best type of radio contests (low power station)?

[canadave]

Hi all,

I work at a small Canadian community radio station and we're thinking of running some contests on the radio. We're pretty new to the contests game, so, what type of contests would work best for our (very) small market station (1500 listeners or so)? Do you all have any experience/tips on this that you could provide?

 

[Chuck]

Why do you want contests? Not having them and all the crap that goes along with "Big Radio" is what sets you apart from the rest. If you have a loyal and dedicated listener base, you risk alienating them.

 

[WRPO]

Contests don't work for us.

 

[Bongwater]

Hi all,

I work at a small Canadian community radio station and we're thinking of running some contests on the radio. We're pretty new to the contests game, so, what type of contests would work best for our (very) small market station (1500 listeners or so)? Do you all have any experience/tips on this that you could provide?

Check with the CRTC - there may be specific rules that may apply.

And Chuck is right. You don't want to alienate the very people who tune to your station to get away from whatever else is on the radio. Contests, unless the prize is a nice HUGE wad of cash are usually pointless.

 

[Goat Rodeo Cowboy]

Do a couple of things. Spend some time defining the various genre of contests so you end up looking at "the big picture".

This is old, old information. The most successful broadcaster I ever worked for refused to run contests. He considered it "programming on the cheap". It would take some space to fill in some of his other thoughts. (This was smaller market radio, by the way.) He had me convinced that contests are just a crude way to try and buy and audience rather than earning and audience.

The next broadcaster I worked for was a little bit more of "a success getting ready to happen". Here was his philosophy: Everybody things that making ktheir contests louder and louder, and the prizes bigger and bigger will buy an even larger audience.

His reaction to the whole question was this: A lot of people like puzzles, games, brain teasers. To attract and keep these people, run simple little contests where when you win the contests, "bragging rights" when you tell your friends you won is more important that having a big juicy cash prize. The make sure the implementation of the contests is low key enough that the "contest haters" in your audience are not severely antagonized.

In this day and age of the state run lotteries and mega-lotteries, a radio station can't out-dazzle those monsters. In support of my second employers claim that people sometimes just have the bug to participate and play-the-game, there is something I have noticed: As I pay for my cup of coffee at the convenience store, I notice that in addition to the zombies who buy a chance on winning the monster jackpot, I see all these animated, excited people buying the little scratch-off tickets with teeny-tiny prizes (for the most part).

Just for giggles, ask a cashier sometime how many monster-jackpot tickets they sell, and how many teeny-tiny prize tickets they sell. It might be an interesting lesson in radio programming and promotion.

 

[GeneSavage]

I like the way you're thinking (smaller is better). I remember in the late 80s / early 90s a local top-40 in Tulsa doing "free music weekends." All weekend long we'd have chances to win the latest cassette from fill-in-the-flavor-of-the-week artist. The contest was, "caller #7 wins now!" The playback was a heavily scripted winner card that played back over the intro of the next song. In and out and gone.

People who listened for prizes loved it because we gave away a tape every couple of hours around the clock, people who loved the artists loved getting the tapes, and those who didn't like prizes could blink and miss it.

Now, everything's $100,000 for the name drawn at random from the names registered over the past three months of people who made it to one of our events and knew the winning phrase... it's just exhausting, for the listener and for the contest player.

One of the WORST contests I ever heard was in the mid-80s when a station did "Win A Hundred." You had to guess the entire serial note, and you had to keep track of previous right and wrong answers... $100 could take a week to win. It was TORTURE, and having a guess on the air (especially as more right letters were guessed) shut the entire station down. Misery for the staff, the listeners, and those playing.

Are you Q92? Give away $92 every hour during the workday, or at lunch. Make it about winning, not about changing somebody's life forever. Give away chocolate boxes on Valentine's Day. As was suggested above, know the demo of the contest and know the audience. Make it fast as well as fun. As the old adage says, it's not the prize of the gift, it's the thought that counts.

 

[Goat Rodeo Cowboy]

I don't know if they still do it, but a good example of a quiet opportunity for listeners who like the engage their brain is the "Puzzler" on Sunday mornings during Morning Edition (Sunday version) Will Shorts, crossword puzzle editor (how would you like to have THAT job on your resume) shows up with some brain-teasers and some are solved on the air in a very short broadcast, and then at the end one GRAND puzzler is put out that people can call the answering machine during the week, and that whole process is discussed the next week.

No loud, over-the-top hoopla. Nothing to really irritate people who wanted to hear a quiet, adult take on this weeks news, but for those listeners who are addicted to thinking about the near-unthinkable... it's like throwing the dog a bone at a random time when you don't normally provide a bone.

When I hear the broadcast, I always ask myself: If I were doing that on a local community station where I can't get Will Shorts to come in, what would I do that was affordable and practical and create the same little soft-spot for people with slightly over-active brain cells.

 

[bturner]

Working in small market radio I found the contest budget was whatever you could scrounge from the salespeople's clients and was usually dictated as a front to get the client to spend more on the station.

Among the more popular were free meals at restaurants. Trivia questions or a special word of the day that the DJ would toss in later in the day or as a variation, the song of the day, were popular. We also had 'listening posts' where businesses would tell us they listened. We'd drop by a business each keep, catch them listening and they's win a pizza party.

We did some creative things too. These were either more intricate or costlier:

1) for Valentine's Day, a local jeweler gave away a nice engagement ring. The guy could propose on the air (prerecorded) and the girl could call the station to say 'yes', going into a drawing to win the ring. All other winners got a free dinner for two and roses. All was traded with advertisers.

2) for Thanksgiving, "Dinner on the Mayflower"., Working with Mayflower, the moving van company, the winner and family got a catered meal on a Mayflower Moving Van. Callers registered when hearing a ship's foghorn on the air. Random drawing was held.

We acknowledged birthdays and anniversaries and sometimes associated prizes with these. One station did a contest where we brought attention to an act of kindness performed by a member of the community and they won a prize...sometimes meals, sometimes gift cards, sometimes an assortment of things. I thought that was pretty cool because people were nominated for the kindness they offered.

The worst was one where listeners registered at business locations. There were always regular advertisers that did not get many entries because they weren't a walk-in retail business and felt the low response was because the station had few listeners. This is more of a sales issue. Such contests must be sold only to high traffic retail businesses, not a pest control company or an Edward D. Jones office.