the biggest tour in America, New Kids On The Block…”
The PD was the brilliant Music Strategist, Mark Shands. I hadn’t had time to brief him but his smile literally wrapped around his head.
And it was then that we get to the Worst Sales Story…Ever. From the far end of the conference table piped up a small voice with a helluva twang. Think “Dolly Parton meets Cindy Lou Who”.
“Excuse me, but the New Kids tickets are committed to a client promotion.”
No one really said anything.
I asked, “How many?”
Cindy Lou Parton with full confidence, said, “All of them.”
Mark looked like he was going to puke. I probably looked worse. He asked, “Who approved that?” And my new Local Sales Manager said, “You’d fired Lynn (my predecessor) and I had a client that needed an added value promotion so I took the initiative to close this sale.” No sense of defensiveness in her reply.
Chris, the NSM and who was genuinely fantastic, asked, “Who is the client?”
Deborah replied, “Dark & Lovely Hair Care Products.”
And this is where my story wins.
I blurted, “The New Kids are WHITE!”
Again, no sense of contrition and in a sing songy kind of voice she said, “I did not know that.”
The General Sales Manager asked, “How substantial was their investment” and again, as if she wasn’t the biggest fucking idiot in the zip code, she said “$2700.” The NSM looked like she wanted her head on a pike. $850 in tickets with a marketing value of maybe a quarter million…out the window. I was literally too stunned and deflated to talk for the rest of the meeting. As we were leaving the meeting, Mark Shands nodded at me and kinda tilted his head towards his office.
He closed the door, sighed, sat behind his desk and explained, “She’s at the #1 FM in Charlotte after a career at an AM station in Salisbury. She’s in a big city with a Mayberry mindset. Deborah is the one that you’ll really need to keep an eye on.”
And he was right, Her next promotion involved giving away tickets to a free event, and somewhere in the pile was a giveaway form for Nix Head Lice Cream.
So, my poor un-appreciated intern Ellen got to spend a day putting hundreds of miles on the van, delivering boxes, registration pads and yes, a pair of tickets to tiny drug stores all over the Carolinas. None of the places were in the metro and were scattered around at places like Wadesboro, Rockingham and Greer.
Nope. There was no station oversight for the contest, so I have no doubt that most of the winners were daughters of drugstore owners.
That’s my story. I have to have won.
And one final anecdote: at that first meeting the Music Director rushed in, late, and out of breath. “Ted Kennedy was in a car accident!” and started talking about how he’s driven off a bridge and a woman had drowned.
I love weird senses of humor and laughed a little until Alan the Engineer nudged me and whispered, “He just heard about it.”
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