I heard a great promo on-air on a radio station while I was on holiday in Scotland.
It was simple, unique and suited the brand of the community station it was on… perfectly.
Now, unfortunately when I wrote the promo down, I didn’t catch the station name (A big fail on my part) – so if anyone can tell me – email me through the usual email address and I will correct this post with the name of the station.
The promo was simple, it ran only during one particular jocks midday shift, and once per hour during that shift.
Once per the hour, and during their talk break… the jock made a simple mistake, from announcing a song title, band name, news item, suburb or town name, or celebrity gossip that was wrong – and waited for the callers to ring through.
When they did, during the next talk break they then made the announcement that they had made the mistake, and the winners name (and put them on-air if they wanted to be) – in only one break in a four hour shift did no-one call through – the mistake at that time was the miss-pronunciation of a town name – it was subtle and as I wasn’t a local I didn’t pick it.
This is a simple promo and the prize in question was just as simple, the listener who got through first with the correct mistake – won a station tee-shirt, and went into the weekly draw for a meal out at the sponsors restaurant.
This promo kept people listening to the station, and engaged with the show. And listeners obviously had the station competition line on speed dial because at one point I thought I heard the mistake in the talk break, and before the ad break straight after it happened – the jock had the winner on-air, all within 45 seconds.