AMP Radio Burns $5000 in cash

[Resolute 14]

Originally Posted by FlamingHomer

There you go. PROMOTIONS. It was part of the Promotions budget and instead of printing t-shirts and throwing them off the Calgary Tower, they wasted it this way instead. Promotion money isn't used for charitable purposes. That's a different budget item.

It's not an either-or scenario.

The promotion could have been "Give a listener $5000 or give it to charity".

The only thing this stunt has shown is that many of AMP's listeners are slightly more ######ed than the people who work in the promotions department of this station.

[Boblobla]

I would never have known about this but since it was posted here I do so I guess mission accomplished? I imagine they know there would be some fallout and they feel that any publicity, positive or negative, is better than none.

[Jedi Ninja]

It is just paper. No wealth was destroyed by the stunt, it was simply redistributed. They essentially gave $5000 to all of Canada. On the other hand, the ####loads of paper mail outs that come in my snail mail box every day truly are a waste of paper, fuel, and manpower... much more disgusting in my books.

[rotten42]

Originally Posted by Daradon

It's definitely distasteful but there's a lot of other things to get upset about. A bit of faux outrage on this one.

Just think of it as $5000 being spent on promotions.

As for the people who think they didn't burn it, I have a feeling they did, at least from what I've read. No real reason not to. Could just screw things up trying to keep it somehow. Plus it is meant to shock, that was the whole point.

Stupid contest, sure........but now it's just another rally point for butt-hurt people to shout out and make themselves feel self-important by bitching so much about it.

Yes...they did something stupid. Hey I got any idea, why don't we storm the doors and hang them for their blatant attempt at smiting me.

[bradster57]

Immature contest. Sounds like the station is geared towards teen listeners and managed by 20-something year olds just out of college/university. Probably desperate to get some listeners from Virgin.

I miss Fuel 90.3

[Hi-Psi]

They're getting exactly what they wanted, for people to talk about their station... Any publicity is better than no publicity. Marketing 101.

[bradster57]

Originally Posted by Hi-Psi

They're getting exactly what they wanted, for people to talk about their station... Any publicity is better than no publicity. Marketing 101.

Sometimes bad publicity is worse than no publicity, especially in the social media era.

[strombad]

Originally Posted by Hi-Psi

They're getting exactly what they wanted, for people to talk about their station... Any publicity is better than no publicity. Marketing 101.

If only that were actually true or was actually part of "Marketing 101."

Bad publicity is helpful if you're coming from obscurity or your product isn't based on a definable quality (actors, writers, etc). On the flip side, bad publicity has been shown to have negative implications on almost every established business which incurred it. Bad publicity is, in fact, worse than no publicity.

[Igottago]

We live in a era where immaturity and stupidity is seemingly rewarded. Just look at reality tv.

I think one of the posters actually called this stunt "brilliant".

This is fit for the "I don't want to live on this planet anymore" thread.

[Bobblehead]

Plus, last week was a ratings period.


(I filled out one of the BBM diaries for tracking radio listening habits over the last week)

[OutOfTheCube]

Originally Posted by Bobblehead

(I filled out one of the BBM diaries for tracking radio listening habits over the last week)

On another note, isn't it laughably bad that a multi-million dollar media industry still thinks this is an acceptable way of tracking users in 2014? They haven't thought up anything else other than people being like "Hmm, I think I remember listening to this station at this time..." and then that person counting for a large part of an entire demographic. Good grief.

[Resolute 14]

Originally Posted by rotten42

Stupid contest, sure........but now it's just another rally point for butt-hurt people to shout out and make themselves feel self-important by bitching so much about it.

Kind of like how you are, right now?

[Muta]

Originally Posted by strombad

If only that were actually true or was actually part of "Marketing 101."

Bad publicity is helpful if you're coming from obscurity or your product isn't based on a definable quality (actors, writers, etc). On the flip side, bad publicity has been shown to have negative implications on almost every established business which incurred it. Bad publicity is, in fact, worse than no publicity.

Actually, publicity of any kind can do a lot of good, believe it or not. That is marketing 101.

At my previous firm, we had what you would call 'bad publicity', where our actions were scrutinized by the entire City of Calgary - even though we didn't really do anything wrong. It was people's mis-guided perception of the entire incident that created the controversy.

Nevertheless, our website had 6x the amount of traffic over the course of the next four months and a swath of new potential business leads were generated because of what happened.

I agree that bad publicity can be used against your organization, but in many cases, it's publicity as a whole, and therefore effective.

[Mean Mr. Mustard]

$5000 could feed, house, provide medical attention and counselling for 100 people?

[DOOM]

Originally Posted by Mean Mr. Mustard

$5000 could feed, house, provide medical attention and counselling for 100 people?

For one night

[Mean Mr. Mustard]

Originally Posted by DOOM

For one night

Doubtful. $50 a person will not get you that. $5000, while it sounds like a lot and in some ways it is a lot, isn't a huge amount of money. For someone to be homeless the total costs are roughly $100,000 per year, with the chronic costing more and the transient costing less. So in effect this could support 18-20 homeless people for a night.

[DOOM]

Originally Posted by Mean Mr. Mustard

Doubtful. $50 a person will not get you that.

Yea, maybe not, I am not sure on the details though. I don't think the medical/counselling would be super in depth though.

[Mean Mr. Mustard]

Originally Posted by DOOM

Yea, maybe not, I am not sure on the details though. I don't think the medical/counselling would be super in depth though.

I edited my post, but I don't think that this is the worst thing I have ever heard of. Think as to how much money gets wasted on promotion budgets all the time, with companies getting their employees horribly ugly shirts with their logos plastered over them, which actually get donated to the homeless...

[para transit fellow]

Originally Posted by Mean Mr. Mustard

Doubtful. $50 a person will not get you that. $5000, while it sounds like a lot and in some ways it is a lot, isn't a huge amount of money. For someone to be homeless the total costs are roughly $100,000 per year, with the chronic costing more and the transient costing less. So in effect this could support 18-20 homeless people for a night.

The source was someone at the Drop in centre. Perhaps they were just looking at their expenditures for sheltering and support services instead of the total cost of homelessness.

[puckluck2]

Originally Posted by CaramonLS

Puckluck, if anything, you should be mad at yourself. The money was burned because of people like you. The ones who post on Internet boards and say 'oh, you should give this money to the needy and not burn it'.

Except no one would give a crap if they actually did give it to charity. This gets people talking about the station and threatening to boycott it.

Except I never said they should give it to the needy. Burning it is disrespectful and it is people like you who don't understand that. No surprise really, but not all publicity is good publicity so if you think this thread is helping AMP then you have no understanding of marketing. Wouldn't be shocked if they are bankrupt within a year.