It was revealed today that the launch of a recent crackdown on illegally recorded music cassette tapes (www.mixtapeamnesty.ie) was a hoax designed to promote the launch of a new advertising campaign for Irish radio station 4FM.
An authentic looking website offered an amnesty to anyone still in possession of cassette tapes that may have been used to record songs direct from the radio – a pastime that was particularly popular in the 1980s.
The site featured formal interviews with a series of ‘official’ figures, including a Garda press conference, a map of places where people could anonymously hand in their cassettes, together with an ‘apology’ section, where users were invited to send an official apology to those artists whose music they had taped illegally.
However, 4FM revealed today that it had been behind the stunt, which it said drove thousands of music-lovers to the www.mixtapeamnesty.ie website. The station also said it received hundreds of calls from worried listeners.
Spoof of a story
According to 4FM, the spoof story was also picked up by rival radio stations, including Newstalk FM.
The campaign resulted in thousands of posts on social-networking websites, including Twitter and Facebook, in an attempt to gauge if it was genuine, 4FM said.
“We wanted to do something a little mischievous ahead of our new advertising campaign. In particular we wanted to entertain the people that our station is aimed at – people who will have grown up taping music from the radio. We thought this was a perfect way to jog a few memories, just as our music playlist does,” said Dave Hammond, sales and marketing director at 4FM.
The new campaign, ‘4FM – Songs you know and love’ launches on Monday, 3 May, and will be seen on TV, in the press, on outdoor sites and online.
Article courtesy of Businessandleadership.com
