Capital's mystery voices aim to lure back Londoners

by Daniel Farey-Jones, Brand Republic 05-Oct-06, 09:00

LONDON - Capital Radio is planning to get Londoners talking about its new £100,000 competition with an extensive outdoor, print and digital ad campaign, devised by Dialogue DLKW and Rocket, breaking today.

The station wants to get non-listeners to try the station, as well as lure back the people who have switched off, causing its Rajar reach to drop from 1.94m to 1.64m between the second quarters of 2005 and 2006.

Capital has got a series of well-known pop singers to sing a song by another artist, and will be asking listeners to identify the singer and whose song they are performing.

Teaser ads, which include 500,000 handwritten notes handed out at mainline stations, hint at some of the artists involved by posing questions such as "Is Robbie doing Lily", "Is Lily doing Justin?" and "Is Christina doing Robbie?".

Capital is promising a continuous marketing drive now that its parent GCap Media believes the station is finally through the worst of the downturn inflicted by straying listeners and severe competition from rivals Magic and Heart.

Steve Orchard, operations director at GCap, said: "We have bottomed out the decline and are confident we can build from this point on. This is the first stage of a much larger marketing campaign commitment. We are expecting to see positive results throughout 2007."

With the competition launching on Monday for between four to six weeks, the teaser activity will reach Londoners through outdoor and online.

In addition to the handwritten notes, ads will appear in thelondonpaper and Metro, on six-sheet posters, 10,000 street stickers and 200 legal fly posters. Drinkers will find the ads on 5,000 washroom mirrors and in 10,000 matchbooks in bars around London.

Rocket's media strategy extends to the internet, with ads targeting London-based users of entertainment sites such as Time Out, Handbag, MSN, Channel 4 and MySpace.

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