Jacaranda FM Turns a Billboard Into a Live Radio Simulcast
Jacaranda FM's 'More Music You Love' campaign, created by Halo and launched in Sandton, South Africa on 15 February 2017, introduced the world's first radio simulcast live lip-sync billboard — a live outdoor performance synchronised in real time with the station's FM broadcast, connecting listeners in their cars with performers visible on a digital screen above the street.
The campaign existed to launch Jacaranda FM's repositioned brand proposition, expressed in the line 'More Music You Love.' Rather than relying on a conventional media buy or a broadcast-only announcement, the station and Halo chose to make the proposition demonstrable — staging a live event that could only be fully experienced by someone simultaneously watching the billboard and listening to the FM signal. The activation was titled 'The Greatest Love Story Never Told,' and the narrative playing out on the screen was directly shaped by the audience: listeners influenced whether the on-screen characters fell in love, weaving interactivity into a medium — outdoor advertising — not traditionally associated with audience participation.
In South Africa, where radio remains one of the most pervasive and culturally embedded broadcast media, the execution carried strategic weight beyond its novelty. The campaign reached 4.4 million social media accounts, according to The Media Online, transforming a single-location outdoor event into a nationally distributed entertainment moment under the hashtag #MoreMusicYouLove, which trended across South African social platforms, also as reported by The Media Online. The archive record for the campaign was published in May 2017, with the film medium submission containing one primary media asset. Clapboard rates this campaign 67 out of 100.
Jacaranda FM operates in one of South Africa's most competitive commercial radio environments. The station competes directly with 947 and 5FM for adult contemporary listeners in Gauteng, both of which maintain strong digital and social presences alongside their broadcast schedules. Against this backdrop, a repositioning campaign built solely on paid media would have struggled to cut through; the decision to anchor the 'More Music You Love' strategy in a participatory live event reflects an understanding that earned attention — social sharing, word of mouth, press coverage — was the more efficient path to audience re-engagement.
Radio's enduring centrality to South African daily life underpinned the strategic choice. According to the Government Communication and Information System of South Africa, radio reaches the overwhelming majority of South African adults and remains the country's most widely accessed broadcast medium, a fact that gives Jacaranda FM's proposition genuine cultural relevance. The insight Halo and Jacaranda FM acted on was direct: music is an emotional experience, and emotions are most powerfully triggered when multiple sensory channels are activated simultaneously. Presenting listeners with a live visual narrative — one they could influence — while the music played on their car radios was a practical demonstration of that insight rather than a claim about it. The simulcast format also bridged outdoor media and FM broadcast in a way that neither medium could achieve independently, creating a proof point for the 'More Music You Love' line that was inherently shareable and structurally difficult for competitors to replicate.
The central creative execution demanded a level of technical and performative precision unusual for an outdoor campaign. Performers rehearsed for weeks in preparation for the live activation, according to The Media Online, because the visual feed displayed on the Sandton billboard carried an inherent delay relative to the analog FM signal reaching listeners' car radios — a latency gap that had to be choreographed rather than corrected. The result was a live performance calibrated not to the room, but to the radio wave.
The activation was titled 'The Greatest Love Story Never Told,' and the storytelling unfolded in real time on the digital outdoor screen, with audience interactivity determining the direction of the narrative. Listeners could influence whether the couple on the billboard fell in love, making each viewer and listener a co-author of the event. This participatory mechanic extended the creative idea from spectacle into something closer to live drama, with the FM broadcast as its soundtrack. The campaign was produced as a film medium asset — a record of the live event — which enabled its continued circulation as earned media across social platforms following the February 2017 Sandton launch. Production credits for the broader campaign are attributed to Halo as the lead creative and agency partner; individual director or creative director credits are not publicly documented in available sources. Kevin Fine, General Manager of Jacaranda FM, stated in The Media Online on 17 October 2017 that the campaign's goal was to 'connect emotions, and music across multiple platforms,' a formulation that describes both the creative ambition and its technical execution in equal measure.
The 'More Music You Love' campaign by Jacaranda FM and Halo won the Roger Garlick Grand Prix — the top prize — at the AMASA Awards 2017, according to The Media Online and Bizcommunity. The AMASA Awards ceremony took place in October 2017. In addition to the Grand Prix, the campaign won Gold in Best Event and Experiential and Gold in Best Integrated: Media, and was Highly Commended in Best Use of Technology and Data, all at the same awards programme, as reported by The Media Online and Bizcommunity. Halo collected two Gold awards and one Highly Commended result across these categories.
On the audience side, The Media Online reported the campaign reached 4.4 million social media accounts and that #MoreMusicYouLove trended in South Africa following the Sandton activation. Minisha Patel, Marketing Manager at Jacaranda FM, is quoted in The Media Online acknowledging the effort invested in creating and executing the campaign alongside Halo and the individuals involved. No verified Cannes Lions, Effies, One Show, D&AD, Clio, Webby, or WARC recognition for this campaign is publicly available. Structurally, the campaign's effectiveness lies in its ability to generate earned reach from a single-location event — a billboard in Sandton that became a nationally discussed media moment — demonstrating that a well-engineered live stunt can function as a cost-efficient awareness driver when the interactivity and novelty are strong enough to sustain organic amplification.
Jacaranda FM's 'More Music You Love' was a 2017 campaign by Halo that launched the station's new brand proposition in South Africa. Its centrepiece was the world's first radio simulcast live lip-sync billboard, staged in Sandton on 15 February 2017, where live performers synchronised with the FM broadcast in real time.
The campaign won the Roger Garlick Grand Prix at AMASA Awards 2017, the top prize in South African media. It also took Gold in Best Event and Experiential and Gold in Best Integrated: Media, and was Highly Commended in Best Use of Technology and Data, according to The Media Online and Bizcommunity.
'The Greatest Love Story Never Told' was the name of the live activation at the heart of the 'More Music You Love' campaign. Performers enacted a live narrative on a Sandton digital billboard while Jacaranda FM broadcast the music, with listeners influencing whether the on-screen characters fell in love.
Halo created the 'More Music You Love' campaign for Jacaranda FM. The agency served as the lead creative and agency partner, winning two Gold awards and one Highly Commended result at the AMASA Awards 2017, as reported by The Media Online and Bizcommunity.
The simulcast billboard displayed live performers on a Sandton digital outdoor screen synchronised with Jacaranda FM's analog FM signal. Because the visual feed carried an inherent delay relative to the FM broadcast, performers rehearsed for weeks to account for the latency, according to The Media Online, making the lip-sync technically precise.
The campaign reached 4.4 million social media accounts, according to The Media Online. The hashtag #MoreMusicYouLove trended in South Africa following the February 2017 Sandton launch, extending the single-location outdoor event into a nationally distributed entertainment moment across South African social platforms.
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