Deezer Music Wall nominated for Econsultancy Innovation Award

We’re very happy this week to discover that our launch campaign for streaming music service Deezer has been nominated for an Innovation Award by the discerning folk at Econsultancy in the category of ‘Innovation in Social Media’. The winners will be announced at the ceremony, taking place at a swanky London hotel on 23^rd of February.

This seems like a timely opportunity to go into the project in a bit more detail with an overview of how things worked. You be the judge as to whether we’re a worthy winner.

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The idea was to draw attention to Deezer with an activity that reinforced their critical differentiator from the music streaming competition – that this is a service by music lovers for music lovers with editorial, human recommendation and more than mere hardcore search-powered tech.

So, we developed a Facebook integrated analogue/digital (which may just be a fancy way of saying experiential/digital) experience encouraging people to share favourite songs and stories to be brought to life in real-time by illustrators working on an installation in London. Essentially, this creative concept brought the Deezer strapline promise – “Where Music Comes Alive” – to life with a perfectly physical, interactive expression of just that.

Built from hundreds of illustrated postcards, the Wall was experienced online through a gigapixel image in which you could zoom into each card and even play the relevant track.

It lives on and you play around with it right HERE.

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1. The real-world experience

Between 19 – 24th October a group of illustrators and a gigapan-operated camera were installed in the Old Truman Brewery, off Brick Lane in East London. Through a Facebook application, audiences shared their favourite songs and the stories behind them. Illustrators turned each of these stories into unique hand-illustrated postcards and added them to the wall. The wall itself grew into both a visual and literal expression of the brand.

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2. The digital interface

Users could view the progress of the wall through a regularly updating gigapixel image that allowed it to be browsed from afar and zoomed into in close-up. As individual cards were selected in close-up, details then loaded in allowing the associated track to be played via Deezer, the track title and user comment to be displayed, and that card to be shared through Facebook and Twitter.

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3. Sharing

With 1000 entries we were able to send Facebook and Twitter notifications when each user entered their track. But the real excitement kicked in when a user’s card was created and added to the wall. At this point we posted to their feed both a packshot and direct link that zoomed elegantly into the gigapixel image within the Facebook app to focus on that individual’s card. These then became the focus for further conversations within Facebook. This turned 1000 entries into hundreds of thousands of impressions across Facebook.

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Brand awareness was achieved both on the ground for a week with a living, breathing brand embodiment in high-footfall Brick Lane, through NME and Facebook advertising and, most effectively, through the sharing across Facebook and Twitter.

A new player was introduced to the busy UK music-streaming market with an exciting, engaging and truly social experience. Complex in behind-the-scenes execution, the user journey itself was beautifully simple and depended only on the demographic’s willingness to express their individuality through music. They were rewarded with a unique, creative and shareable memento which achieved the elusive but highly prized goal of all social marketing: social currency.