I'm sure you've probably seen the picture above or heard about it from someone.
Over the past 36 hours, my Inbox was filled with messages from radio people saying "Wow", "Did you see this?", "What do you think?".
So, let me ask you: What do you think?
Basic story is: Hits 106.1 in Seattle are offering one listener a chance to win fertility treatment, described as: "Grand Prize: $12,900 Poma Fertility Gift Card to be used for one Standard IVF Cycle (up to $12,900 value)."
Is it marketing genius...tacky...insensitive...just another radio comp???
One thing is for sure...it would make for one interesting Hook & Tease: "Do you want to win your very own offspring? I'll tell you HOW, right after Calvin Harris"!
Yep, that'd be a first.
It's primal content, dressed up as a tacky radio stunt. We give away cars, homes, cash, travel..life changing, dream making prizes that appeal to our core human needs. Freedom...fun..why not family? It's a core human driver for many people. Fertility issues affect huge swathes of the population and 'going private' is not an option for a lot of them, so this helps. Of course the attention grabbing execution and promotion is deliberately crass so as to generate discussion but what you'll get on air will be highly personal, deeply engaging HUMAN stories. Which is what our medium excels at. For me, it's much better than the 'Make Me A Millionaire' competition one UK network ran recently, where the finalists consisted of people who had already turned down £10,000. Which, in the current climate I think speaks volumes. So long as the checks and balances and safeguarding are all in place - it's important people who enter realise that there's no guarantee of success, so 'win a baby' is potentially misleading and those involved need to make sure they are supported on their journey but as a responsible operator I'm sure they will do this. We've come a long, long way from 'Hold Your Wee For A Wii'.
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