FOUR KEYS TO ENTERTAINING RADIO CONTESTS

Here are the four factors that make an on-air contest listenable:

• Prize

• Game

• Execution

• Air Talent’s X-Factor

Prize

For “everyday” contests, there are four types of “good” prizes:

1. Valuable

2. Affinity

3. Exclusive

4. Stupid-But-Cool

Valuable Prizes: One hundred dollars cash. GPS devices. Tickets to a hot concert.

(Note that I did not say, “Tickets to the Boat Show, Auto Show, etc.”)

Affinity Prizes: Station t-shirts, jackets, thumb flash drives with your station logo, etc. Something very cool-looking that enables your listeners to acknowledge their relationship to your brand.

The stronger your relationship with your core audience, the more they will respond to “affinity” prizes.

Non-Radio Example: If you want to get rich selling to people who buy Harley-Davidson motorcycles, do not go into the motorcycle business. Sell them other stuff imprinted with the Harley-Davidson logo. Harley owners are the absolute best kind of consumer: proud fanatics.

An Internet search for “Harley-Davidson merchandise” turns up 934,000 different Web pages.

What can you buy with the Harley-Davidson logo on it? Shirts, caps, shot glasses, pool tables, coasters, coffee mugs, ash trays, piggy banks, boots, jackets, sunglasses, clocks, bean-bag animals, wire sculptures, knives, lighters, chaps, shorts, jackets, vests, halter tops, plates….The list is endless.

Exclusive Prizes: Backstage concert pass….Private concert….Private screening ….One-of-a-kind memorabilia….Lunch with a celebrity.

Stupid-But-Cool Prizes: This is most effective when it’s also an Affinity Prize. The ideal Stupid-But-Cool prize is one that you would never pay for …but which you would stand in line to receive for free.

Sometimes in my seminars I give the example of Peter Holmes at England’s BREEZE AM who gave away…personalized bath plugs. A wonderfully stupid prize that loyal listeners went crazy for.

Game

Does simply describing the contest make your audience want to listen? (Most on-air contests fail this test.)

Execution

Does the jock present the contest itself in a way that maximizes its effectiveness?

Air Talent’s X-Factor

You’ve got a prize no one wants to win, delivered via a contest that isn’t worth listening to.

The only thing that can save your radio station is the individual jock’s ability to make something out of nothing. Or, more accurately, to blend his/her personality with that of the caller to create a human encounter that is worth listening to.

Yes, a great jock often can save a lame contest.

But that’s like expecting the record producer to “fix it in the mix” or giving bad commercial copy to the voice actor and saying, “Make it funny.”

If you routinely depend upon your air talent to save the station’s on- air contests, you’ve got serious promotion problems.