Next week’s blog post will be about Promotional Positions and will offer up an exercise we do whenever we launch a station, or know we’re going to be launched on. It’s also outstanding just as a look back at the year as we head into ’14 and see what we need to lock down in the coming 12 months.
One of my favorite “positions” is Trips, which often are Money Can’t Buy prizes. Honestly? The Grammys? The Eagles in London? The Superbowl? No one in the real world is ever going to be able to attend one of thosStrength In Numbers
e things, so these can be really amazing prizes that we want to own and get credit for.
The best way to do that? Create an umbrella and then number them. When we started Wild in San Francisco the music position was “stopless music”, so we started doing Stopless Jetaways, starting of course with Stopless Jetaway #7. Why? Because it sounds bigger.
There is an added benefit to numbering things like trips; it allows you to post-promote some of the really cool things you’ve done in the past and that were probably forgotten as soon as The Morning Nutz announced the winner.
Example? “In the past we’ve sent you to see One Direction in Hawaii, swimming with Katy Perry at a pool party in Miami, shopping with Mariah Carey at the Mall of America, and to the Superbowl and an afterparty with Lady Gaga…all this weekend? It’s Fantastic Fucking Flyaway #49…sending you and your best friend to see Bruno Mars in Paris!!!”
That sounds large. Unless of course you f it up and do “Like us on Facebook!” or “Click and register to win”.
Ditto with vehicles. We had one. But each driver or DJ had their own number, so when I called in I was always “Paige in Van #14”.
Radio is not minimalism, it’s maximalism. So it KILLS me to hear a DJ say something like “Thank you to the 200 people who showed up at the Beer Fest this Saturday!” 200? Say “Hundreds and hundreds of our fans (“fans” are cooler to have than “listeners”) who came out to party on Saturday!”
Arguably the largest contest in US Radio was “The Last Contest” in San Diego, and a large part of the success was the incredibly sexy imaging of the prizes. They didn’t say “Prize #42 is $10,000!” Zzzz. Instead they said, “If you pick prize #42 you will have won thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars in CASH!”
Why? Because that sounds larger.
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