Promos: Your Stations Promotional Library

You look around your desk at the start of the month and start to look around for ideas for your promotional calendar.

WHAT is it you reach for first?

There might be a few books on your desk (they will be old because everything these days is digital) to try to trigger some ideas. Maybe you look at your wall calendar (we have mentioned this before – HERE) and look to see what special event days are coming up, or anything else that has already been written up on it, i.e.: movie launches, new music launch, etc.

Today we look at a couple of sources that can help you out, and give a little more detail on the book that we have been working on for the past 6 months.

1. Have access to a book (or at the very least a LARGE LIST) of annual events (especially local annual events if you are a regional radio station) and plot those on your calendar. This should contain a list of your state, national and regional holidays and special events – from grand finals to historic anniversaries, and more.
2. An odd one now, but a good one if you are in the USA – an Almanac – preferably have several years editions and keep them up to date. The rest of the world doesn’t seem to care for almanacs, but a website with great statistical and trivial data will be just as good.
3. If you think your station may try to break an official ‘Guinness World Record’ then you need the latest edition, and access to their website.
4. If your town has ‘twinned’ or has a ‘sister city’ then you should grab a copy of a current map of that city, and think at least once a year on a “Great Escape” promotion with that cities radio station like yours.
5. And finally… A copy of the new book coming soon from our editors. Containing thousands of promotional ideas from radio stations around the world – and we are not selling that short. At last count we had over 2,000 promos listed, and another batch about to be integrated with it of about the same size – so we are hoping for around 4,000 radio promotions in the one book! That is a MUST HAVE for every radio station surely.

But why are we doing a book listing all other radio promotions that we could find?

So we as an industry can do something better. We can use the ideas within it as a jumping off point and aim higher, do better and make connections with listeners and sponsors that last longer.

We have scoured archives from old radio magazines, talked to people in almost every country about the biggest promotions, the surprising ones, the small ones, and everything in-between.

Although we know that the new book cannot possibly be completely comprehensive – we have given it a good shot at having some amazingly unique promotions as well as the standard ones that radio does well.

But you never know, there may be an idea within it that sparks something in you and makes your station stand out from the competition. Throughout the book we encourage you to look at the ideas within it and give them a twist – make them your own and create some memorable radio.

Plus we also argue for something that all radio stations should have – but many do not – and it makes listeners become raving fans of the station (but you will have to read that when the book is released).

So how soon can you expect to get your hands on it?

Well, we have had a couple of minor hold-ups, and we keep on adding more and more content. So we have had to start taking things out of the book – otherwise it would be too much.

We have simplified some of the formatting of each promotion, sorted them into (hopefully) easily accessible categories that will be useful for promotional people, and sales people to help to pitch to clients.

We have cut out several entire sections and then added others, only to drop them again. So it has been a long a complex process that the committee and editors are working through.

Rest-assured that we are trying to get the book finished as fast as we can, and will even have a place on the new look website where you can submit ideas for the second edition of it (we know we will be told that we missed ‘this promotion’ or ‘that promotion’ so we want to let you the reader submit yours for the next edition).

If all goes well, we should have it out before the end of the year – but I don’t want to commit to a date and rush it, delivering a half completed book that could have been better.

So yes, look out for it, and we will do a MAJOR push on it when it comes out and let everyone know.

That’s all for now, until we launch the new site.

Best of luck with all of your promotional activity – may it garner more listeners, and less prize pigs.

This is the final post for PROMOTIONS on this Blog – thanks for reading everyone. Stay tuned for more promotions downloads and resources when we return at the end of next month with a new look site.
Earl.P.