June 23, 2011
by Mike Stiles
Location based challenges are a way for radio to restore the glory days of listener participation and client involvement. Remember when you could get your listeners to jump through hoops and create an attention-getting spectacle to win a prize? You still can. But I?m not talking about that small core of diehard players who always show up, willing to perform any zaniness you come up with to win?whatever. You know who they are, God bless ?em. They sure do love you, but you have secret desires of seeing a lot more people than the ?usuals? show up.
Want wider listener participation? Want them to have fun with you? Want to drive them to your clients? locations and prove the power of radio to them again? Fine, but you should do it with your social media. Coca-Cola is using location-based service SCVNGR for a summer promo in which teens are challenged to go around malls, concerts and amusement parks, taking pictures or checking in to get an instant prize and/or accumulate points that?ll score them an even bigger prize. Live Nation is aboard as well, offering challenges at 31 ?secret sound check? locations.
Radio can come up with check-in challenges that take the technology users have already shown they like to use to play games, and kick them up a notch with the creative elements your team are such pros at dreaming up. What?s a client prospect more likely to get excited about, your morning show getting a few people into their parking lot on a Saturday to turn themselves into human banana splits, or experiencing an influx of hundreds of brand new people over the course of a week or several weeks?
SCVNGR passed 1 million users in February and is also working with brands like Subway, Sears and Swatch. But you?ve also got options in Foursquare and Facebook Places. The point is, there?s verification that the players did what you wanted them to do.
What?s the on-air component for location based challenges? Use your station to do what it does best, advertise the mobile/social game you?re running. Use your left hand not to execute, but to be the promotional partner to your right hand. Resist your urge to make on-air the driver, because your social is where all the real action is going to be happening?and that?s okay! It?s your brand driving prospects into their stores, so it?s your brand they?ll come back to so it can happen again.
Mike Stiles is a writer/producer with a social network marketing company and head of Sketchworks comedy theatre. Check out his monologue blog, The Stiles Files.
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