Christmas Promotions

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Author: Jerry Williams

Published: September, 2000

Christmas provides the opportunity for a wide variety of promotions, both on and off air. We'll take a look at some suggestions in a number of categories in this article. But first, let's address a few basic rules:

1. Know what you want your promotion to accomplish.

Your station should derive a real benefit from every promotion you do. And that's no less true at Christmas. Your advertisers and underwriters have (hopefully) set aside a good chunk of their marketing budgets for 4th Quarter. And sometimes there are non-traditional sources of sponsorship money available. But remember that the benefit to your station shouldn't be limited to a financial benefit. Just because a promotion can generate some revenue isn't justification enough to do it, regardless of what your Sales Manager or GM says.

Before you design your promotion ask what your needs are. Then craft a promotion that meets those needs. Do you need to increase cume in mornings? Make people tune in at 7:20 to be able to participate. Could your TSL (Time Spent Listening) use some help? Spread vital information or clues over multiple dayparts. Do you want to introduce more new cume to your station? Construct a promotion that gets your calls in front of people who might not otherwise find your station. Your job is to get more people listening to your station more often and for longer periods of time. If you can't fashion a promotion that helps you accomplish that goal, don't do the promotion.

2. Look for sponsorship opportunities.

Keeping in mind what was said above about revenue generation not being reason enough to do a promotion, don't ignore opportunities to bring a sponsor in on a promotion. Whether you're commercial or non-com you're still working for a business. If you can construct a promotion that enhances your station's image, builds listening, and generates revenue, you're going to be a star.

3. Keep it simple.

On air staff and listeners should both be able to grasp the finer points pretty quickly. Your jocks can't run a contest they don't understand. And if your jocks don't get it, listeners are going to have a hard time participating, no matter how grand your prize. Make sure on air promos and liners are delivered in easy to understand, easy to repeat language. If your P1 can't tell a friend the basics of the promotion after hearing the promo a couple of times you need to either rewrite your creative or rethink your promotion.

4. Promote it early, and often.

Listeners don't get the luxury of attending your promotions meetings or reading your memo on the promotion. They depend on your promos. Make them memorable and start them early enough so people are calling in on that first day. Once the promotion is running update your promos every other day, and include lots of audio of actual winners. Your promos should capture the feel, the emotion of your promotion. And they should generate enough excitement to make listeners want to participate.

5. Don't give away what you don't have on hand.

If it's not locked in your office, don't put it on the prize sheet. Nothing will spoil a listener's image of your station quicker than being winning a contest and not being able to collect the prize because you couldn't deliver.

Now that we have some basic rules down, let's take a look at three different categories of Christmas promotions.

1. Music Features

Music is one of the key elements of Christmas. Your PD and MD are already working on adding Christmas music into the mix. In addition to the music they'll begin airing the day after Thanksgiving, there are few music features that you can incorporate into your total Christmas promotions package. **NOTE** If you're the Promotions Director, before scheduling any of these suggestions, work out the details with your PD and/or MD.

All Christmas Music Weekends:
Thanksgiving 2000 is on 11/23. There are five weekends between Thanksgiving and Christmas this year. That gives you up to five opportunities to own Christmas music on the weekend. Depending on your market, five weekends of solid Christmas music may be a bit much. But if the market will bear it, do it.

Start playing nothing but Christmas music at the end of Afternoon Drive each Friday. The to that would be Thanksgiving weekend, where you'd start on Thursday evening or Midnight Friday. And be sure to get them sponsored. You can have one title sponsor for the entire season, or break up with a different sponsor for each weekend. If your sales staff is real aggressive, you could even sponsor individual hours.

The XX Hours Of Christmas:
Similar to the All Christmas Music Weekends, this is where you brand the hours leading up to and including Christmas day with your frequency. If you don't feature your frequency in your imaging, then you can shoot for some nice round number. This year Christmas is on a Monday. That gives you 24 hours of Christmas, 48 hours from the Saturday and Sunday before, and however many hours from Friday you'll need to reach your frequency. So if you image yourself as 95FM, you'll need to kick this one off at 1pm on Friday 12/22.

The Christmas Album Of The Day:
Another simple, relatively low maintenance promotion. For each of the 21 weekdays between Thanksgiving and Christmas you feature a different Christmas Album. Be sure to include some of the new releases as well as the classics. The Fall Book ends on Wednesday 12/13, so you'll want to load the first three weeks of this promotion with your core artists. You can double the bang of this promotion (and sponsorship opportunities) by airing your featured album twice each day, say at 10am and again at 10pm. **NOTE** Be sure your PD or MD helps with the selection of the featured albums and which songs to play from each. Not every song on every album may be suitable for what you're trying to accomplish.

