Niall Power, Head of Station Sound at Beat 102-103, shared the top 10 radio promotions from around the world, showcasing creative ways stations engage listeners and collaborate with brands and world events.
The audience enjoyed hearing about the creative processes that led to these successful and memorable promotions including Tat for Taylor where Beat 102-103, Irelandasked their listeners if they would get a Taylor Swift tattoo in order to win tickets to see her live in concert.
Other great promotions included Quid Games (Dublin FM 104, Ireland) – A €20,000 prize competition with games like Rock Paper Scissors, Connect 4, and Jenga; Dessert Day (Q Radio, Netherlands) – No more choosing between meat or veggie, Q Radio invented a brand new national day, aka Desert Day, taking a bunch of yummy treats to Dutch schoolchildren to enjoy; and Giant Detention (BBC Radio 1, UK) – A school-style endurance challenge. Where breakfast presenter Greg James was forced to go back to school and join his fellow presenters in detention, in which they had to break the code to hear the school bell ring!
Power’s talk showed how bold ideas drive audience engagement and make radio stand out. His key takeaways were you need to “ensure the mechanic is not overly complicated”, and give it the “serial effect”, people want to know what happens next. Along with ensuring you take the 360 approach but always bring it back to on-air. And finally it’s all about being creative and big budgets aren’t everything.
image © Hedda Axelsson
