Heart
Background
Heart wanted to give away an incredible £1,000,000 live on-air as part of Heart’s Make Me a Millionaire – the biggest competition on UK radio. Over the course of 13 weeks, people texted in to win either a cash prize between £1,000 and £20,000 – or a place in the Million Pound Final.
Just 38 of them opted to forgo the daily cash prize for the chance to win the jackpot. As the UK’s largest commercial radio brand with 9.6m listeners each week, Heart needed to make sure that they were giving the radio’s biggest prize away completely fairly and risk-free.
What we did
Our team adjudicated over the entire live Million Pound Final to guarantee that all the finalists had an equal chance of winning. Heart Breakfast presenters Jamie Theakston and Amanda Holden whittled the contestants down to just nine Grand Finalists by a lottery machine – the tenth finalist won their place that morning as Heart listeners played one final round of the Heart’s Make Me a Millionaire game. We inspected the balls to make sure they had not been tampered with and then ensured that the correct entrants were announced by Jamie. This all took place in Heart’s Make Me a Millionaire Vault where we had set up ten safety deposit boxes – only one held the words that every finalist had been dreaming of; “Heart Make Me a Millionaire!”. Our team randomly selected the winning box and then closed and sealed them all, locking them securely into the safety deposit boxes.
- 1
- Millionaire
- 9.3 million
- Listeners
- 38
- Finalists
The PromoVeritas Touch
Just before the ten finalists began selecting their boxes to find out if they had won, Amanda Holden announced that “all the safety deposit boxes have been checked and locked by our independent adjudicator, and neither me, Jamie or anyone who works for Heart knows which box has a million pounds inside…” confirming our important role overseeing the competition. One by one each finalist chose a box which was then unlocked by Amanda, revealing its contents to the audience. The nerve-wracked eighth finalist, Shelley Humphries, selected winning box number two, incredibly winning the life changing prize £1,000,000. PromoVeritas were thrilled to help adjudicate Heart’s Make Me a Millionaire Million Pound Final.
