There seems to be a feeling at the moment that huge money sums entice listeners to radio, like The Fox‘s Fifi Fev and Nick‘s Five Million Dollar Drop, Jase and Lauren at Nova 100‘s $250K game of Hide and Seek and KIIS’s Kyle and Jackie O’s $200,000 Noise recent examples in Melbourne.
Sure plenty of people enter, with KIIS’s Noise and The Fox’s $150,000 Secret Sound both actually giving away the full money prizes, but are these people stayers to the respective stations?
I was really impressed with Power FM in Nowra who had a long running Scatterbrain competition (of which there are various similar examples across the country) which hadn’t gone off in five months. Breakfast hosts Stoltzy and Abby made a deal with their CD to stay on air and keep playing the game until, seven hours later, Trish from Nowra was a $5000 winner.
Feedback the station received was that each contestant would wish the next the best of luck, the community were ringing their mates getting them to listen and enter, and Trish had a beautiful story about giving some of the winnings to her sister who was doing it tough. That’s the kind of promotion that keeps me listening.
$5000 is life changing for many people right now.
KIIS 106.5 and 101.1’s Kyle and Jackie O have a segment called You Get a…….$5000. It’s not complicated. All listeners have to do is call the show and manage to get on air.
Tegan Kirkby, ARN‘s Head of Client strategy shared to Linkedin the below post:
The numbers are staggering. Three million inbound calls in a four hour period, and the in the five minute period leading up to the 9am news the promotion peaked at 132,000 calls!
I imagine all these people sitting in their cars just before heading into work thinking, “I’ll just give it one more try.”
Additional note, that would have been during the ad break. That is a pretty helpful graph to entice future clients.
I am astonished at the numbers of Kyle and Jackie O $5K giveaways, but more deeply impressed by the community spirit that arose from Power FM’s. Both work, but in very different ways.
Jen Seyderhelm is a writer, editor and podcaster for Radioinfo