Friday Poll: What Was Your Most Successful Remote?

    • 1373 posts
    July 25, 2019 10:06 PM PDT

    Happy Friday, everyone!

    In a recent Radio World article, Mark Lapidus discusses the need to Set Expectations with Advertisers before launching an advertising campaign or promotion. He recounts a time early in his career when he was doing a live, two-hour remote at a car dealership on a rainy day. He asked the manager how many cars he expected to sell, and the dealer told him he expected to sell two cars, which would make the remote a profitable venture for him. Mark writes, "I was concerned. My first thought was that I was talking with one crazy car guy, and my second was wondering if the sales rep from my station had discussed this expectation with him. However, I did have one weapon in my arsenal: lots of free food. Turns out he sold four cars. Call it dumb luck — or the most amazing remote I’d ever orchestrated. Either way, it would have been much better to have set that expectation prior to execution." (Click here to read the rest of the article.)

    So for this week's poll question, we'd like to know:

    What was your most successful radio remote/live broadcast? How did you meet or exceed your client's expectations?

    Looking forward to reading your replies!

     

     


    This post was edited by Rebecca Hunt at July 25, 2019 11:27 PM PDT
    • 1373 posts
    July 26, 2019 9:18 AM PDT

    From Roger Utnehmer: Our most successful remotes include selling gift certificates from our radio auction/shopping show. For many years we did a regular remote from a supermarket who paid for the remote with $1,500 in $20 gift certificates we sold during the remote at half price. People would show up at hour early and bring lawn chairs to wait in line. Because this worked so well for remotes whenever we do a home show or senior show we talk the supermarket into selling gift certificates at the event. It always guarantees a good turn-out and creates the appearance of success. This became a bit of a bookkeeping challenge and a hassle for the announcer and is now relegated to the category of “an idea that worked so well we quit doing it.”

     

    • 121 posts
    July 26, 2019 12:08 PM PDT

    We just talked about remotes in our weekly sales team meeting and how they are not what they used to be a few decades ago.

     

    A couple of the tips I shared with my coworkers that I'll share with you:

     

    Schedule the remote for a time that they will already be busy.  I used to work with McDonalds and  we did monthly remotes from 11am to 1pm and got credit for the crowds

     

    I have been doing a remote broadcast of our afternoon talk show the past several years from the local Home & Garden Show which attracts 100,000 people plus over the 4 days.  We had some really sweet prizes that were not announced until the talk show started and included a phrase to say to win.  Two hours in we gave away about a dozen pairs of concert tickets.   The client is an HVAC company that would not normally have a reason for a remote, but this works.

     

    One of my co-workers, had a client ask for a remote, not because of the live broadcast but because it was a good deal for the extra coverage.  So my co-worker created the Non-Remote, Remote program which includes everything except the live broadcast !