Happy Friday, everyone . . . and Happy April 1st!
Here is this week's poll question:
Is your station or are your advertisers doing anything special for April Fools' Day?
Looking forward to reading your replies!
HI,
today in Croatia we are selling fools' story called CROBOX, about package that you can buy in drugstore. Package include Geiger counter,water,iodine tablets,vitamines,protective suit and protective mask, something you must have if disaster come...."willing to wait for a disaster" This is talkabot these days so i hope that many people will take in.
Not sure about this year, last year both the station and I did some "mis-direction" antics. Our afternoon jock played all rock music for an hour, complete with newly re-done liners to make our HOT-AC station sound more classic rock. He gave away the April Fool joke at the end of the hour. Funny thing was, about half of our listeners who reacted really liked the change...the other half, didn't.
I took it upon myself to produce a 'spoofed' spot for a then current client--one with a good sense of humor. I called him up saying we've been getting complaint calls from his ad. I played him the unknowing 'spoofed' spot that sounded legit and professional in every way--with the exception of one cleverly placed "f word". He laughed out loud at the moment he heard it. He then had me play it over the phone twice more on his speaker phone.
(Sure hope none of his customers were within range?)
and when the on lookers approached to see excactly that.... a croc shoe, with a bar of dial in it we gracefully handed them coupons from a near by eatery, that hosted our april 1st prank... Great fun, and alot of good sports in our town... ( i dreamed it all up in my own lil brain) what lil may be left! One of my clients is an appliance/TV/mattress store that puts 95% of their ad dollars into local radio. They're on daily on 7-8 stations in the market, all year long. Their share-of-voice has translated into terrific share-of-mind, which in turn has given them enviable market share. Their conversion rate (traffic to sale) is around 80%.
Several years ago, we thought it would be fun to create a series of ads to run on April 1st - not for the purpose of selling anything but strictly for fun, to give listeners a few chuckles that day. Two things happened: first, that day they heard from tons of people, by phone, email, and in person, mainly to thank them for the laugh (although a few actually called to find out if there really was such a thing!), and they were talked about by a number of the different stations' morning personalities. Secondly, the anniversary sale they ran a few weeks later hit an all-time sales record for single-day sales.
They've since made this an annual promotion and people look forward to hearing the spots, both the original batch and the new ones we've created each year.
I've uploaded a sample below, one of about a dozen such spots.
If you have the right client in the appliance business, this might work just as well for them. Enjoy!
