Kristen Coker Interview 4-15-16

Kristen Coker
Promotions Director
KWND
Springfield

Career Capsule: Kristen has a B.A. degree in Communications/Broadcasting from the University of Tennessee at Martin.  She has worked in radio on and off since 2005, starting with her college radio station WUTM. Moving on to KYTN, then J103 in Chattanooga, Tennessee. After getting married she moved to Springfield, Missouri area with her husband and worked in sales for a few years. In 2015 Kristen started working for 88.3 The Wind as promotions director.

1. Kristin, tell us what’s new at KWND, with you etc… ?

Lots of amazing things are going on at 88.3 The Wind! God is moving through our station and really affecting the community. The last two months we had our “Love for Law Enforcement” promo which was an initiative to rally the community in support of our local law enforcement officers. We asked and they showed up. We had over 3,500 participants in 18 communities send in notes, letters, and pictures to encourage and show support for our local heroes. We even had a local elementary school hold an assembly to honor their town’s officers.

In February, we had our annual FriendRaiser, and our listeners stepped up and gave faith promises to help fund the station. We reached our goal in just 4 days!

This month, we started our Gas & Groceries promotion with a local grocery store, Price Cutter, as our sponsor.                 We’ll be giving away $50 vouchers twice a week for gas & groceries! We wanted to do a promotion that helped give back to the community in one of the simplest ways. Helping with the cost of something we all need!

Our next big promotion will be our Greater Ozarks Baby Shower, where our community can donate baby items to help supply our local Pregnancy Care Center. And following will be a Scavenger Hunt in May that will appeal all of our social media followers.

2. What are the 3 main ingredients to make a promotion successful?

I think 3 things that make a promotion successful are:
– A great idea. Something that we know is needed in the community, and that others can get behind and help be the hands and feet of Jesus. A promotion that is relevant to what’s going on in the community/country.

-A great team. At 88.3 The Wind our staff motto is Caring. We care about the community and want to be out there, doing whatever it takes. That’s in each of our job descriptions.

-How it impacts the community. We’re all about hope and encouragement, and we want to bring those two things into each promotion we do. Sharing the love of God, spreading hope and encouragement with each promotion we do.

3. What is the best promotion advice you’ve been given? The worst?

You don’t know until you try it! I came in when the station had been without a promotions person for a while, so everything we did was starting over. I was trying new things. You don’t know what will happen unless you try. Sometimes it’s a great thing, sometimes it’s a flop. But you can’t let the fear of failure get you down. Every community is different, and what works for one station may not work for another. So you really have to go through the whole trial and error process. Thankfully, I knew our community going in so we’ve had a lot of successes, through the grace of God!

4. Regarding your career, what are you most proud of?

As far as my career, I’m most proud of not giving up. This is a hard industry to get into. I spend a lot of time working in sales, and other odd jobs gaining experience. Other than working in radio out of college, working in sales really prepares you for this type of work. You get to learn how to deal with the public, and you see people at their worst. You also learn how to market things to different people. I’m thankful for the winding road the Lord took me on to get to where I am today.

5. What is the one thing YOU must have to do your job every day?

Lots, and lots of coffee.

6. In your opinion what makes the ideal station promotion?

The ideal station promotion is one that gets you out in the community with the listeners, and one that really helps people in some way. Whether it be a physical need, or a spiritual one.

7. Regarding social networking and promotion, what have you had the most success with?

Facebook has been a big help to us, Trina Wilcox is our social networking guru. The biggest success for that has been our Positive Thought posts. They are shared more than any other of our posts. Sharing these gives our followers some encouragement, and also helps our station reach more people, even outside of our listening area.
8. How do you measure the success of a great promotion?

I think the best way to measure the success of our promotions is to ask ourselves, did this make a positive impact on our community. As a non-profit Christian radio station, it’s really all about the listeners. Did we help people? Were we out in the community being the hands and feet of Jesus? Did this opportunity change someone’s life for the better? That’s what kind of foot print we want to leave in our community. And personally, that’s what I’d love for each of our promotions to accomplish. It’s definitely the most fun part of this job!