Radio contests offering large cash prizes with apparent ease of accessibility (e.g., all you have to do is have the birthday we announce) usually are used to build cume — to increase the station’s cumulative audience.
(Those contests also should feature a “conversion factor” designed to change listening habits, rather than just to get someone to sample the station one time. We’ll talk about that another time.)
But why do radio stations around the world conduct the typical, everyday, “free movie passes/concert tickets” contests?
Not because of Listener Greed.
Or Quarter-Hour Maintenance.
Or Instant Gratification.
A standard on-air contest is simply a method of strengthening & enjoying your relationship with your listeners.
Analogy: You call up a friend and ask, “Hey, how about going to dinner and a movie tonight?”
Your real message is not about dining out or movies. You could eat dinner by yourself, and your friend is perfectly capable of attending a movie without you.
“Dinner and a movie” are simply an excuse to enjoy the relationship you share with that person.
And that’s what an “everyday” on-air radio contest should be: an opportunity to enjoy and to strengthen the relationship you already have with your listeners.
Here’s the problem.
Out of the, say, 50,000 listeners who are tuned in at this moment, your morning jock is about to put a lucky listener on the air, someone who either has won or might win a contest. She is very excited. She’s won (or might win) a contest, and she’s about to be on the radio!
Meanwhile, you’ve got 49,999 other listeners at work, at home, and in their cars. And they’re thinking, “What about me?”
You’ve got to make that contest worth listening to for them. It has to be….
Entertaining.
Funny, provocative, challenging, dramatic, suspenseful, outrageous ….something that involves those other 49,999 other listeners.
They’re rooting (apologies to our Ossie and Kiwi readers; that term means something very different to them) for the contestant to win…or hoping she loses. They’re “playing the game at home.” They’re amused or intrigued or enlightened or relieved.
And I’m sorry, but “10th caller wins the coffee mug” doesn’t do it. No one is going to sit through the commercial break to find out who the 10th caller is. (They know it’s not them, which is all they care about.)
Neither are many listeners likely to wait around to find out, “What actor wrote and starred in ‘ROCKY?'”
