Reinventing the blind test experience on a main stage
What better way to end a Sandbox than a festive meeting with an enthusiastic public on the France Bleu Nord stage during the Braderie de Lille, a great city in the North of France? For Radio France, it's even better with an innovative project that brings together 3 partners in one Sandbox: startups Mukiz and Black Buff, together with the France Bleu Nord team.
For this occasion, several musical blind test sessions were hosted by radio personality Pascal Toth and brought together “Bradeuses and bradeux” (literally, people who go to “la Braderie de Lille”) to listen to emblematic music.
Let’s take a look back at the Radio France Sandbox experiment with Guillaume Bouxin, founder of Mukiz, and Arnaud Delcenserie, founder of Black Buff.
A Starting Point: The Encounters
In 2023, Guillaume Bouxin joined the creative industries hub Plaine Images incubator in Tourcoing where he further developed his blind test app, Mukiz. Three months later, Arnaud Delcenserie, founder of Black Buff, a company supporting projects in the video game industry, joined the same hub. "The goal of incubation is to create synergies between all structures and all projects to discover how we can work together," explains Guillaume.
Synergies were found. Both come from distinct but complementary universes: Guillaume masters the technical aspect of developing a tool, and Arnaud specializes in marketing. "We explored possibilities to organize events that promote the app. I thought it was promising, plus on a human level it clicked between the two of us. And then one day, Iniz arrived," smiles Arnaud.
Iniz Becker is an innovation project manager at Radio France. It was at the Plaine Image's annual event, PIX, that she met the two project leaders from Mukiz and Black Buff. The next day, the France Bleu Nord team shared their desire for a music focus during the upcoming Braderie of Lille. All parties sat down and discussed the main angle of the Sandbox collaboration: organizing a large blind test on the main stage during the biggest event in Lille.
Creating opportunities
The project was planned to launch early April 2024 and they had less than six months to implement it. The stakes were high: France Bleu Nord aimed to organize a major event featuring the largest media booth at the Braderie, which attracts every year over two million visitors. Last year for example, the booth set a record for the largest human chain. For the radio station, the goal was to engage a very different audience over the weekend compared to its usual listeners. "In the evening, there was a DJ set, so the aim in the afternoon was to engage people and ideally diversify the audience for France Bleu and Radio France," explains Arnaud. During this initial preparation phase, the radio station had been actively promoting the app and encouraging its audience to download it, particularly during the Fête de la Musique (a National Music Celebration Day on the 21st of June)
"We were wondering if events could be a solution to promote apps," explains Guillaume. After the Radio France Sandbox collaboration, events have become a full offering in the Mukiz proposition. "Before the project, Guillaume's goal was to reach players directly, but with Radio France, we realised that there might be another market to explore: one where we would offer events as a complete solution," presents Arnaud. Concretely, Mukiz could offer a musical experience where animation would be essential. "We are now exploring new avenues. Whether it's video game conventions where brands often have their own sound universe or anime conventions, as fans listen to a lot of OSTs (Original Soundtrack)," they explain.
Learnings from the Sandbox
"There was a desire from the France Bleu network to bring people together to have a good time. It's both the spirit of the Braderie and the image of Mukiz," says the France Bleu communications team. The project indeed allowed the radio station to diversify the formats offered during the Braderie, thanks to cooperation with these two local startups. The teams identified areas for improvement in the format, particularly the need to edit excerpts or take breaks between them, making it possible to strengthen the animation. Mukiz was thus able to gain essential field learnings in order to activate the operation on a larger scale. The experience gained, with an adapted strategy, made it possible to strengthen this intergenerational exchange.
For the two startups, the discovery also lay in the world of Radio France: it's more standardized and structured than the creativity of entrepreneurship. For Arnaud, coming from the world of video games and esports, the challenge was to confront the functioning of a large public group such as Radio France while for Guillaume, it was rather the desire to discover the world of radio and the opportunities to integrate his blind test format.
The Results
On the day of the Braderie, a crowd gathered around the France Bleu Nord stage. For several hours and over two days, the audience sang along to the greatest hits of French artists like Aznavour, international artists and groups such as Lipps Inc, the Rolling Stones, Coldplay, Supertramp, or Kim Carnes, and even the iconic musics from movies like Kill Bil and more... So many hits that make up the sound identity of France Bleu and its 100% French songs web radio!
For Mukiz and Black Buff, it's a first accomplishment: +1.500 new downloads, +1.000 people who played the blind tests in total and 10% more users on the app the week after the Braderie. But above all, it will be an open door to new opportunities. "The Braderie allowed us to have more content, it was really huge, a real street party. When you do events as big as the Braderie, you can do anything. And above all, we've figured out how to do it," says Guillaume.
For the Radio France team it was an impactful event, on the France Bleu Nord side first, but also within other radio stations in the network ready to replicate the format for other events.
