A tasteful deal once got Rachel McHugh out of a jam. Long before
her days as consumer accounts manager at Emap Active, McHugh sold
airtime on Talk Radio. At the time of our tale, she’d been pitching to
the jam manufacturer Tiptree without any luck. ’Posh jam is quite
upmarket. There were absolutely no audience ratings to prove that
Tiptree’s customers would bother listening to the radio, let alone the
ad. Jam buyers are way off the typical media consumer.’
But our tenacious heroine refused to admit that the story was over and
devised a grand plan to lure Tiptree into a sponsorship deal.
’I decided to present the clients with a concept called Flavour of the
Week. The idea was to do a phone-in competition - listeners could call
in with their favourite flavour and win a hamper. A series of jam-making
questions were compiled and the overall prize was a holiday to
Barbados.’
According to McHugh, Tiptree loved it and after resisting for almost two
years, became well and truly hooked on radio advertising.
