Christmas love was in the air on Today FM this week when one lucky listener in Tipperary had his Christmas dream come through courtesy of the Bauer-owned radio station and retailer Lidl which had been running an on-air competition to win €25,000.
Alan Kenny was the lucky winner of the nationwide “Make a Lidl Wish this Christmas” campaign which, over the period of a month on the Ian Dempsey Show, received almost two thousand entries from Lidl shoppers throughout the country – each one with a heartfelt wish.
Under the cover of early morning darkness, Today FM’s roving reporter Shauna O’Reilly took the nation to Kenny’s doorstep in a live broadcast on the Ian Dempsey Show. A surprised but delighted Kenny was given the good news by O’Reilly that Lidl was making his wish come true this Christmas.
His wish? To marry his partner Natasha Quinn to whom he has been engaged for almost nine years and been together as a couple for 18 years.
The prize money now means that a wedding is in the offing for 2025 – one where the couple’s daughters Georgia May and Willow will play a big part in an intimate family event that will likely be held abroad. Local Lidl deputy store manager Katie Crowe was on hand to present the big cheque.
According to Fiona Fagan, marketing director, Lidl Ireland and Northern Ireland: “As a thank you to everyone who entered our ‘Make a Lidl Wish this Christmas’ campaign and took the time in their entries to share their heartfelt wishes, we wanted to make a nationwide impact when we were announcing our winner. Partnering with Today FM and The Ian Dempsey Show made complete sense. Their enthusiasm for the resulting on-air broadcast is clearly reflected in a piece of radio that was full of empathy and joy, celebrating a wonderful human-interest story.”
“Our work with Lidl has all the hallmarks of what makes radio such a great medium,” adds Eamon Fitzpatrick, Group Commercial Director, Bauer Media Audio Ireland
“By collaborating closely with the brand marketing team on a popular consumer campaign and overlaying it with deft broadcast handling, what you got was an entertaining piece of radio that connects with listeners and makes you want to keep listening in,”
