Music identification and tagging service Shazam has announced that Microsoft’s new TV ad campaign for Internet Explorer is Shazam-enabled.
From yesterday, when people see the ‘Beauty of the Web’ advert featuring the track ‘Too Close’ by musician Alex Clare, they can use the Shazam app to interact with it.
Just to add a little context here, earlier this year UK singer/songwriter Alex Clare’s dub-soul fusion song, ‘Too Close’, was catapulted into the global spotlight after Microsoft used the song in its advert. Here’s a snippet:
The song entered the charts after Shazam users tagged the song more than 1.5m times to identify the ‘mystery’ artist, and it subsequently reached 4th spot in the official UK charts.
Following this success, Microsoft has officially reeled in Shazam and Alex Clare, to make its new ad campaign completely Shazam-enabled. So, when you see the the ‘Beauty of the Web’ advert featuring the track, you can use Shazam’s mobile app to view live performances with the artist, and enter a competition to see him perform live.
The 30- and 60-second ads include a Shazam on-air prompt to let people know they can use the app to interact with it.
Whilst it is perhaps best known for its music discovery technology, Shazam’s expansion into television has opened the doors to new opportunities for the company, letting viewers engage with their favourite shows and ads for additional content and exclusive offers.
Following a hook-up with American Idol in April, Shazam lined up a landmark deal with British broadcaster ITV, promising to let viewers snap up products they like during ad breaks, using nothing but their smartphone and Shazam’s mobile app. The first of these ads featured during the Britain’s Got Talent grande finale on May 12.
The deal saw ITV become the exclusive UK distributor for Shazam-enabled broadcast advertising in the UK, and ITV also signed up Pepsi MAX and Cadbury as the first brands to offer viewers the chance to use Shazam during adverts. And last month, the company announced that five billion songs, TV shows and ads had been tagged since Shazam launched.
“We’re confident that by leveraging Shazam’s reach of more than 11 million people in the UK we will continue to strengthen Internet Explorer’s position as the browser that truly enables people to experience the web in all its beauty,” says Paul Davies, Microsoft Head of Consumer Marketing. “The campaign will build on the growing success of the Internet Explorer brand and show users that Internet Explorer is the best way to experience their favourite sites.”
Shazam entered the broader media engagement realm last year, with the launch of its Shazam for TV service and has since gone on to work with more than 100 campaigns for global brands such as Pepsi, Procter and Gamble, Sony and Toyota.
Shazam is available for all the popular mobile platforms, include iOS, Android, Windows Phone and BlackBerry. It currently claims 225 million users across 200 countries, adding another two million new users each week.
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