Happy Friday, everyone!
This week's question was inspired by one of my clients reminding me recently that there were only 74 days 'til Christmas and by the post of one of our newest members, Candice Sealey, in which she asks for Christmas promotion ideas.
When do you start selling Christmas ad schedules, and what has been your single best holiday promotion?
Looking forward to reading your answers!
We started selling Christmas properties about 3 weeks ago and have had pretty good success! This is about 3 or so weeks earlier than past years...
Davve Hughes, Pineridge Broadcasting Inc.
We start selling in mid to late October. Our primary promotion is Christmas Concentration. It is based on the old TV game show. Each sponsor provides a prize.(a straight trade is part of the package) We have 3 package sizes available. We produce the "concentration" card and make it available here, on line and at sponsor's businesses. Listeners call in when we play the game and they give a pair of numbers of their choice and if the prizes assigned to the number match, the listener wins. I can provide it to anyone who wants to see it. We are also offering a straight spot package.
I believe individual stations have different scenarios based on their size so let me preface my remarks by saying we are a small 3-station cluster in a community of 26,000 (Trade area 65,000).
We have a major 4th Qtr Promotion that we present to our advertisers as early as we can in September. For some this allows them to be on board for December but also gives them some flexibility for Halloween, Thanksgiving, etc.
The balance of our Holiday packages/programs will come out by the end of October. About 5 years ago we reverted back to an old practice of selling blocks of Christmas music on our AM station Christmas Eve afternoon/evening and Christmas morning. These times were traditionally light and it has been very successful with all blocks sold. As far as something different for Candace we took this block concept to a local Nursing/Retirement facility. They pay a premium for an hour on Christmas Eve afternoon. Part of this package is they also give us the list of songs/artists they want played and we go to the home and record greetings from the residents which we play between songs. Other than that no commercials; just an open and a close. We then make a copy of the program which we present to them for their own use.
Hope this helps.
In terms of talking with clients about annual and quarterly plans, we sell Christmas music programming year round. With retailers it comes up as we discuss their holiday plans (about 2-3 weeks ago). We have always thought it should sell better though to non-retailers, businesses or organizations that would like to have a Christmas greeting or message. We have one lawyer in town who regularly advertises on key weekends and holidays re: DUI and he participates in this. A local liquor store likewise with a 'have fun but don't drink and drive'. This year we are doing a mail campaign to area churches to give them enough time to discuss it with members and/or church boards - specifically suggesting to them promotion of advent services, chorale and music programs, children events, et al. This sponsorship we offer is basically a sponsorship of the Christmas music added to the music logs, starting the day after Thanksgiving thru New Year's Eve. Commercials outside of those promotional mentions are included at different sponsorship levels as is a website listing. For the churches we will either list the info or provide a link to the church website as part of the package.
Retailers are obvious. We look to these kinds of packages to draw in nontraditional advertisers with the idea they will start to look to us for other activities and seasonal issues they want to promote. We no longer have a telemarketing function which used to sell small PSA pkgs for National Dental Week, Car Care Month, Breast Cancer Awareness and that kind of thing.
Great- thanks!
Dave, I am interested in this Christmas Concentration and how it works. Please send me the [email protected]. Thanks so much.
Hi Dave, definitely I'de like to see a sample of the promotion along with details. Thanks so much
Please send it to [email protected]
Gabriela Ortiz
Dave,
I would love to hear more about this promotion, can you please send me your 1 sheet or some more information about this? [email protected]
Thank you so much!
Dave I would love to see the details of your "Christmas Concentration" promotion. Could you email it to me at [email protected] please? Thank you so very much! Have a great day!
Teresa Michela
Dave: I would also like to see details on your "concentration" promotion. My email is [email protected]
Thanks.
