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"Hurt"
by Claude Hall
Chapter 16
J.D. and Amanda were not in the apartment. At
first,
I thought the dervish had been there. That worried
me; I had a dark suspicion that I knew all too well
what the dervish did with their victims.
Then the odor of wolfsbane threw me into a coughing
spasm. There were only three people in the world who
knew, without question, about my illness. J.D., of
course. And Braun and Gertrude.
I had smelled the wolfsbane, of course, the instant I
opened the door to my apartment. It's an herb with an
ugly yellow flower that has been used as a defense
again werewolves since at least the 14th century.
Back then it had been often called monkshood.
Whatever you wanted to call it, it carried the most
horrible odor you can possibly imagine. My nose hurt.
My lungs heaved.
I left the door of the apartment open and opened the
window beside the door. Then I turned on the heating
unit full blast to blow some of the smell out of the
apartment. The stench was virtually overwhelming.
My apartment had been ransacked and literally
destroyed. Perhaps "qualitatively destroyed" would
be
a better choice of words. Destroyed not out of anger,
it seemed to me as I stood there thinking about the
situation amidst the debris, but quite systematically
and with purpose. Not the work of fanatical villains
as we supposed the dervish to be, but someone intent
on leaving me a "message." They had started at one
end of the living room, for example, and worked their
way across the room, evidently tossing some of the
things over their shoulders--a pretty rock I'd found
in the desert during a full moon, a coin cup from the
former Dunes Hotel/Casino with the quarters it had
contained scattered hither and yon, a deck of playing
cards from Binion's Horseshoe Casino that I'd
purchased a few months ago in an abortive attempt to
learn how to play solitaire. The playing cards had
fluttered everywhere about the living room.
I heard a low moan from Doris just behind me. She
pointed at the wall to my left. Someone had painted a
huge cross on the wall reaching as high as my
shoulders with red paint. Then I noticed the dead
chicken on the floor below the cross and saw the blood
that had oozed from a gash in its neck. That wasn't
"paint" on the wall.
It appeared as if some strange rite had then been
performed over the dead chicken because five candles
placed like the points of a star still flickered
around the chicken. The candles had been burning
quite a while; they were almost used up and only
flickered dimly now. It was difficult to see the
chalk circle around the candles linking them together.
The couch had been overturned. The end table had been
smashed. A print of a lake scene had been jerked from
the wall and the cheap frame broken. However, an
old-fashioned clock, the kind you have to wind every
day, tickled on its face in the corner of the room. I
picked it up and examined it.
"It didn't break," I said. This puzzled me. That
kind of clock doesn't cost much. You drop one of
them, you generally have to buy a new one. But I
hadn't used this particular clock in months...hadn't,
in fact, even bothered lately to wind it. I had
decided one morning that it's ticking made too much
noise.
The smell of the wolfsbane then caused me to cough
violently again. I went into the bedroom--the bedroom
had been trashed, too--and opened the window onto the
parking lot. Although the rain hadn't reached into
the valley, storm clouds over the distant mountains
sent whipping fresh wind between the two-story
apartment buildings that thronged this area. After a
couple of deep breaths of air, I was able to return to
the living room.
I've heard people say that wolfsbane doesn't have any
noticeable odor. And I've heard others comment that
the odor from the yellow flower was slight, but not
offensive. To me, the smell of wolfsbane was like the
stench of something foul and long dead.
The common method for those who wanted to drive away a
potential werewolf was to dry out the plant--flower
and all--and then grind this into a powder. This
powder was then dusted around doorways and below the
windows of houses. That and a few prayers by a local
priest who knew what he was doing was usually good
enough to do the trick.
In my apartment, however, someone had dusted both the
couch and the easy chair. I held my breath and
carried the easy chair out into the middle of the
patio between the buildings. In less than a minute,
I'd also dragged the couch out of the apartment.
After that, I was able to breath a little better.
To a questioning stare from Doris, I just shrugged. I
didn't have time at the moment to explain my peculiar
allergy to wolfsbane.
Doris picked up the picture of the lake.
"It's torn," she said. She stared at the cheap
painting as if it offered a feeling of security in a
world that, for her and me, had become total chaos.
For her, perhaps too suddenly.
