Why Q4 Is AC Radio’s Prime Promo Season

The days are long – the years are short. At least according to Gretchen Rubin, author of “The Happiness Project.”

Halfway through 2025 – July 1st – we offered THIS piece on the temptation for Adult Contemporary brands to promotionally sleep through the 2^nd quarter.

The calendar marches on — 2025 is slipping away.  Forward-thinking brands have shot their holiday commercial as we collectively shake our heads with Halloween decorations in Costco in July, Halloween garb in Lowe’s in August and Christmas stuff in Hobby Lobby in September.

Opportunities are creeping up on you.

• Halloween is 10 weeks away.
• Only 15 weekends until Thanksgiving.
• Christmas is in 19 Tuesdays – including this one.
• New Year’s Day?  135 days on the horizon.

If you’re not actively working with your promotional team NOW, creating promotional and sales opportunities, the rest of the year will slip through your fingers.

Every quarter —and at times monthly—we confab with promotional teams and local sellers to brainstorm what’s in the next season for the station and their advertisers.

The promotional Super Bowl for Adult Contemporary radio is the 4th quarter, as it coincides with high listener usage of Christmas music, collaborative promotional partnerships with retail, and the emotional impact of the season.

Also promised in our July 1^st piece, here are samples of notes from client ideation sessions for your 4^th quarter:

September Ideation

Winery Party Bus

• Rent a full bus limo for a Saturday afternoon. Your morning team rides with qualified winners and their guests on a winery tour through a nearby Wine Country. Make stops at client restaurants for appetizers between wineries. Offer to pay for Uber for a ride home or drop them off at their home. Qualify listeners by email through your website to build your database. (Must be 21). 

Station – Branded Charging Station

• Also covered in our July 1^st article, work with a U-Pick Orchard or a farm that promotes Agricultural Tourism. They are packed in the fall, and parents take loads of pictures, leading to dead phone batteries. Phone charging stations have come way down in price in the past decade.  Check Amazon. At a minimum, buy a USB power strip and put it near the checkout or bathrooms with a QR code that leads to your website.

School Pledge

• This might seem remedial or even corny, but the Pledge of Allegiance has made a school comeback. Country stations have been doing this for years. Ask a class or a school to record their pledge and email it to you.  Collect many classes and schools’ pledges and rotate them at 7:30 am daily – when many elementary students are on their way to class. Local advertisers love being connected to patriotic themes.

October Ideation

Election 2025

• With a few Federal Special Elections as exceptions, this fall’s polling races are mostly local—and as they say, all politics are local. Develop and air PSAs with key dates for voter registration, mail-in ballot deadlines and early voting locations in your state. Check with your state broadcast association, as they may already have production in their arsenal with this type of messaging. Also, spotlight PSAs recruiting poll workers for your county. Some counties even have funds set aside to buy airtime for that message

Listener Designed Seasonal Logos

• Ask listeners to create a logo for every season (Fall – Halloween – Thanksgiving – Christmas – New Year’s – Winter) and use their logo on all your digital and social platforms for the season. Have artists use YOUR logo as the base. Sponsors also get placement on the seasonal logos.  Winners selected get prizes from local retailers OR station swag, with Canva and like AI programs, it’s easy to do.

Halloween

• Hold a virtual costume contest through your app or website. Costumes must be homemade. Create different categories for adults, children and pets. Have local celebrities or politicians do the judging. Give away Costco–sized bags of candy as prizes or local sponsor merchandise. Hottest costumes for 2025 continue to be Taylor Swift-inspired, Barbie/Ken and TikTok’s Ibiza Final Boss.

(Add this to your standard Spooky Song Weekend, Trick-or-Treat Safety Sponsorships, Haunted House Ticket Giveaways and remotes.)

November Ideation

Kards For Kids

• Have listeners create homemade cards for kids and send them to the station. Morning shows read some of them on the air. Talent then delivers to the children’s wing of the local hospital. Take pics – with permission – and post online. Sell to a local hospital or any affinity group looking for great holiday PR. 

Food Drives

• Instead of a dedicated Food Drive, partner with your local food pantry to have them be at EVERY one of your events – big and small – through December, collecting non-perishable items. Food pantries have marketing dollars. See if you can get some of their budget in your cluster. Develop a plan to do this year-round, as people in need stay hungry – year-round.

Small Business Saturday

• This year, SBS is on November 29^th.  Great way to reinforce LOCAL for your clients. Dedicate a web page highlighting participating local businesses and their special SBS deals for that day. Get local Chambers involved and create spots that highlight several businesses at a discount in one :60. Most local businesses cannot afford a full radio campaign.  This creates an affordable entry point. Cyber Monday is December 1^st.

(Add this to your Turkey Hotline Survival Tips, Turkey or Ticket Giveaway, Bowling for Turkeys and Thanksgiving Weekend Kickoff with Christmas commercial-free hours during peak shopping times).

December Ideation

Christmas Parades

• THIS is the time you should be preparing for Christmas Parades. Work with your local Town Planner (or like platform) to identify local Christmas parades. If you need a permit, now is the time to apply. Pass out candy in sponsor-themed bags on the route. It’s something that SiriusXM and Spotify can’t do. Sponsor families get their family on a float, handing out candy.

The 12 Strays of Christmas

• Designed to get shelter pets adopted by featuring one adoptable pet each day leading up to Christmas. Partner with your local shelter or humane society to highlight 12 different adoptable pets, each with their own story and personality. A highly sponsorable promotion, and Christmas is a hot time for pet adoption. Partner with local pet stores, your local Wal-Mart (managers have a budget for things like this) or veterinarians to offer discounted services for adoptions

Christmas Choirs

• Have your jingle provider send you sheet music of your package. Post a PDF of the jingle on your website. Encourage local school and church choirs to sing your jingle with a holiday feel. Run them with audio attribution throughout the season, even after you stop Christmas music. Tons of local organizations end up talking about this on your AC station.

(Add this to your standard Christmas Wish, 12 Days of Christmas, Santa’s Secret Stash, Toy Drives and Santa Tracking.)

We get so far into the forest when we’re handling the day-to-day of building a superior product and hitting short-term sales goals, we mentally slip on future planning.

Before you know it, the “Black Hole” that is the 1^st quarter will be in our windshield.

We’ll have promotional guidance for you, then, too.

But first – get going on 4^th quarter 2025!

*Special thanks to client stations for ideation and the creative minds behind the promotional efforts of Kensington Digital Media, Midwest Communications, Federated Media, Midwest Family of Companies, Saga Communications and CPR Promotions Paige Nienaber (among others).

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