More to Memphis than dry rub right?

Some of the points you should be taking away with you from The St. Jude meeting in Memphis this weekend is how to make this happen in a dented economy. Using social media, you can really stir the pot with your radiothon this year. I watched Wal-Mart's Food for Hunger campaign explode on Facebook here in Fresno, everyone got involved and began posting everything as simple as "Go Fresno" to thoughts about why we could use a million dollars to fend off hunger in the community. 

Facebook and Twitter can be used to help spread the message and the web site and phone numbers to have folks give. The main thing is the human element, talking to real people at the mall, either St. Jude parent's or a parent who has had a brush with children's cancer. We had a gentlemen who would come down every year in Allentown and talk with us on the air, who lost his daughter. He had the entire mall and staff crying. That led to a $50,000 hour in our last hour. We drove big metrics, because the staff got into and didn't treat it like a dumb radio promotion, they ate, slept and you know what else at the event.

The staff has to be cohesive and you have to work your communications skills. Some talent don't have the natural abilities to pull this off, that's what you should team strong and average talent together for 3 hour shifts to avoid burn-out. This is an emotional roller coaster and you need a break every couple of hours. That's the extra drive it takes to pull off a blazing radiothon for any community building promotion