Doing big stunts can be great fun. They create entertainment value for the audience and can generate media coverage that spreads your brand beyond your existing reach. In fact, pulling off outrageous, buzzworthy promotions used to be radio’s superpower, but it’s now what YouTubers like MrBeast have turned into billion-dollar empires. Whether you’re designing a major market spectacle or a small-scale attention-grabber, preparation is the difference between a career-making stunt and a brand-damaging disaster. To make it work, you have to plan a radio stunt.
How to Plan A Radio Stunt
Radio used to own this lane. Remember stations suspending jocks on billboards until a goal was met? Or “craziest thing you’d do for a prize” contests? Now compare that to MrBeast burying himself alive for 50 hours, giving away houses, or staging last-one-to-leave challenges with million-dollar payouts. Same DNA (and many are the same promotions you did in the 80s and 90s), but he’s scaled it to a global audience. And he does it with one critical ingredient: flawless planning.
Lots of things can go wrong with stunts. That’s why planning isn’t optional. It’s survival. The infamous Hold Your Wee for a Wii stunt in Sacramento is the worst-case reminder. A listener tragically died because the station didn’t think through the consequences. That’s the nuclear version of “oops.” But even without fatal stakes, half-baked stunts can lead to embarrassment, negative publicity, or a brand hit you never recover from.
MrBeast doesn’t just throw cash at a camera. He scripts everything—start, middle, payoff—then obsessively stages the visual, audience reaction, and safety plan. Radio should take notes.
Does It Fit the Brand?
Not all stunts are good stunts, even if it causes talk, so before pulling the trigger, ask:
Does this stunt amplify our identity or just hijack attention?
Some stunts, like “What’s the craziest thing you’d do for a prize,” always get noticed. But they often leave listeners thinking,
“Radio listeners are weird, and that morning host is immature.”
You don’t want that. The best stunts are aligned with your brand. If your show is positioned as fun and family-driven, send your host to live on top of a school bus until 10,000 books are donated. If you’re edgy and sarcastic, push boundaries with a tongue-in-cheek dare that riles the audience without alienating them.
MrBeast has mastered this. Every stunt fits his brand: larger-than-life generosity. That’s why fans line up to participate, rather than rolling their eyes.
