AM 560 The Answer built Shaunfest from a modest afternoon meet-and-greet into one of Chicago radio’s most talked-about live events, and the growth shows no signs of slowing down. What began three years ago as a one-off idea centered on afternoon host Shaun Thompson has since ballooned into an annual gathering that draws well over a thousand fans and has become a cornerstone of the station’s advertising strategy.
The event’s rapid rise caught even its creators off guard. AM 560 The Answer Program Director Marcus Brown recently reflected on how a cautious first attempt turned into something nobody at the station anticipated.
“About three years ago, we were looking for some kind of an event to produce around Shaun Thompson, our afternoon host,” Brown said. “We had no idea what kind of a turnout we’d get the first time. The first venue we chose probably could comfortably seat 300 people. We thought, great, if we got 300 people on a Friday afternoon in September, that would be lovely. That’d be fantastic. And we opened up registrations. The event was totally free. We didn’t charge any ticket prices. We just turned on registrations about six or seven weeks in advance. And immediately, it just blew up. That first year we registered about a thousand people, and probably had about 1,100, 1,200 folks show up, and just blew us away. We just were not expecting it or anticipating it whatsoever.”
That surprise turned into a pattern. Attendance climbed the following year again, and this year’s Shaunfest pulled in roughly 1,400 people, according to Brown. The Program Director credited much of that continued growth to a factor outside the studio altogether.
From Beach Videos to a Bigger Crowd
Thompson’s reach has extended well past traditional radio thanks to a social media habit he picked up about a year ago. Brown explained how that shift has reshaped the audience showing up to Shaunfest each fall.
“He spends about half the year living in Florida, and about half the year living up here in Chicago, and goes back and forth,” Brown said. “And so he started doing this thing when he was down in Florida, where he’d get up in the morning and take a walk on the beach and just record himself talking about whatever happened to be on his mind on that morning. It’s two or three minutes of him just kind of talking about whatever the issue is. And he’d post that up on Instagram and Facebook and on Twitter. That thing just has taken off. I mean, he’s routinely getting 120, 150,000 views per video, and a lot of the people who are seeing that are people that are not in Chicago, are not in our market at all, and are like, who is this guy? What’s this all about? And have begun to kind of connect the dots that he’s a radio talk show host.”
As a result, out-of-state fans who discovered Thompson online have started making the trip to Chicago. Brown said Thompson spent two and a half hours shaking hands and posing for pictures after this year’s broadcast, greeting everyone from longtime listeners to a military veteran who presented him with an American flag.
A Personal Connection That Pays Off for Sponsors
Beyond the fan experience, Shaunfest has become a proving ground for local businesses testing radio advertising for the first time. Brown pointed to that dynamic as a major reason the event matters so much to the station’s bottom line.
“We had a dozen advertisers who sponsored this event and were on site. I talked to almost every single one of them, and they were just blown away by the fact that they were able to have as much traffic at their booth at this event as they did,” Brown said. “We had a couple of vendors who were kind of more retail-oriented sponsors. And there were a couple of guys that had to go back to their truck three or four times to bring more merchandise back to the table because they were selling out.”
That kind of return has convinced skeptical advertisers to keep coming back, Brown noted, since sponsors have told the station directly that their sales depend on Thompson’s endorsement.
Even with that success, AM 560 The Answer isn’t rushing to replicate Shaunfest across the calendar. The station already runs five or six local events annually. Brown said variety matters more than volume.
“I think that’s kind of the important thing — if you just want to do the copy and paste where you’re doing the same event every quarter, every month, it’s not going to work,” Brown said. “So we’ve created some very unique event opportunities.”
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