A couple of years ago – at another radio station I worked at – we had been taking a close look at our promo set-ups for remotes and outside broadcasts, plus vehicles and promo products we giveaway… and the choices out there are astounding.
From inflatable arches to marquees and inflatable people… there’s pens with station logos on them or shirts, caps, stickers – how can you choose what is right for your station when there is so many choices available?
For example, in our Promo meeting we wrote a quick list in a matter of minutes of some ideas…
Inflatable characters, stickers, scratch tickets, billboards, vehicles, display banners, event tape, balloons, and posters. All up we had over 20 items on our list.
How do you decide what to get and what not to get?
Some people favoured just basing their choices on budget – others on visual impact, or longevity of use, someone else suggested our choices should be based on the station formats – so you can see that having a unified voiced when it comes to promotional activity is something that is required.
We decided that our choices should be based on 2 things: Visual Impact and budget. In that order. So a inflatable arch which costs a lot would be high on that list, but pens, balloons and stickers would be low.
So we re-ordered our list – and funnily enough, more things were suddenly added in like a cash prize machine.
So we went through the process again and again more items were added, a couple were dropped off and then we decided that we had to go through a process of elimination.
Being the type of person I am – I wanted to do a spreadsheet with costs, benefits and a score rating of meeting our requirements – I was out voted on that as the team just wanted to have the choices laid out and the budget committee (yes it was one of those workplaces with more meetings and committees than days of the week) would choose what we would purchase.
So you can guess what happened – all the things that were cheap and not going to last where chosen over our recommendations. They didn’t last longer than 6 months and we suddenly needed to buy more and our budget for the financial year had already been spent. OUCH!
Flash forward to this month – and I am at a different station and we are doing something very similar – and this time we are doing a spreadsheet – but basing our decisions on our needs. The process this time is taking longer and there are way, way more choices available for us to make.
It is hard thing to do – and the choices you make will influence what the public thinks of your station.
We can only do our best – choose carefully – and – try to pick products that will last. I will keep you up to date as we go along.
