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Morning Show Traffic Test
June 12, 2012
Have an opinion? Add your comment below. This is a cool campaign that can easily be adapted to your market.....but as you will see, it's all in the detail.
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After last week's look at how to achive better creativity by focusing first on the development of a specific strategy, let's get back this week to content and creativity ...
MORNING TRAFFIC ... it’s a headache facing most morning show listeners daily ........... in fact, as we know, getting up to date info is one of the critical aspects of morning radio.Â
Recently Melbourne Australia’s Gold104.3’s breakfast team took the traffic issue one step beyond an ''update from a chopper''.
This is a cool campaign that can easily be adapted to your market ..... but as you will see, it's all in the detail.
Thanks to PD Mal Lewis and Producer Clint Drieberg for sharing.
After months in the planning, a false start, some off air challenges and set-backs, the Morning show’s Brig & Lehmo conducted a fantastic on air experiment to try find a solution to the terrible traffic congestion in Melbourne, a problem that fills the pages of newspapers and is such a concern with their listeners they even took it up on air with State Premier (he's the head political dude in Melbourne) Ted Baillieu.
CLICK HERE to hear calls and the Premier’s Solutions:Â
Brig & Lehmo asked the question we all want the answer to every morning...
.......... What is the best way to get to work: car, public transport or bike???
First up a start location was selected 20-23km from the station that, according to Google maps, should be no more than a 30 min trip.
Three celebrities(you wont know these people but big local celebs) were selected to depart Nunawading train station at 8am....Â
Charlie Pickering from Network Ten’s “The Project” was on his bike as he loves riding on two wheels; from riding his BMX into a tree after his training wheels were taken off to the 120 bomb that got him through the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2007.
Legendary Australian Football League star Shane Wakelin who famously sold his prized V8 1972 Mercedes-Benz and started catching public transport to training and matches took the train.
Channel 7’s “Dancing with the Stars” Judge Josh Horner took off his tap shoes and got behind the wheel of the Gold 104.3 Roadie Car
Dedicating most of the morning’s program to the Traffic Challenge, Brig & Lehmo found out the pros and cons of cycling and catching public transport to work ........................... and Australian long distance champion Steve Moneghetti even called though to brag how quick he could run the distance (75 minutes)!
It was elements like this that made the campaign sound even bigger by the way!
The Australian Traffic Network Chopper gave listeners a bird’s eye view of the trip and GPS trackers showed the participants travels online via a dedicated website which was amazing to watch in real time
In the end, it took just 41 minutes for Shane Wakelin to get from Nunawading to Richmond with public transport. Shane was followed by Josh in the car at 49 minutes, and sadly our celebrity cyclist was last into the studio taking 53 minutes leading to this apology on Twitter to his near 50,000 followers:
This idea works so well because it’s completely relatable to most listeners as it unfolds.
- Good in depth pre planning
- Well set up on the day – having the most powerful person in Melbourne on air  to discuss the issue that has been making headline news
- Well executed
- Good star power using celebrities as the commuter ‘guinea-pigs’
- Use of GPS on line tracking
- Live streaming of the three celebs en route
- Countless listener calls throughout the experiment
- Real sense of soap opera
- Forced Listening!!!!!!!!!! and quotable.
To listen to a Gold 104.3 station promo and some audio from the day of the challenge, click on either of the tracks below.
To view The Big Bang archives click here. -
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