Drivers stuck in traffic at Elston, Western and Diversey avenues in Chicago last week may have noticed a billboard promoting Allstate’s new ad campaign. The billboard invited viewers to tune in to 99.1 FM within a few blocks of this six-way intersection and listen to recorded snippets of Allstate’s advertising character Mayhem personifying local disasters.
In one radio spot, Mayhem pretends to be Mozart’s “Eine kleine Nachtmusik” — but composed with a cacophony of car-crash and traffic noises. In another, Mayhem personifies world news, saying, “I’m happening everywhere except the six corners” of the intersection — a place that is so uneventful it is “Page 8 material.” Mayhem also pretends to be the gyro meat at a local restaurant and a “martial arts dojo on Western.”
The radio spots localized the Mayhem character — who is part of a national marketing campaign — not just to Chicago but to locals at one intersection, said the Crain’s Chicago Business story.
The scripts for the radio spots, which you can listen to here, were written by David Schermer, a former writer at Chicago-based Leo Burnett, the advertising agency that created the Mayhem character in 2010.
Schermer previously had written city-specific radio spots for Allstate, including ones for Washington and Chicago, but said that since the insurance company was based near Chicago, “we wanted to do something special for the city.”
He said writing the radio spots for the intersection was easy since he lived nearby and was familiar with the local stores. The remake of Mozart’s work was composed by Chicago-based Comma Music, a music and sound agency that specializes in advertising.
“We wanted to make it as local an experience as possible in this heavy traffic area. . . . People are sitting in traffic and staring at the same things every day,” Schermer said.
The billboard has since been taken down.
See the full Crain’s Chicago Business story here.
RBR-TVBR observation: While this may sound like good news for radio at first, it really isn’t (unless it was instead done with a commercial station). It’s good for Outdoor. We’re not sure if what they did here was legal with the FCC, but if so, it could have been done with one of these existing or new licenses:
NEW 256 L1 FL 99.1 MHz APP CHICAGO IL US BNPL-20131114ADR – 193259 0.0297 kW 53.7 m URBANMEDIA ONE
NEW 256 L1 FL 99.1 MHz APP CHICAGO IL US BNPL-20131115AAM – 196878 0.1 kW 29. m UNIVERSITY OF HEAVEN WSDA BROADCAST GROUP
NEW 256 L1 FL 99.1 MHz APP CHICAGO IL US BNPL-20131114BNK – 196767 0.1 kW 14. m SOUND OF HOPE RADIO NFP
Noted Francisco Montero, Managing Partner, Fletcher, Heald & Hildreth, P.L.C.: “Personally, I like this. It is hyper-local and that has always been radio’s great potential advantage over other media. In all cases, however, you want to be sure that the station is permitted to air such ads. If the station is on a non-commercial frequency or is required to operate non-commercially, such as the low power FM applicants identified in the RBR-TVBR observation would be, such stations cannot air commercial advertisements for for-profit advertisers like Allstate and these spots could violate the terms of the station’s FCC license and its operating requirements.”
