Earworms are a well-known phenomenon. Listening to or singing the original song rids them. But what if you can’t remember the name of the song, and can only hum it?

An original recording vs. a hummed melody contain different information. With lyrics, background vocals and instruments, the audio of a musical or studio recording varies from the pitch, key, tempo or rhythm of a hum. Many existing approaches to query by humming technologies are challenged by limitations: 1) they match the hummed tune against a database of pre-existing melody-only or hummed versions of a song, identifying the song indirectly 2) they rely on a limited database that requires manual updates.

Launched in October, Hum to Search is a new fully machine-learned system within Google Search. The technology matches a hum directly to original recordings, and its constant refreshed database identifies original recordings from across the world — even latest releases.

We created a 360 campaign featuring these elements:

- A :15 national broadcast spot “humdubbed” over L’il Nas X’s “Old Town Road” (who was getting ready to release his new single in December)

- “The Hum-Off,” featuring Hum to Search in a game on "The Late Late Show with James Corden"

- A whitelisted social post demoing this new feature by Kid Cudi, an artist known for his iconic humming

- The Top 100 Most Hummed List, the first ever Billboard chart for the most hummed songs.

In a year where there was so little to be joyful about, we wanted to introduce the Hum to Search technology in a culturally relevant, joyful, and uplifting way during the ‘20 Holiday Season.

We created a 360 campaign in partnership with artists and platforms who could:

- show users how they can hum, whistle or sing a melody to Google on their mobile device

- demonstrate how Google’s machine learning algorithm helps identify potential song matches

- show how users can explore information on the song / artist, view music videos, listen to the song on your favorite music app, find lyrics, and check out other recordings of the song when available.

We worked with venerable music partners and performers (some even famous for humming) to demonstrate how Google makes it easy to solve for earworms.

In a very speedy turnaround, we briefed partners in late October for an execution from Thanksgiving to mid-December of 2020.

- A :15 national broadcast spot “humdubbed” over L’il Nas X’s “Old Town Road” (who was getting ready to release his new single in December)

- “The Hum-Off,” featuring Hum to Search in a game on the Late Late Show with James Corden

- A whitelisted social post demoing this new feature by Kid Cudi, an artist known for his iconic humming

- The Top 100 Most Hummed List, the first ever Billboard chart for the most hummed songs.

Billboard successfully drove awareness to Google’s new “Hum to Search” feature through a custom chart and social content, earning over 6 million video views, 527 million press impressions, and 38 million digital and social impressions. Talent partnerships with influencers such as Lele Pons, Rick Astley and Guaynaa further extended this reach to talent channels on TikTok, reaching music fans in an organic and meaningful way. The campaign’s social engagement rate was 50x Billboard’s benchmark, further proving the resonance of the content with our audience and successful promotion of the feature.

Through the partnership, we generated a strong Social engagement with 565M+ impressions, drove an estimated $4.8M in earned media value and drove lower funnel metrics for a female audience.