I'd never liked that particular picture, it had come
with the apartment. Lakes don't really look like
that; the artist had failed to put in the mosquitoes.
I quickly shut off that line of thought...it sounded
too much like J.D.
Some of the stuff in the icebox had been spilled onto
the kitchen floor. A quart of milk was still in the
rack of the icebox door, but one smell was enough to
convince me that some wiseguy--Gertrude?--had dropped
a pinch of the wolfsbane into the container hoping to
catch me off guard. I poured the milk down the
kitchen sink and rinsed the sink out. The money was
gone from the container in the deep freeze; the
container had been placed on the kitchen counter. The
small kitchen table was tilted on its back against the
wall.
However, the phone still worked after I plugged it
back into the wall. Doris immediately telephoned her
parents so they would know where she was. The
conversation was fairly brief.
She turned once from the phone. "Mother wants to know
the full name of your enemy."
"Tell her that I don't know," I said. "We call him
Mr. Braun."
"Well, what does he look like?"
I said the first thing that popped into my mind. If
you were trying to describe Braun, head of the
hospital, and you were in a hurry, what would you say?
"A big, overweight black bird with a red handkerchief
tucked into his suit pocket."
When she set the phone down, she told me that her
father and mother had changed their plans and both
were now on their way to Las Vegas by a chartered jet.
The TV set in the living room wasn't damaged. Someone
had turned on its side facing the wall. I put the TV
back on its stand. The cheap print of the lake, I
tossed in the trash. The smashed end table, I placed
outside the apartment by the door. It only took a few
minutes to straighten up the room.
I left the cross on the wall alone and everything else
where it was because when I reached down to pick up
the dead chicken, Doris said to leave it there. I
don't know what I intended to do with it...perhaps
toss it in the trash bin out back of the apartments.
"Don't touch it," she said.
"I can't let your dad come down here and see this
mess. What would he think?"
"Dad's not very handy with dead chickens," she said, a
grim little smile upon her face. "Mother, however, is
quite good. She will know what to do. Just in case."
She didn't explain what she meant by "just in case"
and, frankly, I was in too much of a dither to ask. I
had other problems at the moment.
I set the clock on the kitchen counter. It's steady
ticking could be heard in the living room even after I
turned on the evening news.
"How can you stand there and watch the news when your
two best friends are missing and may be dead?"
"I can't," I said. I turned the TV set off. There
had been nothing about Amanda or J.D. on the news.
However, another body had been found in a shallow
grave out in the desert toward the lake. The
investigating officer speculated that the death was
drug related. The body had been difficult to
recognize as human.
In one sense, I was relieved. Because I swear to you
I hadn't been out that direction in several weeks, so
it couldn't have been me while under the influence of
a full moon.
Finally, when I figured there was nothing else I could
do, I used the phone.
Juste Dawson said he would leave immediately for Las
Vegas. I asked him to bring his elephant gun and gave
him the address of my apartment. He said he'd already
prepared several shells just as I'd suggested. He
also asked if we'd need some extra help. I told him
that I didn't know, but one Juste Dawson was probably
worth about half an army in this particular
circumstance.
"I'll figure it all out when I get there," he said.
Ed Esposito had gone home for the day, but when I
mentioned my name the police officer on the other end
of the phone quickly gave me Esposito's home phone
number. A moment later, I asked Esposito if there'd
been any police reports of a white-haired lady and a
tall, slender man in a dark suit. He said he'd find
out and would tell me when he reached the apartment.
He said he knew the location.
Then I ordered delivery service on a couple of pizzas
and before the teenager on the other end could tell me
the price, changed the order to make it four pizzas.
"First, TV. Then, food. At a time like this?"
"Not for me," I told Doris. "Just in case Mr.
Dawson
and Mr. Esposito get hungry. It's the logical thing
to do. This Dawson fellow could probably eat three of
those pizzas just as an appetizer."
Briefly, I explained to Doris who Dawson and Esposito
were.
"What you mean is a gunrunner and a wounded
policeman."
"Yes. I guess so. But not just any gunrunner and not
just any wounded policeman," I said.
"I sure hope my father and mother get here in a
hurry," she said.
But they didn't.
As soon as Ed Esposito arrived and I introduced him to
Doris and a handful of pizza, I explained as much as I
could without really telling him the truth about J.D.
