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TVNZ-NZ Marketing Awards: The Edge/MediaWorks win Media/Publishing Award for daring campaign

To get New Zealanders listening to The Edge for longer, MediaWorks locked up its announcers and challenged fans to find them, release them and win some cash.

The Challenge

In 2018, The Edge radio enjoyed a large cumulative audience number, but a not so strong time spent listening (TSL) rating.

Capturing the target audience of 15- to 35-year-olds is doable, but reasonably challenging so with a padlock and willing announcers, it created an epic campaign to create intrigue and capture the audience’s attention.

The Response

Dubbed ‘The Edge Safe House’, the campaign saw announcers locked in a house somewhere in New Zealand. Clues were released for listeners to find them and with them, a wad of cash.

As well as reaching audiences on radio, the campaign seamlessly transitioned from on-air to online and other marketing spaces to engage the audience across multiple touchpoints.

One of these spaces, a dedicated Facebook page called ‘Where is The Edge Safe House’, created a community of fans and a place for announcers to directly engage with listeners.

To keep those spaces updated with content, there was plenty of creative in the form of ads and cut-down pieces from the livestream streaming on Rova. And wanting to make sure the creative captured attention, it was given a scary-touch, which was so effective there were BSA complaints against it – however, they weren’t upheld.

Offline and off-air, The Edge Road Runners dressed up in the Safe House kidnapper uniforms waving signs saying, “Where the hell is The Edge Safe House” on busy intersections. Meanwhile, MediaWorks also plastered ‘missing’ posters with announcers’ photos on notice boards around the country with tear-off tabs asking people to head to the website to help find them.

While the content was going out across multiple channels to all New Zealand, MediaWorks stayed true to its mission to increase TSL by specifically targeting growth-potential regions to plant safe houses and also guided clues towards other regions that needed attention.

The Result

So engaging was the campaign, MediaWorks describes its following as “cult-like”.

The goal for the Facebook group was to reach 5000 members and it peaked at 15,577 members – and they weren’t just active in the group. Some were door-knocking, creating private group chats and were blogging about their clue theories.

Its Rova livestream also performed well with over 1800 streams.

On air, the target demographic station share increased by 15 percent between survey two and survey four and most importantly, its aim to increase TSL was achieved.

Nelson TSL increased in target (18-34) by 20 percent and Wellington went up by a huge 24 percent. It also strategically targeted some other areas such as Hawkes Bay where it didn’t have a house but steered some clues in directions here to help the TSL and it worked. The Edge saw a 36 percent growth in TSL for all people 10+.

Category
Media/Publishing

Company
The Edge/Mediaworks

Marketing Initiative
Where is The Edge Safe House?

Judge’s Comment
“A great idea, nicely integrated and well-executed from start to finish which lead to some fantastic results!”

This piece was originally published in the 2019 Awards Issue of NZ Marketing magazine. To get a print copy, subscribe here.

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