During Johannesburg's rush hour, morning traffic and on one of the busiest main roads, we targeted listeners, media and social influencers with a multi-channel, engaging music experience; the first ever radio simulcast, live lip sync digital billboard. The idea invited motorists to switch radio channels and engage with the huge digital billboard that screened live performances perfectly synced to sing along with the music playing on their car radios.

To achieve this, we set up an outside broadcast, on location, with the Jacaranda breakfast team. This allowed the performers to receive real-time playback of the songs which allowed them to lip sync to which our cameras then captured. The analog radio feed was then sent back to the station, 40km away. Meanwhile, we sent the live camera feed through a digital signal delay to lag the footage just enough to allow the analog FM signal to travel back inside people’s cars. The perfect merge of analog signal with digital signal delays, created the perfect synchronized radio simulcast, live lip sync billboard experience. In the end, we successfully showed just how good it feels to sing along in your car with the station that plays more music you love.

While the campaign only cost our client $80,000, it generated almost $1.1m* in earned media across social media and other traditional news and entertainment channels at a ratio of 13.75:1. Website visitors for the month of the campaign increased by 235%, from 280,000 unique visitors to 660,000. Radio media sales for the months of February, March and April all exceeded targets. As radio listenership figures are only released annually, the true listnership effects are yet to be quantified.

Music radio exists to entertain. So when asked to promote Jacaranda FM’s new music offering, we had to use an entertaining approach to ensure we could entrench the stations proposition of “More Music You Love”. We developed a multiple-channels, integrated story. It began with a love tale, live on air, told over 5 days about a young couple with listeners calling in to drive the direction of the story. After the 5th day, the story was left open-ended and then concluded using a live, radio simulcast, lip sync performance on the biggest digital billboard in Johannesburg.

The strategy was developed to create awareness around Jacaranda FM and their new “More Music You Love” offering, focusing on deepening affinity with existing listeners, as well as acquiring new listeners in the greater Johannesburg area (the station's new expanded FM signal range).

The station's new target audience profile was found to be multi-racial, male and female radio listeners in Gauteng province between the age of 20 and 45, with a focus on motorists within the greater Johannesburg area.

Our approach was simple: prompt active engagement from the desired (main) target audience and generate trial by bringing the radio station’s “More Music You Love” FM radio broadcast offering to life in an entertaining way on multiple media platforms in a location where the core target audience can be found (stuck in their cars during peak hour morning traffic) at one of Johannesburg’s busiest intersections.

After extensive research Jacaranda FM found South Africans wanted a radio station that aired less talk and more music, so they updated their offering accordingly.

While Jacaranda FM achieves success through listenership growth, it is also important to demonstrate innovation in the broader radio category to grab attention of the media agencies and media buyers and help drive advertising revenue.

Our brief was to help launch and promote the station and its improved “More Music You Love” offering in an entertaining and engaging way, worthy of generating social and media talkability and hype around the brand.