When I mentioned the name Amanda Robinson, he let out
a low whistle and said, "You've got to be kidding!
She's a legend. Virtually a myth. Everyone thought
she was dead."
Then I told him about Juste Dawson and his daughter.
That took a little more explaining than I wanted to do
because Esposito kept asking the wrong questions and
those questions led to further questions.
"Tell me everyone who was in the cave."
I shrugged. "Beside me and Dawson and his daughter, I
haven't the slightest idea. That's all, so far as I
know. But I did see this shadow. Well, sort of a
shadow. And these eyes. They were red like the eyes
of a cat, maybe. Or something like that. But I don't
think they were really the eyes of a cat. Does that
make much sense?"
"Hell, no," he said. "But nothing makes sense about
this entire farce. Kids rioting on Industrial with
what was supposed to be blanks, but weren't. A woman
who has been supposedly dead for more than 30 years
suddenly coming back to life, then getting kidnapped.
And I checked out that accident involving the
senator's daughter here; all of the casualties had a
record of one kind or another and she probably did
both the federal and state government big favors. How
could any of this make any sense!"
"Maybe I can help," said a slender, ancient figure
that appeared in the doorway behind Esposito. "Right,
Doris?"
I thought I recognized him, but I couldn't remember
when nor where we'd met. Then he introduced himself
as Dr. Jake Chadwick, an English professor at UNLV. I
had been under considerable duress at our last
meeting; the moon had been giving me fits. Now,
however, I remembered that balding head and the small
forests of white hair around his ears. Tonight,
however, they did not resemble the wings of anything.
I glanced at Doris. The sudden appearance of Dr.
Chadwick had upset her slightly. She glanced at me
before finally shrugging her shoulders.
"Maybe," she said.
Dr. Chadwick pushed his goldframe spectacles higher on
his nose. "I surmise that I'm butting in on something
that may be personal. I came by to see you,
Chuck...well, I was hoping that we could talk," he
said to me.
"I'm sorry, but I don't have time right now," I said.
His eyes darted quickly about the room, hung just for
a moment on the dead chicken and the candles. Two of
the candles had already died out.
"From what I overheard just a moment ago as I stood in
the doorway and that sacrificed chicken on the floor,
I can gather that," Chadwick said. He sniffed the
air. I heard him mutter the word "wolfsbane" half
under his breath. Without asking permission, he
stepped around me and bent over the flickering
candles.
"Don't touch it," Doris said.
He looked up at her from where he knelt by the circle.
"Ah, yes," he said, nodding as if her sharp command
had told him many things. "Is perhaps your mother
coming to see us in the very near future?"
"Yes," answered Doris. "And my father."
"Perhaps she'll let me observe her in action," said
Chadwick, a soft, wishful tone in his voice. "I could
learn so very, very much."
"I don't think so," said Doris. For a moment, I
thought she was slightly afraid of the aging college
professor. But she crossed her arms and continued to
look him directly in the eyes.
Esposito looked first at Doris, then at me. "I wish I
knew what in hell was going on around here."
"Me, too. What is this guy besides an English
professor?" I asked Doris.
"I am, indeed, a magician," Dr. Chadwick answered
quickly as if he was leery that Doris might provide a
different response. His manner of speech was pedantic
and old fashioned, but his tone was pleasant and
almost friendly.
"Like Lance Burton or Sigfried and Roy?" asked
Esposito from behind me.
"No," said Dr. Chadwick. "I do not indulge in
trickery. It's true that my skills are quite limited
and some say I have absolutely no talent for the
genre, but at least trickery is not my game."
Doris nodded.
"The professor does know about magic," she said. "Old
magic."
"Is that what the dead chicken is all about?" I asked.
Dr. Chadwick slowly rose to his feet and stepped back
from the circle reluctantly, keeping his eyes focused
on Doris, shifting his shoulders as if to get the
kinks out of his muscles. Without turning to face me,
he said, "Ah, but Chuck, I would have thought you knew
everything by now. I sensed in you an underlying
intelligence the other evening that, to me, was quite
startling. Yes, you should have figured everything
out by now."
"Figured what out?" I asked.
Dr. Chadwick glanced quickly at Esposito, then his
head lifted slightly and he scratched at the tuft of
his hair above his left ear.
