This is the second post of a series of 3 on Advertising and Promoting your Airbrush Business. Visit the other two posts… How to get free Print and TV exposure and Social Media and Printed Promotional Material to learn more about simple things you can do to help get your name out there.
The first thing I want to emphasize on this post is that this is all about getting FREE or extremely low cost advertising through Radio and Live Promotions.
A few of the original Coyote Kim shirts.
For us, our venture into the world of Radio all started with a crush….that’s right a love crush….lol…Going way back in our history to circa 1992, one of our artists Dave, had a huge crush on the traffic reporter from one of Cincinnati’s local country radio stations. Her radio name was Coyote Kim. So Dave had the brilliant idea of doing her a special shirt and taking it down to the station and giving it to her. So, long story short, Dave gave her a shirt, she loved it, the other DJs loved it and most importantly the Promotions Manager of the station loved it. We went on to create a whole series of shirts(some shown here) using cartoon characters depicting the different DJs and it became an on going gag that was talked about on air over and over….and the whole time our name is getting splashed throughout the airwaves …..for just the cost of a few shirts. From that day on we have worked closely with many of the top radio stations in this area. Simply because we gave away a free shirt….Oh, and Yes Dave and Coyote Kim did start briefly dating….they did eventually break up and as life would have it Dave went on to marry someone whose REAL name was Kim….lol
Full size Semi Airbrushed for the Shania Twain Concert
Anyway, So how does this pertain to Advertising? Well, from that day on, because the promotions manager of the radio station loved the shirt and the “creativity” behind it, they had us designing all kinds of different things for them, shirts, cards, banners etc… They had us travel with them to do live onsite radio promotions where we would airbrush certain items to be given away for free to the listeners, We even had the opportunity to airbrush an entire semi-truck for the Shania Twain concert and they also flew us out to Washington DC(all expenses paid) to do another Semi for a sister station in DC.
Second full size Semi in Washington DC for sister station of Cincinnati’s Y96.5
All of these things were done in trade for radio advertising. And I’m not talking a free radio commercial with a jingle(although there were a few)…we are talking actual mentions and conversations about us by the DJ’s, live on air. This is what you are shooting for, NOT an annoying radio commercial that we all change the station as soon as the commercial comes on. You want the DJs themselves talking about you. Lets face it, we ALL love listening to our crazy local DJs, especially during drive times in the morning and evening rush hours. These conversations stick with us all day long, we usually even share what we heard on the radio with friends and family. This is exactly what happened way back in 1992, Coyote Kim, not only talked about the shirt, the rest of the DJ’s kept talking about it and Anything Airbrushed all day long. Our name was officially out there, now it was up to us to keep it going.
Even now, our artists are always doing shirts for local radio DJs. If they hear the DJs talking about something funny, they make a shirt about it and send it down to the station, If the DJs are involved in a certain promotion that we can come up with something that pertains to it ….we come up with something and send it to them. In the past, we have volunteered to be a drop off point for Toys for Tots at Christmas(which brings people in). We set up and give away free baby bibs and Room Pennants at the huge Mega Mommy Sale hosted by 4-5 of the local stations. We do all kinds of charity and concert promotions with the stations, all year long.
Our Mall locations have always been the best form of advertising because the mall marketing department always has radio stations out to the mall for promotions….and we just piggy back off of those. If a station is going to be here for some kind of promotion like Halloween, Mothers/Fathers Day, Back to school etc…. we immediately tell the Mall we want to be involved and we usually wind up setting up next to the station while they are here and we give away free stuff like, knit hats, stockings, tote bags, room pennants…all the stuff that doesn’t cost us more than $1-$2 each. When all is said and done, and the 2 hour remote is over, it will have cost us usually less than a hundred dollars. What we got for that $100 is a few days or a weeks worth of on air mentions(telling everyone we would be at this promotion giving away stuff) as well as on going mentions/promotions for the 2 hours of the remote. This is hundreds of dollars worth of advertising and when you talk long term and on going advertising campaigns, its thousands of dollars in advertising that we did not have to pay for.
