Case description
The joint initiative “Werbewunder Radio” (The miracle of advertising on radio) is a cooperation between ORF-Enterprise, RMS Radio Marketing Service, Marx Tonkombinat Arbeitergasse (sound studio) and the Creativ Club Austria whose aim is to strengthen the medium of radio. Since the cooperation was founded, all four partners have supported the initiative through an annual creative competition highlighting the possibilities of radio as a medium and emphasising radio spots as a playground for creative radio advertising.
The winning spots from this competition are broadcast on ORF and RMS Austria radio stations. In addition to all radio listeners, the target group is primarily people from the media sector, agencies and advertisers.
This initiative has been around for more than 15 years and some of the creative spots also went on to win other creative competitions – one spot was shortlisted at the prestigious Cannes Lions festival. The rules for the competition have changed a bit over the years, but in general it all starts with a call for entries in which creatives are asked to come up with a funny idea for a given topic. In a preliminary round, up to ten participating teams (1-3 people) are selected. They then receive a full briefing on the actual task and final campaign.
The selected teams are asked to develop a radio campaign consisting of several spots around a given strength of radio advertising. The spots can have a touch of humour, be catchy and get to the heart of the strength of radio. The goal is to create attention-grabbing and entertaining spots to increase awareness of radio’s strengths.
The winning campaign is then broadcast on the stations of the public service broadcaster (ORF) and most of the private radio stations (RMS) during the summer months with a strong frequency at no cost to the winners. The initiators finance the spot production and submit the campaign to the major domestic creative competitions. The winning team receives a prize of 10,000 euros. All other teams from the final round receive 500 euros per team.
This initiative supporting creative radio advertising has produced many great spots over the years and shows that radio advertising can not only drive sales, but can also implement complex ideas in an exciting way using just the imagination. In addition, young copywriters discover the possibilities radio offers and are encouraged to use radio spots more often for their creative campaigns.