"Maybe we should all wait for Doris' mother," he said.
"And, of course, for her father. I am most
interested in meeting the man in person."
"Good idea," I said. "Meanwhile, I have a small
errand to do."
Esposito wasn't fooled. "Perhaps I should go with
you."
"It's not your kind of fight," I told him. "I'm
really grateful for the offer. I appreciate it more
than you'll ever know. However, I need you here to
protect Doris. And Amanda and J.D., too, if I'm wrong
about them being kidnapped."
"It's damned well my kind of fight," said Doris with a
lot of snap to her voice.
"No, it isn't," I said.
"What about me?" asked Juste Dawson just then from the
open doorway. I was so glad to see him--because,
well, you just never know about some people--that I
felt like running over to him and giving him a big
bear hug. The thing that stopped me, however, was
that I doubted if I could reach around him. Anyway, I
figured a handshake was probably a much more manly
thing to do in this particular circumstance.
I introduced Dawson to Esposito, but I could see that
they would never become friends. Neither man
understood the other and didn't even want to try;
neither man trusted the other. The differences
between them--job, lifestyle, outlook on life--created
a wall. Make that a mountain.
"What the hell is that?" Esposito asked, pointing at
the huge rifle in Dawson's left hand.
"Special make," Dawson said. "Special
bullets."
"Something like that is probably against the law,"
Esposito said.
I thought that Esposito was merely trying to make a
joke, but I don't think Dawson took it that way.
"More than likely," said Dawson. "More than
likely."
"What can you possibly do with a gun like that?"
Esposito asked.
"Just about anything I want," Dawson said, not backing
down an inch.
I stepped between the two men. "Dawson brought that
particular weapon with him," I told Esposito, "because
I asked him to."
"Oh," said Esposito. And that was the end of that
particular discussion.
Dr. Chadwick, however, was a different situation. I
could tell that he was almost quivering with
curiousity about the long-barreled rifle in Dawson's
hand. Furthermore, he wasn't going to be satisfied as
easily.
"If you think my rifle is a bit strange," said Dawson,
"you can imagine how I feel about that mess over
there." He pointed at the crude red cross on the wall
and the dead chicken on the floor below it.
"Perhaps you should tell Detective Esposito and Dr.
Chadwick about the cave," I told Dawson.
That allowed me just enough time to sneak out. I know
that Doris saw me leaving, but she was, at the moment,
listening intently to Dawson.
(to be continued)
e-mail claude@claudehallonline.com
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Commentary
by
Claude Hall
February 1, 2004
A
Promotional
Design
"Rattlesnakes"
performed ad hoc circa 1956-58
by
L. David Moorhead, program director
KTKT Radio Station
Tucson, AZ
Note: This promotion has been expanded and the new
version given structure to fit a theoretical
promotional campaign paradigm created by Claude Hall.
Purpose of a Model Concept for Promotional Campaigns
A major facet of any promotion requires drawing the
attention of the target audience to the promotion.
Without audience, there is no promotion. The larger
the audience, the better the results of the promotion
as well as the possibilities of success.
The first phase: Attention. (OTHERS: Indulgence,
Belief, Participation, Bible)
At this stage, it's necessary is some way or through
some device to gain the attention of the target.
There's an old folk tale about a farmer with a
stubborn mule. He told the mule to "giddiup"
and the
mule didn't move. The farmer promptly picked up a 2x4
and whacked the mule alongside the head. When asked
why, the farmer replied that the mule obeyed real
well, "but first you have to get his attention."
Tricks may be used. Or stunts. The stunts can be
akin to the parade before the circus, a device (which
either originated or became a tradition with P.T.
Barnum) used to draw attention to the fact that
something is going on or about to happen. Terrorist
acts are usually just a method of getting attention
(even though the deaths perhaps involved may also be a
form of revenge), but so is the cry of a baby.
In getting attention, you can irritate or disturb,
impress, persuade, trick, beguile, entice; you might
have to interrupt, disrupt, shock, flabbergast,
betray, dismay, disenhearten, charm; you might have to
be rude. It is best not to be crude, distasteful,
vulgar, or overstep the boundaries of good taste
without careful consideration of the more than likely
adverse consequences; you want the target audience to
remember you, but you don't want them unnecessarily to
dislike you without constructive purpose. The wise
public relations professional creates no enemies by
accident, but may find it necessary, on occasion, to
create some on purpose. A case in point: Dan Rather
leaped from a field reporter to anchorperson on NBC-TV
news when he insulted President Richard Nixon on
national television.
