Big stories deserve big audiences
Wonderly’s Kevin McCreeth on finding the audience your story deserves
Kevin McCreeth
I am well aware that this story ages me, but bear with…
The other week I was listening to the radio (ask your parents) in the middle of the day. Nothing unusual about this; I often work with the radio on (6Music since you ask, at least, until 10:30am when I am forced to make a change, but that’s another story).
You And Yours, Radio 4. A lovely show: excellent tone with content perfectly pitched for its audience.
The story that grabbed my attention was about fraud. A listener had been robbed at a gym; her locker had been broken into and her phone and bank cards stolen. Her accounts had been cleaned out within minutes and her bank had not accepted her story of theft since the thief had used her PIN. The ne’er-do-well had pulled this off by getting access to the victim’s bank account and all they’d had to do was download the right banking app to their own phone. It was an incredibly simple and devastatingly obvious crime; one that would never occur to most of us, but which a majority of us, I would say, are open to.
How they do it.
The thief steals a phone and bank cards from their victim. The thief then downloads the banking app to his own phone and requests access to the victim’s bank account using the account number and sort code on the card. The bank needs a two-step authentication so it texts the victim’s phone to say, ’someone’s trying to access your account – should we allow it?’
That text includes a code to say everything is OK, go ahead. If the thief can get the code and enter into his phone he will be granted access. But the victim’s phone is locked, so it’s not possible, you say.
Here’s the cheeky bit.
The phone’s settings allow the banner notification, showing the release code, to be read even though the phone is locked. The thief taps in the code and hey presto: spend, spend, spend (another reference that will date me).
Each woman had been told their crime would not be pursued by the police for lack of evidence. But now that You And Yours had got involved the police were linking the crimes and re-opening the cases.
The broadcaster even went on to explain precisely how to avoid this devious crime by making a few simple adjustments on your phone.
It struck me as a lovely example of how to suit your content to your audience. Tell a great story and you can connect with your audience. And they did. The story grew: the list of victims grew to four and they may now get justice.
But this story deserves an audience larger than You And Yours’ listener figures. The wider population needs to know this story and the fix. We ALL need to know about it!
Which is where an agency like Wonderly comes in.
We take your news and grow your audience by telling the right story, at the right time, to the right demographic in the right format.
Maybe the Radio 4 social team did a great job on its own and everyone out there knows this story and the fix…
What’s that you say? You don’t? You don’t know how to prevent this fraud? Let’s try again then to get this fix out there. Check out our Twitter feed to find where we have detailed the fix. Even better, forward that tweet to as many people as you know and enjoy a bit of financial security on us.
