Your sound is calling

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The only way to enter was to call the studio line, and in Cape Town, it is calculated an average of 256 attempted calls came through every second. There was a second, comment line, which listeners could call but this line was only able to let listeners hear the sound again. In Joburg, they received 25 707 calls on that line. A parallel competition was run through the websites, where visitors could guess a different sound, and stood a chance to win a Samsung phone.

It was the second consecutive year that Samsung paired with the stations on this promotion. According to Marina Hartmann, Samsung Mobile assistant marketing manager, there were a number of reasons it wanted to participate again this year. “We could see the results it produced for us last year and the kind of brand awareness we got out of it. We felt it was brilliant property as we saw a link between ‘the sounds' and mobile phones,” she said.

“It also ran over a peak sales period for us and tied in with a massive launch - of the Samsung Soul handset,” she added.

Hartmann also felt there was a strong synergy between the brands, and that there were good opportunities for consumers to interact with their brand through the competition. “Both Samsung Mobile and the stations' brands are strongly focused on the consumer or listener and keeping them entertained. We booked additional airtime for our networks to flight specific deals where consumers could get the phones that amplified the Sound of Joburg or The Cape Town Sound.”

Primedia made use of the stations' mobile sites to strengthen the link between the promotion and cellular phones. The mobi sites allowed listeners to hear the on-air sound over their phones and, at the peak of the promotion, this service was used over 12 500 times during the promotion.

To further the brand interaction offered by the promotion, marketing around the campaign was experiential. Samples were handed out to motorists that included either a strip of bubble wrap, or a bag of popping candy, to reinforce the idea of listening closely to sounds that are familiar but unusual. Furthermore, billboards displayed images that clearly conveyed a sound - for example, a pin poised to pop a balloon.

Loyalty club integration

The stations' loyalty clubs - Club VIP and Klub VIP - were also integrated into the promotion. Samsung Mobile set up centre court displays at nine major shopping centres in Joburg and Cape Town, where Club VIP representatives were issuing bonus codes and points to members who visited the displays, and they were also entered into a lucky draw to win a Samsung family pack consisting of the latest Samsung cell phones. These centre court promotions allowed club members to interact with both the Samsung phones and the radio stations, as there were also presenters at these events.

In the words of Primedia, the response generated by this, as well as on-air hype, was “phenomenal”. In addition to the hundreds of calls that came in to the competition line, the website statistics show that there were 202 934 page impressions for the competition page on www.highveld.co.zawebsite alone and nearly 20 000 people played the online version of the game.