A major advertising concept--very
popular for a while
on Madison Avenue during the 1960s--was the kind of
advertisement that actually irritated the viewer in
some manner. The Comet commercial, for example,
featured a very brusque woman shoving a housewife
aside and teaching her the fundamentals of sink
cleaning. The voice of the woman grated upon the
nerves, her actions were roughly insulting to anyone
of an IQ above 10. The theory was that when people
walked down the aisles of the supermarket, they did
not remember that they were irritated by the
commercial; they remembered the brand name and bought
Comet as opposed to Ajax, the "foaming cleanser"
of
radio jingle days. The worked; Comet sales shot up
80%, according to personal conversation with an
executive from Foote, Cone & Belding.
Rationale
In this case--specifically, the promotion featured by
KTKT, an AM radio station that featured a Top 40
format in the early days of rock'n'roll--a
psychological aspect was evident in the selection of
the promotional tool.
The promotional tool was the
rattlesnake.
There is something in human nature that
loves horror.
Edgar Allen Poe used horror effectively and, as we
now know, on purpose. Stephen King has not only
become very wealthy through the writing of horror
novels such "Shining," but his name a household
word
at least in the United States. P.T. Barnum also used
this concept rather well upon occasion, i.e. his freak
shows and General Tom Thumb.
It is considered to be one of the
factors that makes
a journalistic incident or event "newsworthy"
regarding news stories. In movies, everything from
"Friday 13th" in all of its many sequels to the James
Bond series have used various elements of horror.
It's a staple.
Top 40 radio was not above using this
same
psychological facet.
Background
Watchee Konochee once roamed the south from Glassboro,
KY, to Tucson, AZ, offering radio stations the
opportunity to bury him alive in a coffin with several
rattlesnakes. L. David Moorhead, then known as Guy
Williams, knew Watchee Konochee well.
"He was immune to rattlesnake
poison," said Moorhead
in "This Business of Radio Programming" by
Claude and
Barbara Hall.
"I used him at five different radio
stations.
Watchee used 28 rattlers, two boa constrictors, and a
python. I don't remember what his real name was."
(Hall & Hall, 136)
This was more than likely the same
person used by
Steve Bellinger, owner of WDZ in Decatur, IL, about
that time, though Bellinger doesn't remember his real
name.
Bellinger convinced a local shopping
center to let
the radio station cut a six-foot-deep hole in the
parking lot.
"We took a man from Kentucky called
Ahab the Arab and
put him in the hole on a Serta mattress for 10 days.
To make it more interesting, we covered him with
rattlesnakes and offered a $10,000 reward to anyone
who caught Ahab out of the hole. We did remote
broadcasts and drew a sensational crowd."
"One of the highlights for me,
though," recalled
Bellinger, "was when a big boa constrictor got loose
in one of the stores. The crowd immediately
scattered." Bellinger said he went into the store to
retrieve the snake, brought it up from behind the
counter, turned around, and faced down three police
officers, all with their guns drawn." (Shovan, 26)
Moorhead said that the reason he used
Watchee
Konochee a lot "was that I always worked for
losers."
Losers were radio stations at the bottom
of the
ratings battle. Entrepreneurial radio men would buy
one of these radio stations, hire a hotshot program
director such as Guy Williams, George Wilson, Chuck
Blore, etc., to turn the station around with a Top 40
format. Once the ratings improved, advertising sales
followed.
But Moorhead didn't wait for higher
ratings, as a
rule; the radio station would usually charge 25 cents
a person for people to see Watchee in his coffin.
These promotions were unplanned; thus,
things often
went wrong.
"In Tucson for KTKT, we were trying
to break a
record, because he'd been there before the past
winter. I don't remember what year it was, but
Kennedy became president about that time.
"Unfortunately, this time it was
summer and, to say
the least, the snakes were uncomfortable."
Moorhead and the KTKT staff took the
snakes to an
outdoor museum near the city to "let the snakes clean
themselves out. Can you imagine what that coffin
would have been like with all that snake crap?"
