MUMBAI: Radio Mantra celebrated the festival of lights with an innovative programming initiative:  'Double Hafta Vasool', an interesting contest which targeted the normally dormant affluent in its eight markets, and ended up connecting with a database of over 20000 people with salaries ranging between 15000 to 80000 rupees per month, from sectors like insurance, banking, education, telecom, and government.

The contest required participants had to answer five simple questions to take home a prize money amount starting from an amount equivalent to a day's salary to twice the salary for a week, if the managed to answer five questions correctly.

Uniquely, the contest targeted at salaried professionals had an important social angle: it was created to spread awareness of the benefits of filing income tax returns, and restricted participation in the contest to only those who filed their returns.

The contest received a strong response from the usually dormant affluent and 20000 people registered for it via SMS and IVR. The contest ran from the 1st to the 5th of November in the eight  Mantra cities and towns of Agra, Bareilly, Gorakhpur, Varanasi, Hisar, Karnal, Jalandhar and Ranchi where, per the IRS 2010 Q2, Radio Mantra has a listenership of over 5 million.

Hemant Kumar Goyal, a Senior SDO with BSNL in Jalandhar, who won on the contest, said, It is great to see that people who are filing income tax returns are being acknowledged and encouraged. I tuned into the contest as I was anxious whether I could answer the questions; it is great that I won....

Commenting on the concept behind 'DHV', Kanwar Sameer  National Programming Head – Radio Mantra, said, What better than to earn half a month's salary, especially when it comes around Diwali! We have been mulling about launching Hafta Vasool for a while and Diwali presented the perfect platform for the launch. I am overwhelmed by the response and the buzz that the property has created and look forward to making this a permanent feature on Radio Mantra....

RnM View:

Meaning and relevance do seem to be pushing out the merely  mercenary from the kind of buzz activities radio stations are undertaking to reach out and touch the lives of their listeners. Another recent memorable initiative with a social angle was Red FM Pune's Sandese Aate Hain,  which took messages and good wishes of Puneites to the Jawans at Wagah Border, telling them that posted as they were far from their homes and loved ones, they were remembered during Diwali, a festival everyone wants to celebrate with their family. Even as it struggles in the smaller towns and cities, Radio relies in a big way on buzz creation marketing activities and ground events to connect with local listeners and advertisers. More strength to the fledgling medium, which is ushering in a change at grassroots level, and the change is not just creation of and addition to infrastructure, but also awareness and social responsibility.