Mansfield District Council
Mansfield District Council is a local council covering Mansfield, Mansfield Woodhouse, Market Warsop and Meden in Nottinghamshire.
Over the past few years I have worked with the Council on many different campaigns. Although we discussed various advertising mediums, I was asked to look after the radio side of their advertising mix. All campaigns were broadcast on the local commercial radio station Mansfield 103.2.
This radio station has been on-air since 1st February 1999. I was part of the original sales team and have been helping them out periodically since. The Council was one of the original advertisers on the station and have been a great supporter of it ever since.
The Council had regular airtime campaigns on the radio to promote a variety of different subjects.
These included the following:
- Summer events put on during school summer holidays
- Specialist weekend events held in the market place
- Weekly Market days
- Periodic specialist market events such as International and Craft Fair markets
- Christmas Light Switch on events
- Christmas market activities
- A local lottery called Robin Hood Lottery Community Fund
Each campaign was originally booked on a case by case basis. However, we eventually managed to book in advance a 12 month campaign of the specialist, Summer and Christmas events. All these events needed to be booked in advance by the Council to ensure they got them on specific dates so it made sense to book the airtime with the radio station in advance. With these pre-booked, all we then did was work on the relevant message as they came up. All other campaigns were still booked on an ad-hoc basis as they couldn’t be pre-planned.
Although the COVID-19 Pandemic and subsequent national lockdowns have put a hold on virtually all public events, the Council have still used the radio station to promote virtual and Facebook events. We fully expect things to return to normal once the pandemic is behind us.