Big Ideas…Damn the Budget

Michael Hedges September 8, 2008

Promotion ideas are easy. Everybody has them. Turning an idea into a major promotion is not the realm of the faint-hearted. And that’s one reason many broadcasters have given them up. The accountants never liked all that expense anyway.

As a young program director I was always trying to sell a promotion idea to the boss. In a very brand conscious and promotionally-oriented broadcasting company I learned that the key to MY promotion, if not job security, was keeping the bosses attention and enthusiasm. His words as I made pitch after pitch haunt me still. “Make it bigger,” he’d say before tossing me out of the big corner office.

Promotions fail, said NRJ International CEO Mathieu Sibille because they are ‘not daring.”

“It is important to try and innovate,” said Bauer Media’s Steve Taylor, “so that listeners are actively waiting to hear the promotion and in essence it becomes an additional and welcome layer of the programming mix.”

Bauer Media, across its 22 UK radio stations, seized an idea, ran with it and created a major radio event with significant brand impact and enormous public service value. The idea was to create a day for children since the UK had no formal national day highlighting children. The partner Bauer Media approached was the UK charity Save the Children. The fund-raiser “For The Kids Day” was created.

The impact was enhanced by a content-rich approach to a public appeal for donations to Save The Children. Teenagers participated, voicing promos and producing a special networked program. It aired last March 28th, the entire day given up to one event.

The promotion lasted five weeks, scoring print and television coverage and notice from UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

If inventing an entire promotional concept causes tremors in the accounting department, imagine the simple, tried and tested promotion that causes a truly national stir. It was Radio Expres in Slovakia that saw its One Million Banknotes contest affect the currency distribution in the entire country. Of course, there were winners and massive publicity.

The concept is a radio favorite, a natural for sponsorship by a financial institution. Serial numbers, full and partial, are read on-air by DJs with daily cash winners working up to the giant prize. The promotion “had phenomenal results,” said Radio Expres General manager Eva Babitzova. “The special bonus was the official letter from the National Bank of Slovakia to our sponsor:

"This artificially-induced state caused an inadequate hoarding of this nominal value in the financial cash circuit. To illustrate, we can state that under the influence of the competition the amount of 20 Sk banknotes issued into the cash circuit in March this year rose by 38.3% and by up to 63% in April compared to the long-term average."

Radio Expres, covering the majority of Slovakia, has a 25% market share.

Sadly, American radio broadcasters – once the bleeding edge of radio branding – find contests and promotions out of favor. Once huge radio brands have slipped to obscurity as companies, strapped for cash, cut everything but power to the transmitter. Consolidation has taken its toll.

“I feel that the word ‘contest’ is the killer bad word just like the word ‘sports’ turns off women,” said legendary US and Canadian radio programmer George Johns. “It's like no one cares about being number one, only how many stations you have,” added the equally legendary sales and marketing guru Dick Yancey.

Hopefully, those ‘trends’ won’t cross the Atlantic.