Shock Banner

Background

hasan & partners, an advertising agency in Helsinki, had acquired 51% of digital agency Perfect Fools in Stockholm and Amsterdam. Both agencies wanted to have as much publicity as possible for the new marriage. Along with the normal PR campaign, the CEO and Chairman of hasan & partners were invited to Radio Helsinki, a pop culture radio in Finland, for an interview about the acquisition.

Idea

A lot of crap about world domination all too often accompanied stories about agency mergers. So the idea was to let the radio audience engage with the show. Through a banner listeners could administer an electric shock to both the gents as and when they started talking bullsh**.

The banners appeared on the radio station's website and on www.marmai. fi, a prominent Finnish business magazine, and displayed images of Ami Hasan and Eki Ruola. Both men were wearing electrodes connected to the internet via a Nodejs server. When a listener clicked on a face, he zapped the person in real time in the interview.

Results

Radio Helsinki got the highest ever listener engagement. Eka Ruola and Ami Hasan received a staggering amount of electric shocks. Ruola was the target of most of the listeners' wrath, receiving three times as many shocks as Hasan. The banner was also a huge PR success. Among others, The Guardian, Agency Spy and Marketing & Advertising magazine in Finland wrote about it.

Our Thoughts

This ‘foolish’ idea (and it would have to be, with the takeover of Perfect Fools) is one of the most innovative ideas we have seen for a while, pushing the boundaries of radio way, way beyond the 30-second spot. The coming of digital has freed creative people from the constraints of media. You don’t have to make advertisements to create noticeable and memorable advertising, as this interview demonstrates.

Innovations in radio advertising are few and far between. Quite brilliantly this turns radio from a ‘push’ medium into one that ‘pulls’.