To this day we work with the radio stations to help make any promotions they have a little better and a little more exciting. We do all of this at little to no cost in trade for radio mentions.
Charity promotion where we gave a way free baby bibs and room pennants.
B105 DJ Amanda Valentine with a shirt we did for her compliments of her on air partner Jesse.
Seasonal shirts for Cincinnati’s Q102 DJs
Joke shirt for the B105 Morning show
So now you are wondering how this can work for you, right?
First, listen to the radio…lol…. Get to know your local DJs. If something comes up that you can do something creative, do it and take it down to the station. You don’t even have to wait, just make sure the DJs name is on it and leave it with the receptionist. If the station is doing some kind of promotions that you feel you can be part of…. contact the promotions manager and tell them you want to be involved. If you are in a Mall or a Flea Market, get to know the Marketing Managers. Tell them you want to be involved in these promotions.
Above all…don’t be shy ! …put yourself out there and contact these stations. They are always looking for ways that they can make their promotions different and I can tell you that they probably haven’t even thought about airbrushing.
I can tell you that you do have to be willing to be creative. You have to come up with the ideas that you can approach the stations with. In time they will be calling you with ideas of their own asking if you can do something that they have in mind.
As far as compensation…When it comes to doing radio remotes and on site promotions, what you are asking for is to be part of the promotion itself. You want the mentions in any on air conversations and you want to be mentioned in any of the commercials for the events. So for example, lets say the station is doing a promotion for a local charity at a local community center. You can volunteer to set up with the radio station and give away knit hats for 2 hours. In turn, the station will mention this every time they talk about the event. This will be a good amount of mentions that keeps your name out there all for the cost of doing 40-60 hats .
What is even better these days is the stations and DJs themselves all have Social Media accounts so not only do you get the benefit of the on air mentions you will also get Social Media exposure which will expose you even more to people who never knew you existed. Its always fun when the DJs or station post pictures of what we are doing or a shirt that they received and to read all the comments…. again just an added bonus all for free
These are the type of promotions that we do the most of and the ones that get us the most exposure. The same type of event is what we do in the Mall which of course gets us not only the mentions on the radio but also drives people directly into our store during the remote….How?…well, even though the remote is going on in a different part of the mall, when we do things like the hats or stockings or anything that needs to be heat set. Then we get to tell the people who are picking up their free item that they need to take it up to our store and have it heat set. This automatically drives people into our store who may not have know we were there to begin with…. hence automatic sales opportunity. Since at the remote it is always one item per person and people ALWAYS want more that one, not only can we send them to the store to get the item heat set but we also tell them they can purchase additional items at a discounted rate.
Back in the 90’s the only way a company could get an entire trailer with Shania Twain on it was to have it custom painted by an airbrush artist since the technology wasn’t there yet to make it possible or affordable otherwise. Being able to put someones name on a hat right in front of them anywhere at any time, was not possible except for the airbrush artist who only needed an electrical outlet to plug in a compressor.
Times have changed, and technology has changed everything including the printed apparel business. A lot of what used to only be able to be done by an airbrush artist can now be done by a computer and a digital printer. However, technology will still never be able to do replace EVERYTHING an airbrush artist can do and going out in public, meeting people, making them smile with a free personalized item done right in front of them is part of what will ALWAYS make airbrushing popular.
So to wrap this part of our “Getting your name out there” series of posts, Advertising all comes down to getting as much exposure as possible with out it costing a lot of out of pocket expense. In order to survive in this day and age you have to be on peoples mind at the right time and in the right place. The airbrush store business is a combination of impulse buying as well as repeat customers. The more you offer the more people will eventually be interested in buying something. However if they don’t know you do it or don’t even know you exist then the sales will be fewer and fewer.
Hope this helps with your advertising, as always feel free to leave comments or ask questions…..now go turn on the radio!