SITUATION:

In 2015, leading manufacturer of premium guitars Epiphone announced a new signature edition of their most famous model: the Les Paul - played by legends like Slash, Jimmy Page or James Hetfield.

BRIEF AND STRATEGIC OBJECTIVE:

1. Promote this Edition, designed by Björn Gelotte, guitarist for famous Swedish metal band “In Flames”. 2. Improve the overall profile and market share of Epiphone as the #1 brand for ambitious guitar players.

CLIENT CHALLENGE:

Everyone wants a Les Paul. But once you have one, you're set for years.

Epiphone still has to keep up demand for annual product launches.

TARGET AUDIENCE:

Ambitious amateur, semi-pro and pro guitar players. Familiar with the history of the Les Paul. Interested in rock/ metal. From DACH region.

INSIGHT:

Musicians love to be challenged.

STRATEGY:

Challenge + Exclusivity = Extreme Attraction.

IDEA:

Let guitar players prove their skills, by perfectly playing a difficult solo written by Gelotte himself. Let them measure their precision through a familiar channel: Shazam. Reward them for perfect performance with exclusive benefits.

Because the innovative use of data was the essential technical part of the idea, all outcome was data driven: During the promotion period, countless guitar players tried to master the solo. Because those who weren’t good enough didn’t produce a measurable result within Shazam, we can only guess the numbers. What we know: Even though only very skilled guitarists could play the solo perfectly in our tests, Shazam measured 250+ successful matches. One lucky guitar mastermind got the new Les Paul for free. The rest of the first production batch was sold out, before it was even in stores. Not least because of the Paul Skill Check, the 2015 Les Paul Signature Edition is now at the top of every guitar player’s wish list.

In our case the data was present in the form of unique “waveform fingerprints” (hashes). It came from two sources:

Sample Audio Data

Was produced by consumers with their own instruments.

Was uploaded to the Shazam server, analyzed (“fingerprinted”) and used to search for similarities in the Shazam database.

Master Audio Data

Was produced by studio musicians, simulating different likely setups like “bedroom”, “studio” or “open-air” and played with different popular guitars and amps, to anticipate likely setups of potential users.

Was processed with advanced audio technology to shape the soundwaves and create clean “master” files tailor-made for the purpose: Detect soli played perfectly by users.

Was uploaded to the Shaam database and fingerprinted, before the promotion started.

Further details on “fingerprinting” and the detection algorithm can be found in the additional supporting pdf.

Innovative use of data in terms of “algorithmic search within a database” was the technical mechanism at the core of our idea, and the key element facilitating the whole creative campaign.

While most creative data efforts may focus on collecting their own data or use formatted available data, we did something totally different.

Working together with Shazam, we “hacked” their “waveform fingerprinting” technology (algorithmic search within a database):

Instead of using Shazam to recognize prerecorded audio from radio or tv, we used it to set up a challenge: We placed perfectly played clean audio recordings as “master” files in the Shazam database.

Then we made users play their own guitar, producing their own “sample” audio.

Only if they played precise enough, Shazam would detect enough similarities within the fingerprint (hashes), recognize a match and reveal to the user a website with the chance to exclusively pre-order or even win the new LesPaul Björn Gelotte Signature edition.