MUMBAI: BIG FM, India’s largest and the number one radio network and Idea Cellular, a leading telecom brand took the concept of sharing and caring up several notches with their stupendous on-air RJ Marathon campaign clocking over 4500+ hours. The campaign was envisioned to educate people about the benefits of internet and encourage internet sharing. The RJ Marathon, which began simultaneously across 45 stations on 26 January 2016, received overwhelming response from listeners which led to the marathon being extended from 92.7 hours to 100+ hours in most stations.

Indian Sharing Season’s RJ Marathon is the first instance of any radio brand in India crossing 4500+ hours of continuous live on-air RJ broadcast. During the marathon RJ Prateek from Delhi, RJ Giri Giri from Chennai and RJ Nasir from Jammu were on-air for 111 hours each, a record for any RJ in Asia. The campaign witnessed over 5,00,000 MB of data pledged across platforms including micro site www.927BIGFM.com/IndiaSharingSeason, twitter handle #IndiaSharesIndiaCaresMarathon and dial in calls. In a space of four days, India Sharing Season was followed by close to 22,000 people on twitter.

The Indian Sharing Season was one of the first large scale phygital campaigns PAN-India, connecting the consumer across physical locations, on-air broadcasts and online platforms. In cities like Bengaluru, Chennai, Kolkata, Hyderabad, Chandigarh, etc. mobile studios gave listeners a firsthand experience of the 100+ RJ Marathon.

The marathon also received immense support from celebrities, politicians, sportspeople, bureaucrats, philanthropists and many more supported in each of the 45 cities. Noted personalities like Sudha Murthy, Saina Nehwal, Javed Jaffery, Kavita Seth, Javed Ali, Nikhil Chopra, Keerthi Suresh, Anup Jalota, popular Kannada actor Upendra, etc visited the studios of BIG FM and lent their support to the RJ’s.

Speaking on the success of the RJ Marathon, a spokesperson from BIG FM said, “Clocking 4500+ hours is a truly commendable effort by our RJs and the programming teams across all stations of BIG FM. India Sharing Season garnered overwhelming response from listeners and has set new benchmarks for PAN-India campaigns. We are glad that the campaign was able to emphasize the importance of the internet as an enabler and that people were willing to pledge data. We would like to thank our listeners for their support.”

Idea Cellular CMO Sashi Shankar said, “We are happy with our partnership with BIG FM and the way the campaign has been accepted by our audiences. It was interesting to see how RJ Marathon spread awareness about the new way of sharing mobile internet. It was appreciated and received well by the listeners making it to reach 100+ hours as against 92.7 hours that was initially announced. Driving mobile internet awareness and relevance has been a key objective for Idea and this campaign was one of the many that we will engage with to get Indian online.”

With 4500+ hours of live RJ Marathon across 45 stations and 111 individual hours by RJ Prateek, RJ Giri Giri and RJ Nasir, BIG FM is gunning for the coveted Limca Book of Records.