“People with pacemakers or other implanted medical devices should avoid the session and please, please wear rubber-soled shoes.”
That’s Paige Nienaber, self-described “evil genius” of CPR Promotions, describing “20 Electrifying No/Low Budget Promotions That Will Grab People’s Attention,” the Monday, June 3, session scheduled for the upcoming Radiodays North America convention in Toronto.
Nienaber, who is available to stations on barter via MannGroup Radio in America and Orbyt in Canada, is a longtime master of both outrageous and heartstrings promotions. In recent years, radio promotions have slowly been rediscovering their creativity after years of overreliance on “text this keyword” national contests, which don’t always yield even audio of a winner.
On the recent “What Workers Want” webinar, Point to Point Marketing’s Tim Bronsil and Strategic Research Solutions’ Hal Rood cited a “new golden age of contesting,” at least as far as listener interest goes. But the contest capturing their attention might be coming from Mr. Beast, with its history of recycling staple radio promotions, or from a gaming app, not from radio. That’s where we started our discussion.
Nienaber: I go to this site called sweepstakesadvantage.com, which is basically a site for prize pigs. A constantly updated list of on-line contests for everything from Coke to Weed ‘N Feed. And you realize after trolling through them that their digital contests are way, way, way more compelling than ours.
Ross: Why do you think contesting has gotten so unexciting? Is it PPM hangover? Is it budgets?
Nienaber: PPM didn’t help but no, there are [programmers] who have never heard an exciting contest, and “lack of bodies in the studio” which can be compensated for … The only real reason to do contests is to make cool promos and have excited winners. Imagine Let’s Make a Deal without the screaming winners. It would have been canceled after one episode.
Ross: Along those lines, how important is it to use the phones in contesting, even though radio would rather do text? And can you still make the phones ring? Presumably with the right prize?
Nienaber: I was in San Jose for Taylor Swift and was listening to 99.7 Now-FM [KMVQ San Francisco]. They were doing a Back-to-Back contest. Two Taylor songs in a row were a cue. It was the day before the show and they were playing her every third or fourth song, but not back-to-back. The phones imploded after each time they played her, and they were airing tons of frustrated, screaming fans. It was audio crack. Amazing to listen to … Beasley in Wilmington did Secret Sound for Taylor with “items locked in the box.” Huge.
You have to do keywords? Fine, be creative how you deliver them. Kiss 106.1 [KHKS] Dallas, for Post Malone, did hourly keywords that were written in Sharpie on a DJ’s forehead and posted to Facebook. For a Halloween attraction, a Cumulus station had the keywords delivered by a ghost via a seance. One station realized that they’d done nothing but keywords for two years, so they mixed it up and did Secret Sound and it exploded. People were so happy to have something that they could engage with.
Ross: Let’s talk about cash vs. other prizes. Is cash truly king now, as many stations seem to believe, and either way, what’s the best way to effectively give it away?
Nienaber: Cash can be more than cash. The younger demos have cash. They want gadgets and experiences. We’ve dumbed down “Win $1,000!” to the point that it doesn’t mean anything. It’s not the prize, but what you do with it. The Wolf [WPAW] in Greensboro had $300 a day, which is kind of a weird amount, so we framed it as “win school lunches for your kid for a year” and it was seismic.
Nienaber cites WDJX Louisville as a station that juiced up a cash giveaway by billing it as “$1,000 in Ceramic Cats … or the cash equivalent” with promos voiced by “cat lady” character Eustis K. Ungerman.
Ross: You’ve done both outrageous and pro-social contests. What do people want from contests now in these messed-up times?
Nienaber: They want to be entertained. Games [matter more than] contests. The Price Is Right is a game show.
There’s more on this year’s Radiodays North America here.
I can remember being just like Paige before I knew Paige existed. While battling a 50,000 watt competitor with our little 5k days/1k nights station we did “games” where people could get involved. They were probably too involved, too complicated but we did our best to make it fun. How many stations gave away an airplane? WE did. Our giant competitor was #9, we were #1 with double digits. Even when things went wrong we were lucky to get the local press involved. People spend an hour a day watching “Jeopardy” and “Wheel”- because of the fun of “getting it”. Spend 5 minutes with Paige and you will be embarrassed that you didn’t think of the stuff he things of first. K-Earth 101’s first #1 book in years was due to 3 people. Rick Thomas (PD), Gary Bryan (musical expert) and Paige Nienaber who made us get off of our collective keesters and make the station fun!! It doesn’t have to be more complicated than that.