Small businesses are a very valuable constituency for UPS, therefore in the last quarter of 2008, when UPS was planning to run the second annual UPS Local Business Awards and the credit crunch started to hit industry in the UK UPS were keen to ensure the awards were seen as offering small businesses a unique chance to beat the crunch. Radio provided the ideal platform for this, as there are very strong and long-established links between radio stations and local businesses and radio (unlike local papers) acts as a "right now" medium, able to create excitement spontaneously.

Raise awareness of the awards amongst small businesses

The UPS Local Business Awards were run in association with ten of Global Radio's biggest local stations, reaching over 5milion listeners and extending through to a multitude of touchpoints including airtime, promotions, online, mobile, events and leafleting. The three key phases were recruitment (encouraging businesses to enter), the judging (headlined by Theo Paphitis) and the winners' campaigns - the ten winners ran radio advertising campaigns locally, taking their enterprise messages to millions of potential customers.

Over 1,000 small businesses entered the awards, and this entailed (like for like) an increase of over 300%. A survey amongst the winning companies indicated that their business with UPS had seen a rise of around 10%. But most importantly the small business community had begun to give more positive consideration to UPS, with significant rises in UPS's scores for being "responsive to business needs" and "caring about me".

"The second UPS Local Business Awards again proved the power of local commercial radio advertising in helping small businesses to engage with the local community and drive real business results. UPS were able to help facilitate this incredible opportunity for over 1000 small businesses, driving a huge amount of positive PR, increasing new leads and shifting positive feelings towards UPS as a whole." Amanda Barrett, Head of Radio, Universal McCann London. RAB Commentary - UPS found a clever way to leverage the relation between radio and their key customer segment.