Caller number ten wins a 10 dollar coupon

and other tales from radio promotions

A week or so ago my boyfriend called me to tell me he had won a radio contest. As you can imagine, I was amused. I spent 20 years on the other side of the giveaway and started thinking back to all the frustrations of contesting and the “fun and games,” the poor promotions department went through, the winners…. and I rolled up into a ball and hid until someone brought me my weighted blanket and a flat ginger ale.

Seriously, radio promotions of any kind are no picnic.

First of all coming up with an idea for a radio promotion is difficult. It doesn’t just have to have a snappy name, it has to have a contest in it. So you have to decide is this an on-air contest, is this web based, are we doing a key word or texting? Who has to write the contest rules?

Is this an onsite contest? Where is the site? What are we doing, will we need release forms? What about props or contesting pieces? Are we live streaming this on our website? Who is filming this entirely ridiculous thing for TikTok? Is this for a client? #isthereatalentfee

Whatever it is, you’ll have to have this thing called a promotions meeting.

This is who is usually in attendance:

-The poor overworked Promotions Director (who is also the web designer, graphics person, quasi lawyer, liaison to the police, fire, zoning officials of the county, auto mechanic, car detail dude or gal, personal shopper, bail bondsmen, taxi driver and mental health provider of the station cluster, who is doing this for 5 or 6 stations.)

-The Sales Manager (who is late for a round of golf with a client.)

-The Operations Manager/ General Manager (who wants everyone to know they too used to be on the radio and they are still cool.)

-The Program Director for the station (who has 45 music logs to do back at their desk and has to keep saying “no we won’t be giving away 10 cents off a hot dog at Sheppys on the air,” and reminding people that putting the words EXTREME, FRESH, FOR MOM, UNDERGROUND, FAMILY FOUR PACK, in front of any event doesn’t automatically make it in the station’s audience demographic.)

These four people or some variant of these people will sit down in a room and “think.”

Ways they *think* include, shouting boob jokes, telling fart jokes, discussing how we could legally set something on fire, how can we make this remote broadcast at a strip club family friendly, more boob jokes, “That’s what she said,” someone calls someone an asshole, “Let’s trot out what we did LAST YEAR and change the name!” and sometimes a little bit of talking about the budget.

(Say “That’s what she said,” one more time…)

The promotions meeting adjourns and everyone goes off to breathe life into contest ideas that end up on the radio. The ones you don’t ever hear or see online though, those are the gems. Think about it, if you’ve ever heard a contest and thought “Damn that is a weird/dumb/offensive idea,” the ones we didn’t give you were worse.

Some things we’ve tried to figure out how give away were so weird I can’t even believe they made it to the meeting. One year we were doing a Super Bowl promotion where that station’s sales staff wanted us to give away…. an area rug.

An area rug… on a classic rock station for Super Bowl.

An area rug. Like not a team logo area rug… just an area rug.

(Ahh yes, this is exactly what I needed for my Super Bowl party!!!)

It didn’t happen, but I still can’t hear the words area rug without giggling.

Another contest that never materialized was one where we had a boat to give away. And instead of having the usual giving away keys and one key starts the boat thing, we decided we’d get a big crane or two big cranes I can’t remember and give people the chance to push a button and it was a 50/50 chance, the boat either crashed to the ground or didn’t and you won the boat. I can’t remember the myriad of reasons WHY this stroke of genius never happened but for years to come, we could be sitting in a promotions meeting at that station group and when we couldn’t figure out how to give something away, some one would always pipe up “Let’s just drop a boat on the fucker and go home.”

Actual on air contesting and promotions aren’t this involved but executing them isn’t easy either. For one you have to have something someone wants to win badly enough to actually participate in it. Then you have to hope and pray your winner isn’t a… dud.

Imagine going out in public and saying “I have 50,000 dollars and I am going to just give it to the 25th person to just call me on this phone.” and when that 25th person calls and you say “OMG I have 50,000 dollars for you! HOW COOL IS THAT?!?” And the response you get is….

“great. cool.”

(feels bad man)

Or you get this at the end of saying “50,000 DOLLARS! OMG” over and over to the winner:

“What did I win, again?”

(Nothing, you win nothing forever!)

The other fun thing is cleaning out the prize drawer on “expiration day,” which is when all the gift cards and concert tickets and theme park passes we gave away are about to expire and you realize almost none of these people come to get their prizes. This is also “Feed The DJs They Are Really Poor Day,” where everyone runs around picking up all burgers and pizzas we were given to give away that no one picks up. Pass the paper Happy Star coupon, we’re going to fancy dinner, kids!

Contests aren’t all stress and sadness on the other side of the console though. Sometimes a really amazing promotion comes together and people are super stoked to win whatever it is you’re giving away. Sometimes it’s even someone who really needs that prize for whatever reason and that part is cool. Sometimes even people are just happy to win a prize, no matter how small it is.

We’re going on a pizza date tonight to use that pizza gift certificate. My boyfriend may look at it like a free pizza, but I looked at that thing when we pulled it out of our mail box as a whole group of people getting together to make someone happy. So thank you!

(Also big props and a big thank you to KZOZ for MAILING this thing to us! So much easier to claim our prize this way. xoxo)