Creating a brand story for Sony’s music streaming service
As well as the launch campaign and ongoing activity.
(you can watch the case study video below or continue to scroll through my arguably less interesting prose)
The problem
Sony has as a music streaming service which functionally rivals that of the more familiar Spotify. However, it had limited awareness and a small user base. How do we create a brand story, launch campaign and then ongoing activity that will create a connection with people and get them to trial the service?
The insight
It’s as if only those who are “in the know” have the right to truly enjoy music. And sometimes the less culturally elite (ie 95% of us) feel embarrassed by what we listen to.
Creative strategy
“Sony Music Unlimited: The People’s Music”
Creative platform
“We know what we like”
The music streaming service for all of us
Campaign
We launched a 360 degree campaign that celebrated the populist appreciation of music. All of our “stars” were people that we found on the most democratic of channels, the internet, thoroughly in the moment with their favourite songs.
The TV ad was sourced exclusively from Youtube.
The press and outdoor ads were sourced from Flickr and other image sharing sites.
The app and the site were updated to reflect the new brand identity and story.
We launched the Music Unlimited social presence as part of the campaign. During the campaign and on an ongoing basis, we encourage people to share what they like, then we create dedicated playlists in the service from these responses. These playlists not only encourage trial but are the most popular amongst users of the service.
We continue to do this on an ongoing basis, in addition to creating playlists around specific moments in culture, such as Glastonbury or going back to school.
Brand book
As the work has been executed in multiple markets, we created brand guidelines to ensure consistent visual treatment, imagery, messaging etc. (I’m sorry I can’t share this here!)
For a gaming audience
We use a similar approach when promoting the service to the Playstation audience — capturing the real emotions of gamers in the moment.
Results
Over 1 million subscribers across 19 countries. This continues to grow month on month.
70% of the audience who saw it responded “positively or very positively to the creative.”
560% increase in trial sign-ups during the campaign period.
(the launch campaign ran for 6 weeks mid 2013 — there’s ongoing social, display, search and content activity)