But the truck that they rented had been
sitting in
the sun. The truck bed was about 125 degrees hot.
"When we tossed those rattlesnakes on that hot metal
pickup floor, they started striking, killing each
other."
KTKT had to, literally, dig up some more
rattlesnakes.
Then other problems developed. "Watchee
was bitten
six times by those wild rattlesnakes before we could
even get him into the hole," Moorhead said. "The
poison didn't bother him, but one of the rattlers had
cankermouth. Watchee had a hell of an infection
problem for a while.
"But the snakes did their
job," Moorhead said. "We
soon sat there in the market with an 64% average
share."
He added: "It was only much
later--after I became a
general manager myself that I realized it was much
better to have 28% of a market and make money."
In the early days of Top 40 radio, major
radio
program directors--and disc jockeys--often worked for
losing stations. The reason is that the so-called
"Golden Age of Radio" had met its demise at the hands
of television. But here and there, record shows were
still doing okay on radio. One of the first such
shows was hosted by Howard Miller on WIND in Chicago
(Hall & Hall, 30-31) and sponsored by MGM Records to
promote its product (sales increased 30% in the area
in just one year). Others who rose to fame included
Jack "the Bellboy" McKenzie and Tom Clay in
Detroit,
Frank Ward in Buffalo, Bill Randle on WERE in
Cleveland, Al Jarvis and Peter Potter in Los Angeles,
Joe Smith and Arnie "Woowoo" Ginsburg in Boston.
But then radio history was created at
KOWH in Omaha,
NE, with the development of format radio by Todd Storz
and Bill Stewart, the first people to not only bring
consistency and rotation patterns to Top 40 radio, but
strong promotion stunts.
As the format concepts spread--as well
they did with
every successful radio station--outlandish promotions
were among the bag of tricks of each and every program
director. Some kept files and repeated the promotions
in other markets as they, themselves, moved up and
down the hierarchy of markets, from small to medium to
large cities.
J. Paul Emerson, whose real name is Jim
Coleman,
believes Pogo Pog was the king of radio stuntmen.
Pogo Pog earned his nom de aero by jumping on a pogo
stick for 35 miles to raise money for the March of
Dimes while working once at an Ogden, UT radio
station. He also once held the world radio record for
riding a Ferris wheel 17 days without getting off.
"Pogo worked at KIMN in Denver from
1955 until 1965,"
said Emerson. "He wore a fur hat, racoon-skin coat,
drove a three-wheeled auto, carried a pogo stick at a
cane and used the name Weird Beard. Anyway, during
the time at KIMN, Pogo once did his show from the
store-front window of Zales in downtown Denver. and,
get this, he did it while sitting in the middle of 150
snakes. Seventy-five were killer snakes. On the 13th
day, while on the air, his chair broke and he fell
into the snakes. A cottonmouth jumped out and bit him
on the arm three times. Pogo, whose real name was
Morgan White, was in the hospital for several weeks
after that stunt."
David Moorhead, who spent considerable
time in Denver
(he worked during one period of his career at seven
different Denver radio stations under six different
names) remembers the incident differently: Watchee
Konochee climbed into the jewelry store window
surrounded by rattlesnakes. After several weeks of
publicity, the final day arrived. The station had
climbed to No. 1 in the market (probably a Mediastat
rating). The program director wanted fiercely to stay
No. 1 in the market. The promotion was almost over.
Watchee Konochee was being interviewed on radio about
the deadly snakes. Then, suddenly, the radio audience
and the people milling around the jewelry store
realized that something had gone wrong. A rattlesnake
was loose. A disc jockey appeared to be bitten. Two
men slashed at the DJ's wounded hand and tried to suck
out the poison to prevent it from spreading. An
ambulance was called. The DJ was given anti-venom and
rushed to the hospital. That "snakebite"
proved
itself worth extra mileage; the disc jockey ended up
being interviewed by local newspapers and eventually
by most of the press in the West and Southwest.
To this day, only two or three radio
people,
according to Moorhead, know the truth. Secretly, the
program director whacked the DJ with two nails on a
board. By the time his hand was cut to such out the
"snake's" venom and he was rushed to the hospital, no
one knew the small difference. The big difference was
in the even-greater ratings for the radio station
during the next few months.
"Watchee was okay," said
Moorhead. "A real pro."
