Paige Nienaber's Midweek Idea Dump: Caring for and Training Your Teenagers

(By Paige Nienaber) About ten years ago, I was discussing a high school promotion with a top PD and he stopped me and said, “We're not a teen station.” We are 18-34 years old. I wanted to point out that 18 and 19 were actually teenagers, but I had a rocky relationship with this client and snark wouldn't have gotten me anywhere. But I suggested that if he didn't start farming and raising children, in a few years he would be screwed.

And he is.

You do not have to become a teen station to attract teenagers. You just need to occasionally acknowledge their existence. Throw them a bone every once in a while. As?

Wild in San Francisco has done a great job over the years selling dances to schools. (DJ, sound and lights) This allowed them to maintain a presence in schools.

Even with limited resources, most of us have access to a sound and light show and a DJ, so have a “most written” contest and award a prom.

Since Marconi has been an intern, having cheerleaders on air is a real home run.

When CBS launched AMP in Boston, they did so with a “soft launch” and 10,000 songs without jocks. A few months later, their first PD came in and emailed me, “No one knows this station exists,” to which I replied, “Do you think so?” He needed humans on the air and he needed them fast, so for a month, every weeknight, the nightly show was do by a high school team. This wasn't a studio visit: these were jocks with Dan at the helm of the board. He did a brilliant job of selecting the schools so that they all had zippers. The girls were in charge of marketing at school and, by God, they had ears for it.

If you have tickets to a movie showing, save a few pairs for the school newspapers so they can send someone to review the movie.

'HYT in Detroit made the team of the week. Not just during football season, but throughout the school year, every Thursday evening there was a school team in attendance. The Romulus women's volleyball team. Livonia Boys Swim Team. The Grosse Point girls gymnastics team. It was sponsored by Hungry Howies and the children returned to school with a trophy for their cause.

The best school campaign of the moment is undoubtedly Crash The Concession Stand, produced by WIXX in Green Bay. Every Friday night in the fall, they attend a football game and staff the concession stand, making a matching donation to the club or organization that ran the stand (through a customer).

Teenagers dictate trends and radio Really must be a trend right now.

And now with Dumping.

Bachelorettes

One of the resorts is hosting the “ultimate” bachelorette party for a winner. There were no less than three BIG hen parties at my hotel the other night. They were big, well organized and loud.

I would send the guy(s) from the morning show to follow one of these and get a glimpse of how the other sex celebrates one of these occasions. That's kind of what I did with Albie Dee when we were doing Friday Night Live at WPGC and he gave me the wheel, jumped out of the van and got into a limo of women, and spent about 30 minutes on his cell phone during the evening. Incredible sounding radio.

A #1 idea

We've all done a variation of the “bounce contest” where you hit the audience with a song to listen to the next day to win tickets to the next show you do.

How about plastering porta potties at your next event with the song or word? You have to work around the price-chance-consideration, but this can be done if there are porta-potties outside the main door.

And then… here’s a salesperson who should have a smiley face on their report card. At Froggy 92.9's Country Summer a few years ago in Santa Rosa, an AE with a DUI lawyer client put stickers on the pots with the company's phone number. The concert was sponsored by a beer and the police were known to lurk and arrest people as they left.

Old Man Wilbur

Great campaigns have great spokespeople and as exciting as someone with a killer voice can be, sometimes you can do more.

Prize Closets (or “Prize Vault” at Power 96) are an excellent example of this. Kiss in Albany had Tammy, the ticket intern, who started the summer as a kind, sweet young student whose job was to manage the ticket inventory. The story evolved and by the end of the summer, she had become a deeply irresponsible and corrupt young woman.

102 Jamz in Orlando had a safe in sub-sector J, about 200 feet below the service, and an old man (modeled after the security guard from “Men In Black”) who was happy to had visitors and would ask things like, “What happened with this Watergate thing?”

From Cat Thomas to Beasley/Las Vegas:

We had both Kendrick Lamar and Post Malone tickets on sale. Instead of doing something like Pick A Ticket, we use a morning show character “Old Man Wilber”. We've put him in charge of the prize room for the Summer of 1000 Tickets and basically when we get a call, old man Wilber will come into the prize room and pick out a pair of tickets for the winner. “We have a few lines like 'Oh look…a pass to Treasures (strip club).' I'll just put this in my pocket – I guess it's now the summer of 999 bills! Oh, here's a pair of Kendrick Lamar tickets for you! » (The winner was awarded by Kendrick Tix).

Construction worker Wednesday

This is 97 Rock's contribution to workplace marketing. Every Wednesday, a food truck delivers breakfast to a construction site. Steal that.

Choice of spinners

For the CBS series SPF in Las Vegas, Power in Miami used a theater of the mind slot machine that they had in the studio and that the staff had “released” on a casino cruise from Ft. . Lauderdale. The idea was that the hourly caller would get a flip and you would win whatever appeared on the reels: concert tickets, swimsuits, movie passes, and once a day a flying ticket.

One of the resorts is in a market with several area casinos that all spend money and all have concert programs in the summer. With one of these announcers, they will make the virtual slot machine: pull, hear the spin, and then three artists who are playing there this summer will “appear” on the reels. Night Ranger (with an original member), the Georgia Satellites and Mickey Thomas' Starship. I can still rock in America, so I would choose Night Ranger and those would be the tickets I would get.

Throwdeo

One of the stations has a furniture client who wants to sponsor a rodeo ticket contest. Well, you could make caller ten or something like that on social media or a gallery or ask people to enter digitally… or you could take 11 callers and assign them each a number between 2 and 12. And then Facebook Live, an athlete throwing two dice. Whatever they throw determines the winner.

This could be done as a Throw & Go for just about any variety of tickets.

Camp 99.7

One of the stations in Albany used “camp” as a summer umbrella, which was actually pretty cool. The air staff were advisors. They were very interested in the themes. This is actually even cooler and as a guy who spent all his summers at camp, this hits me perfectly. 99.7 NOW-FM in San Francisco partnered with the YMCA to send kids to a week-long sleepaway camp. Just really cool.

Hand bingo

One of the stations was looking for something for a Thursday night for a bar/restaurant customer. They blew them away with another event so the customer would come back for more. This is a good thing.

Y94 hosted Purse Bingo on Wednesday. The customer searches for the handbags and Zero and Amy have a bingo and handbag giveaway night. Big? He received a ticket from the fire department for overcrowding.

Crisis in children's lives

Most of the biggest promotions started with a name…and then people rushing to build something around it. Kind of like “Screw Over Your Ex” at 97.9 The Boss in Atlantic City.

Mike Campbell provided the name, now what could you do with it?

• How about creating events, activities or resources for parents who are running out of things to keep their kids busy during the summer?
• How about doing a week of competitive spa treatment the first week of September for moms who survived the summer?
• Maybe it’s a podcast made by one of the talents who is experiencing being a parent for the first time.

Paige Nienaber insults/visits over 100 radio stations on Fun 'N Games (Marketing & Promotions). Find it at CPR Promotions. Read Paige's Radio Ink archives here.