2. Off Air Promotions

Any promotion that you do on air is only going to impact people who are already listening to your station. The Christmas season provides unparalleled opportunity to get your station out in front of potential new cume.

Christmas Caroling:

Local malls are a great place to look for promotional opportunities, especially at this time of year. Organize your staff or staff plus volunteers from your listener and client database to provide the caroling at local malls. Be sure to grab great banner placement and alert the local TV stations that you'll be out.

You can also check into sponsoring the caroling for the entire season at a local mall or two. This could be as simple as promoting it on air and hanging your banners at the mall, or as involved as co-coordinating different church choirs, school choruses, and civic groups to actually show up and provide the caroling.

Christmas Festivals:

Every town has some sort of Christmas (or, depending on their pc level, winter) festival. Make sure your station is represented. Set up a booth or tent. Hand out hot cider and station premiums. Don't let a large group of people gather within your signal area this season without your station being represented.

Church Events:

Every church in your area will be having some sort of special service or presentation. Offer your staff's services to MC. You may also consider providing bulletin inserts with a calendar of all your station's Christmas events. Again, don't let a group of Christians get together within your signal area without your station being represented.

3. Contesting

You have to give stuff away. The key is to develop contests that:
a) Meet your prestated objectives
b) Are simple
c) Are fun
d) Generate excitement

Here are couple of potential seasonal contests. The prizes range from a Christmas CD collection to a trip. The logistics are all alterable to fit your own station's needs.

Mystery Christmas Song:
Every morning at 7:20 you give a clue about a certain Christmas song and/or artist. Later that day you play the song by the specific artist. Listeners have to be the designated caller to win a (your calls here) Stocking Stuffer.

The WWWW (your calls) Advent Calendar:
One of my family's Christmas traditions is centered around the Advent Calendar, you know, those ones with the little doors that open to reveal different seasonal scenes or pieces of chocolate. With this contest you design your own "Advent Calendar". You can put traditional seasonal items or scenes behind the doors, or have station related items in there, like your morning jock eating a candy cane. At various pre-promoted times each day you give hints as to what's behind that day's door. After each hint you take a designated caller. If they correctly identify what's behind the door, they win a (your calls here) Stocking Stuffer.

The WWWW (your calls) 12 Days of Christmas:
The most challenging aspect of this promotion is coming up with the song. You don't use the original version, you write your own lyrics, substituting station related "gifts" for the traditional partridge in a pear tree. So that on the first day of Christmas you have "my good friend brought to me, the Joe Blow Morning Show," and so on.

After the writing is complete, get three or four of the best singers on staff to record it, first one day/verse at a time, and then all the way through once from day 12 to one. For a little added fun, speed up the song so it sounds a little like elves. I wouldn't suggest you call them elves on the air though, the WWWW Carolers is probably safer.

The basic execution of the contest is pretty simple. Every morning at 7:20 you reveal another verse of the song by playing that day's verse. Then at various times throughout the day you play a sounder and take a caller who has to sing the entire song as revealed up to that point. So on day six at 7:20 you play the verse for day six. Your caller(s) that day must sing the verses for days six, five, four three, two, and one. By day 12 all the verses are revealed and the caller(s) must sing the entire song.

You can make your prize package grow along with the song. On day one the prize is Michael W. Smith's CHRISTMASTIME. On day two it's CHRISTMASTIME and a $25 bookstore gift certificate, and so on. If you start this promotion on Monday 11/27 and only run it on weekdays, you'll finish up on Tuesday 12/12. Plenty of time for your winners to collect their prizes before Christmas day, and all of your 12 days take place during the Fall Book.

Home For The Holidays:
The basic premise here is you're giving away a trip. You can either structure it so you fly one of your listeners (or a family) back to their hometown for Christmas, or, if you have a problem with sending your listeners out of your signal area during the Fall Book, that you fly in a family member(s) for the holidays.

With a grand prize this big you want to make sure you get the most out the promotion. Look for sponsorship opportunities and start it early enough to get it all in for the Fall Book. You'll also want to start it early because you'll be dealing with the logistics of people's holiday schedules.

You can make it as simple as listening each morning at 7:20 to learn the Christmas song double play of the day. Then when you play those two Christmas songs back to back taking the designated caller. Each of those callers win a (your calls here) Stocking Stuffer and get registered for the grand prize drawing. An alternate is to have registration locations at various sponsors and on your website. Draw several names each day. If those people call back within an amount of time that's tied to your frequency (nine minutes and 55 seconds for 95FM) they win a Stocking Stuffer and are registered for the grand prize.

Hopefully you've found a useful item or two here, something you can alter to fit your station's unique needs for this Christmas. And I hope you'll begin planning your station's Christmas package very soon, as we prepare to share the wonder of God in the form of man with our listeners. Let me be the first to wish you a most blessed and merry Christmas.