Design
To capitalize on the fact that most people can't stand
snakes of any kind--and, in fact, are deathly afraid
of them--yet drawn instinctive and overwhelmingly to
the macabre, a person is put into the middle of
several rattlesnakes.
To give the situation an even more
gruesome aspect,
place him or her in a glass-topped coffin,
well-lighted, buried about six feet down in a local
place of high foot traffic, i.e., a major shopping
center, an airport, the center of a major university
campus, etc.
Research
I. Feasibility study to consider
A. What kind of
audience you have available and what
kind of audience you wish to reach
B. What aspects of
this promotion would best catch the
attention of that audience, appeal to them, motivate
them
C. Practicality of
the promotion; can it be done
within certain parameters of energy, personpower,
funding, taste
D. Channels of
communication to be used
E. Merits of
promotion; what will be achieved, in
anything
F. Potential
results
1.
Larger audience
2.
Increased sales
3.
Higher level of consciousness
a. Call letters
of station
b. Names of disc
jockeys involved
c. A particular
client
4.
Change in attitude of target audience
toward the
station and its personnel
5.
Motivation of a specific portion of the
audience
to do something
6.
Motivation of one or more potential
advertising
clients
G. Cost of the
promotion
II. Possibilities for backfire
III. Possible tie-ins
A. With
advertising clients
1.
Shopping center stores
a. Promotion
builds up customer traffic
b. Stores could
be plugged on-air
2. Display of rattlesnakes inside of
local stores who
buy a specific amount of advertising time; this
display would feature several rattlesnakes in a glass
case and the call letters of KTKT would be prominently
displayed, along with the feeding times of the snakes
B. Public
1.
Charity?
2.
Local cause, i.e., wildlife
conservation, Sierra
Club?
3. Tee shirt featuring rattlesnake on
back intertwined
around call letters KTKT; try to promote this with a
record label (their artist or record would be featured
on front) or a fast-food restaurant (their logo would
be on front)...there is a possibility, of course, of
selling this tee shirt in local record stores and over
the air
4. Plastic coffee cups featuring a
rattlesnake
intertwined around the call letters KTKT (see artwork)
on one side and McDonald's or Burger King on other
side
IV. Scheduling of the promotion
A. Time of year
B. Place
Raison d'Etre
To firmly establish the call letters of KTKT radio
station in the minds of the community of Tucson, AZ,
it will be necessary to disturb them in some fashion.
This particular promotion campaign would merely be
preliminarily to a major extended promotional campaign
that would continue cementing the call letters into
the minds of the population of Tucson and the
surrounding region within and beyond the signal reach.
Planning
I. Media lists/contacts
A. Secretary will call every newspaper,
television
station, and magazine in region to build a current
list of names, titles, firms, and addresses, along
with phone numbers
B. Purchase
lists
1.
State newspapers, magazine (Standard
Rate & Data,
Skokie, IL)
2.
Television stations (Standard Rate &
Data,
Skokie, IL, or Broadcasting Yearbook)
II. Write announcements
1. Before
COPY FOR WEIRD BEARD
(Sound effect of rattlesnake rattling) Forty-eight
hissing monsters, some as long as five feet! (Sound
effect of rattlesnake rattling) I'll be there. You be
there. Sunday. Right before the movie starts at the
Royal Theatre at the Deerwood Shopping Mall. If
you're scared of rattlesnakes, I wouldn't come. But
if you'd like to see a human being fondle one of these
horrible monsters, come on by. Sunday afternoon at
the Deerwood Shopping Mall!
2. During
promotion
COPY RE KENNY SHOES
Drop by and talk to Watchee Konochee this afternoon on
the special phone KTKT has installed just for you.
Maybe Watchee will let you say hello to a rattlesnake.
And while you're there, drop by Kenny Shoes and say
hello to manager Bill Smith. Jogging shoes are on
sale today at Kenny Shoes. $24 for a pair of Jogger
Dans. Kenny Shoes do not take a big bite out of your
pocketbook.
