![[ logo ]](logo_thisal.jpg){kind=logo}
'This American Life'
DEVELOPMENT
|
![[ directory ]](/infosite/images/development.jpg)
'This American Life' DIRECTORY
|
'THIS AMERICAN LIFE'Four Hours of On-Air Fundraising by Ira Glass Okay, here's a pledge drive trick I've talked about at PRDMCs. "This American Life" has some premiums designed specifically to help stations do this trick, but it'd work with lots of premiums. When we did this during one "Morning Edition" at WBEZ where I work, we made — okay, I know this sounds crazy but I'll explain, I swear — $179,000 in 1,719 pledges in just four hours. I know that looks like a typo. Even for WBEZ, which does powerhouse pledge drives, that's a pretty good morning. Here's how we did it. And how you can do some version of it. It's based on the idea of offering a second, very cheap premium, for one "Morning Edition" during your drive. During those four hours, everyone who pledges will get the cheap premium in addition to the regular thank you gifts. They get the cheap premium at any pledge level. This is key. It gives first-time callers a way to get a gift for a $15 or $20 pledge. And it gives a second premium to all the people who are pledging at the normal levels. The whole idea is to solve the hardest problem of the pledge drive: How do you give your listeners — who have an inchoate sense that maybe they wanna pledge someday — a reason to call right now. This gives them the reason. Namely, they get extra stuff! (We even say that sometimes on the air. "Don't call because it's the right thing to do! Don't call because for years you've felt you should! Don't call to keep these programs on the air! Call to get the stuff!" I know. This might be below the dignity of you and the people at your station. We, however, are not too proud to stoop.) The cheap premium we used this fall at WBEZ was this build-it-yourself Louis Sullivan building artist Chris Ware designed for us. They're available for 75 cents each at the VisAbility website, and only make sense really if you also offer the "This American Life" DVD — the building is from the DVD. Other TAL premiums that would work as cheapo thank you gifts are our "public radio temporary tattoos" and our "squirrel cop patches" (though you'd have to play our "squirrel cop" story for that one to make sense). Any premium you have that's under a dollar could work. So what do you do? Glad you asked! THE EASY VERSION You go on the air and say that "During today's "Morning Edition" and only during today's "Morning Edition," if you pledge, you not only get the regular thank you gifts ... you also get this build-it-yourself architectural masterpiece. Pledge for a coffee mug, get the mug and the Sullvian building. Pledge for just $10 or $15 — a first time pledge, too low to normally send you anything — and we send you the Sullivan building with our thanks." You emphasize that this special second premium will only be available once during the drive — right now! Maybe your station puts a picture of the Sullivan building online, to drive people to your website. (If you're offering the "This American Life" DVD, you can actually put a movie preview on your site, from the DVD, to get people to your site to pledge. Just steal the movie and graphics from www.thisamericanlife.org/dvd, as we've said in many DACSes.) Obviously, you want to encourage people to pledge at higher levels, so they don't all come in for $10 to get the goodies. This hasn't been a problem here at WBEZ when we've done this. THE SLIGHTLY-LESS-EASY WAY ... OR ... HOW TO MAKE $179,000 IN FOUR HOURS WITHOUT STEPPING FOOT IN A CASINO So here's what we did on WBEZ on Tuesday, November 16. Like you, probably, we have a certain number of Board members who are gonna give us sizable donations each year. One of ours, a guy named Larry Keeley, agreed to take part in this novel scheme. (All credit, by the way, to our Pledge Director Wendy Turner for inventing this and making it happen.) I and my boss Torey went on the air that morning and talked about how in public radio, there's this legend ... (cue spooky pan-flute music here) often dreamed-of, never achieved ... of someone, somewhere, someday, getting a thousand pledges in just one morning. "Nobody's ever done it," we told the audience, hoping it was true. "When we sit around the campfire at night with the pledge drive director, the stars shining brightly above us, she tells us this story, this myth, this prophecy, that someday, one thousand people will call during one "Morning Edition." Many have tried to achieve it. Many have perished trying. It's the Mount Everest of pledge drives. It's the cold fusion of pledge drives." And today, we told listeners, we want to reach this never-achieved goal. We explained how Board member Larry Keeley was so eager to get people to join the station, and so ambitious about breaking the thousand-pledge barrier, he volunteered to buy each and every person who pledged before 9:30 the "This American Life" DVD. "You pledge at any level," we said, "it doesn't matter what, he'll buy you the DVD. But — and this is an important 'but' — he'll only do it if we achieve a thousand pledges before the end of "Morning Edition." The DVDs cost WBEZ $10 each. He'll pony up ten grand. Ten grand to buy "you" a DVD. But only if a thousand people call." "And on top of that, no matter what happens, everyone who calls gets the build-it-yourself Sullivan building. This architectural masterpiece used to stand downtown in the Loop. Now the only place it exists is here — during this pledge drive." This make sense? They pledge $20, they get the Sullivan building. And, if a thousand people pledge, Larry Keeley buys them the DVD. They pledge $150 (what it took to get a mug) and they get the Sullivan building and the mug, no matter what, and if a thousand people pledge, they also get the DVD. They pledge $150 (what it took to get the DVD as a premium), and they get the Sullivan building and the DVD no matter what. Wendy was scared that this scheme would lead to lots of people pledging for tiny amounts, just so they could get the DVDs ... so she told Torey and me that we should never mention a pledge level below $150. Torey was also instructed to pitch for very high-end donors. This worked. We wanted to end the deal at 9:30 but literally every phone in the pledge room continued to ring for the next half hour, with people who wanted to get in on the deal. It was pretty amazing. I've done three or four pledge shifts every drive, several times a year, for the last decade — including some other fantastically successful pledge drive gimmicks — and I've never seen anything like it. It was like the phones never stopped ringing all morning. I honestly believe we'll never beat it at WBEZ. Something about the combination of the free premiums and "be part of history" ... and the general air of excitement and fun, all combined to make it the best morning ever. Also, Wendy and Torey had to be willing to take a $10,000 donation and simply throw it all at premiums. Keeley, by the way, was delighted. His donation had caused an avalanche! (He even came on the air with us at one point to egg the listeners on. "Take me to the cleaners!" he warbled. "My business has done great this year. Lemme buy you a DVD!") In the end, when we got over a thousand donors (1,719, remember), he paid for all of their DVDs. Nice guy. Hopefully, you're lucky enough to have someone like that on your Board too. One last note about all this. Now that I've pitched the DVD and the build-it-yourself building on the air a few times, I've realized some things about how to pitch them. They're wonderful premiums, but you have to talk about them for a minute or two before they make sense to the audience and seem as appealing as they should. I'll write up my notes on how to best pitch them, and maybe make some new pre-taped modules that'll do the job for you, for our TAL spring fundraiser. |
