With stations launching the all-Christmas format on a daily basis, Ross on Radio and RadioInsight are featuring excerpts from consultant Tracy Johnson’s Radio Guide to Holiday Programming, a look at music, between-the-records content, personalities, post-holiday promotion and re-entry to regular format.
Johnson’s entire 57-page guide is available here. Here are his thoughts on why “Yes, You Need a Major Holiday Promotion.” (The guide itself lists more examples and execution strategies for some of the promotions outlined here.)
Music and personality are important, but a major promotional campaign ties a bow around the seasonal strategy. And while you’re at it, try to include a secondary promotion.
Major Christmas Promotions: Many stations are active with charity events as a cornerstone of the season. A promotion gives substance to the messaging and activates listeners.
Some stations update an existing contest to a Christmas promotion or play a game like “listen for the Christmas Elf with a cue to call.” Those are fine, but they don’t capture the feeling of a promotion to create goodwill. For best results, identify an idea that can build equity as an annual campaign year after year. It’s even better if a story can be told inside the promotion.
Always follow these tips for the best results:
- Plan. Great promotions take time to plan and prepare and even more time to manage. Start the planning process in July or August (that’s not a misprint; it is not too early) to secure sponsorships. If there are no sponsors, lock down ideas until early November.
- Produce It. Support each campaign with promos, imaging, marketing, and promotional materials. Get the creative team involved in logos, landing pages, audio, and marketing concepts.
- Start Earlier Than You Think You Should. Christmas tends to sneak up on stations. A good campaign takes at least 4-5 weeks of consistent promotion, and some advertisements with more moving parts (Christmas Wish, for example) must launch by early November to get stories on the air in early December.
The Best Christmas Promotions: Here are a few of the most effective major Christmas promotions with a short description and a link for more details:
Breaking And Entering Christmas: This promotion only works with a high-profile personality show. Don’t try to do it with a new show. It requires behind-the-scenes work, but it is excellent for generating warm feelings.
- Listeners nominate a deserving family.
- The station chooses a story and makes Christmas dreams come true on the last show before Christmas.
- The station team “breaks in” when the family is away (the friend nominating them is responsible for accessing the home) and fills the house with food and gifts selected for their situation.
These moments are tear-jerkers and will produce excitement and gratitude. Be sure to capture it on-air and on video for post-promotion marketing.
Christmas Wish: This classic promotion is a winner on dozens of stations in all formats. If someone else is doing it, repackage it with a different name.
- Listeners nominate someone who needs help.
- The station or show grants as many wishes as possible to make it the best Christmas ever.
When starting, grant a new wish every day during Christmas week. As the brand grows, it expands to the week before, and so on. Eventually, present a new wish every day in December.
The key to this promotion is storytelling. Start collecting nominations early, then invest time to develop the story in the most dramatic possible ways.
12 Days of Christmas Kindness: This campaign ticks all the boxes for an outstanding promotion and is relatively easy to execute.
- A personality commits to one act of kindness each day for 12 days leading up to Christmas and encourages listeners to join them to spread Christmas cheer.
- Feature each act online, on-air, in daily emails, and via social media, and take calls from listeners with their stories.
Here are a few examples:
- Call a friend or family member you haven’t talked to in a while to make a connection and tell them how much you love them.
- Leave a thank-you note for a service worker (postal worker or delivery person, for example.
- After a snowstorm, find a sidewalk that has not been cleared and get the snow off.
In addition to the 12 acts of kindness, ask listeners to suggest additional acts of kindness.
Home For the Holidays: Many listeners (or their family members) can’t make it home for various reasons (logistics, financial, etc.). Home for the Holidays is a promotion of sentimental feelings.
- Solicit entries with a story about missing their family and not being able to see them this year.
- Select a winner. Ask them to come to the studio to tell their story (record it), but do not tell them they’ve won.
- When they’ve told their story, call the relative they’d like to bring Home for the Holidays. Let them talk about how they hope this can happen, etc. They don’t know that the family arrived the day before and are hiding in the station. While talking on the air, bring the relative in to surprise them. That’s when the magic happens. It makes a great story on-air and a powerful video!
Meet The Real Santa Claus: Every child knows that the real Santa Claus lives at the North Pole, but did you know there is a real Santa Claus and you can visit? The official home of Santa Claus is in Finland. In the Arctic Circle, an entire village called Rovaniemi has been designated as Santa’s official home. Is there a better Christmas promotion than taking a family of listeners to meet Santa? This typical enter-to-win promotion is full of imagery and promo power.
Minor Christmas Promotions: Most stations should be able to manage a second promotion with a different appeal.
- 12 Trees Of Christmas: Deliver a Christmas tree to a needy family each day for the last two weeks leading up to Christmas. This promotion is easier to execute than Breaking and Entering Christmas.
- Jingle Bail: Start with a cause. Then, choose a high-profile location with natural traffic. A shopping mall is a great partner. Build a jail cell with a personality locked inside as a prisoner until bail is raised (through donations) to grant a wish. When released and a wish is fulfilled, arrest someone else and start again! Try to get local celebrities involved.
- We Shop for You: Everyone has someone person on their list that’s hard to buy for. This promotion addresses that problem. Find a listener struggling with shopping for one person with an interesting story. Then help them.
- The 12 Strays of Christmas: Many stations do public service promotions for pet adoption, but The 12 Strays of Christmas stands out. This is primarily an online video campaign supported by on-air promotion.
- Toys For Tatas: This is not usually associated with Christmas, but a personality-based show that pushes the envelope and targets men can cash in with this parody of the popular Toys For Tots campaign.
- The Christmas Choir Competition: This campaign promotes traditional feelings of goodwill and local involvement and has a nice side benefit: Dozens of organizations talk about your radio station and show. It may not seem like the hottest, freshest, or sexiest holiday promotion, but there is merit in this one.
- Launching All-Christmas Music: This is a great idea to kick off the holiday music season. Have one personality lock themselves in the studio and “break format” by playing one song repeatedly. Pick an annoying parody song like “Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer” or a classic song like “Last Christmas.”
The Online Holiday Experience: The greater the change, the more it should impact off-air marketing and promotion, starting with the website. Change the website and social media to All Christmas if you’re playing All-Christmas. Get everything else off for the time being.
The easiest way to do this is to hide (unlinking) the deeper pages on the site until after the holidays. When listeners interact with the station, each platform should reflect what is on the air. Then give listeners something to do online. Here are two promotion ideas:
- Online Promotion: Scared Of Santa: Photo contests are highly engaging and, when executed correctly, can add traffic to a website or social media page. A Scared of Santa contest works every time. And it also makes for a great segment (or segments) on-air.
- Your Show’s Holiday Recipe Book: This may not seem exciting, but it works! It’s best if the promotion is led by a personality that loves to cook, but it is suitable for any show that gets behind it. Ask listeners to help assemble the show’s official Holiday-themed recipe books, then publish and sell copies to benefit a charity.