III. Write news releases
A. Launching of
promotion
B. Promotion
moving to store front
C. Boa
constrictor escaping
D. Disc jockey
bitten by snake
IV. Possible articles
A. Handling of
dangerous snakes featuring interview
with Watchee Konochee
B. Feeding of
rattlesnakes, what they eat as pets,
what they eat in wild
C. Conservation
of wildlife--snakes are people,
too--featuring Watchee Konochee
V. Possible media interviews to be
pitched by letter
and over the phone
A. Watchee
Konochee on how to treat snakebite
B. Watchee
Konochee on how to avoid getting bitten by
rattlesnakes, where they life, how they live
VI. Posters
A. Art:
rattlesnake biting a hand
COPY FOR POSTER
Are you scared of snakes?
Meet the man who has been bitten 17,000 times--and
lived!
Watchee Konochee
The Snake Man
From the Dangerous Ochefeenochee Swamps of
Georgia
Deerwood Shopping Mall
Tucson
June 24-June 30
VII. Contests
A. Weird Beard
gives $100 to anyone willing to touch
a rattlesnake on the opening day
B. Bite pool to
see who guesses how many time Watchee
Konochee will be bitten during his coffin stay
VIII. Talks/demonstrations by Watchee
Konochee at
local public schools
IX. News conference featuring Watchee
Konochee, KTKT
general manager, KTKT disc jockey Weird Beard
A. Place:
B. Time:
C. Refreshments:
D. Snakes:
E. Media Kits
contents
1.
News release
2.
Watchee Konochee bio
3.
Photographs
a. Disc jockeys
b. Watchee
Konochee with snakes in coffin
4.
History of radio station
5.
Current disc jockey lineup of radio
station
6.
Reprints re radio station, if any
F. Planned
disturbances:
1.
SPCA
2.
Animal rights activists
VIII. Training of personnel, if any
Programming
I. Step No. 1--Announcement
A. News
conference
B. Posters
distributed
C. Media kits
D. On-air
promotional spots
E. On-air
crossplug copy for deejays
II. Step No. 2--Burial
A. Digging of
grave
1.
Invite media
2.
Invite mayor
3.
Photos
B. Climbing into
coffin
1.
Invite media
2.
Photos
3.
Videotape
C. Placement of
snakes
D. Closing of
coffin
E. Lowering of
coffin
F. Demonstration
by animal rights activists
III. Step No. 3--Store window display
with Watchee
Konochee
A. Construction
of "pit"
B. Watchee
Konochee places snakes into pit and climbs
in
IV. Step No. 4--Snake escapes
A. During
demonstration with boa constrictor, snake
"wanders off" while Watchee Konochee chats with
passersby (David Moorhead takes snake to store that is
station's major client in the mall)
B. Watchee
Konochee notices snake missing
C. Announcement
on loud speaker system in stores,
broadcast announcements on radio station
D. Runners sent
to warn everyone in shopping mall
E. Snake "found"
in store
V. Step No. 5--Disc
jockey bit by snake
A. Disc jockey
climbs into chair in pit to broadcast
life
B. Chair
collapses or he falls (thin, low glass
barrier protects him)
C. Disc jockey
struck by snake while on air
D. Program
director slashes arm to save life of disc
jockey
E. Disc jockey
whisked away to hospital by ambulance
VI. Step No. 6--Interview on air with
disc jockey at
hospital
VII. Disc jockey honored at tribute
dinner
Evaluation
I. Media coverage
A.
Newspapers
B. Magazines
C. Television
D. Other radio
stations
II. Sales increase
III. Audience increase
IV. Step-by-step analysis of the
promotion
Bibliography
Cantor, Bill. "Experts in Action: Inside Public
Relations." New York: Longman, 1984.
Cutlip, Scott and Center, Alan and Broom, Glen M.
"Effective Public Relations." Englewood Cliffs,
NJ:
Prentice-Hall, 1985, 6th ed.
Hall, Claude and Hall, Barbara. "This Business of
Radio Programming." New York: Watson-Guptill, 1977.
Moorhead, L. David, personal conversations, 1976-1992.
Shovan, Tom. "Radio Days--Again: Pulse's Retro-Radio
Series Continues." Pulse magazine, March 14, 1988.
* * * * *
NEXT WEEK: Emails and chatter and maybe some of the
world's greatest promotion stunts, including "The
Only
Living Brazilian Invisible Fish" caught and promoted
by the legendary Harry Reichenbach.
Claude Hall
e-mail claude@claudehallonline.com
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