Situation:

Studio Brussel is a Belgian radio station known for discovering and promoting young talent.

Brief:

They asked us to communicate this. We decided not just to tell about it, but to prove it, by creating a whole new story about a real boy with a real dream.

Objectives:

Make sure music lovers and music festival visitors know that Studio Brussel has a nose for young talent.

We took the term ‘young talent’ literally and decided to turn a kid into a rock star. We started an intense casting process to search for Belgium’s youngest and most talented drummer. After seeing more than 80 kids, we discovered Mirko.

Our plan was to kickstart his career and get him on a real stage as soon as possible. That's why we let him star in his own tv commercial, to allow everyone to discover his unique talent. It worked: Mirko became the talk of the town. Even major rock band Triggerfinger was impressed. So much so, that they invited Mirko to play with them at Rock Werchter.

That’s how an 8-year old got to play one of the world’s biggest music festivals, resulting in a goosebump moment for himself, more than 10.000 people in the crowd and everyone in the country who read or saw his story.

We promoted Mirko in the same way as every other young, talented band.

Step 1: audition.

We saw more than 80 kids, but our experts immediately realised Mirko had huge potential.

Step 2: give a platform to shine.

We then put in a huge effort to promote Mirko. We gave him air time on our radio, a live gig on Facebook and let him star in his own tv commercial.

Step 3: gain attention from experts and fans.

Only if your talent is good enough, he’ll get picked up. That’s exactly what happened. After a couple of days Mirko became famous. Even major rock band Triggerfinger was in awe of his talent.

Step 4: become bigger than life.

Triggerfinger invited Mirko to play Rock Werchter with them: the big dream of every young band. As a result, he was featured in all major media, just like real rock stars.

In using the PR strategy described above, we could control step 1 (audition) and step 2 (give a platform to shine). Step 3 (gain attention from experts and fans) and 4 (become bigger than life) are obviously beyond our control.

But thanks to our exceptional nose for young talent, results followed really quickly. Mirko was so good the public immediately started talking about him. And after only a couple of days, he was already invited to play Rock Werchter. He even got good reviews from very critical and respected music journalists.

As a result, every major Belgian news medium covered his incredible story, gaining Studio Brussel a lot of free and positive attention.