Title	THE WORLD'S BEST COVER BAND (ACCORDING TO SHAZAM)
Brand	ALLSTARS
Product/Service	COVER BAND
Category	D02. Costs/Creative Performance PR Campaign
Entrant Company	NIKJOEY.COM Amsterdam, THE NETHERLANDS
Advertising Agency	NIKJOEY.COM Amsterdam, THE NETHERLANDS
Production Company	LAMA LAMA Amsterdam, THE NETHERLANDS

Name	Company	Position
Nik Sluijs	nikjoey.com	Creative
Joey Boeters	nikjoey.com	Creative
Mark de Vries	Lama Lama	Webdeveloper
Hans Jong	Young Music	Sound Engineer

The Campaign

CHALLENGE Dutch cover band Allstars needed more bookings. They asked us to create a smart and cheap campaign to promote them. Target audience: potential bookers of cover bands (parties, weddings, festivals, birthdays). A very broad audience, so we wanted to generate as much free publicity as possible. INSIGHT A great coverband should be able to play all kinds of famous songs, sounding just like the original artist. IDEA We came up with a fun experiment: let's prove that Allstars is a great coverband by fooling Shazam (the well known app that recognizes music). Here's how: Allstars plays a famous song. If Shazam thinks it's the original artist playing, Allstars must be The World's Best Cover Band! Well, according to Shazam. We created simple and short videos of Allstars playing various songs. Set up in their rehearsal space with an iPhone/Shazam app in front of them. One video for every song we managed to fool Shazam with. We put all the videos on theworldsbestcoverband.com and sent a press release of the project to relevant blogs/media. The project got picked up and shared A LOT. KEY PR ELEMENTS - Tapping into the popularity of one of the biggest music platforms (Shazam). - Doing something that's never been done before. Hacking-the-system by fooling Shazam. RESULTS - 40% increase of bookings - 700.000 impressions (site views, blogposts, social shares) - Allstars was invited to fool Shazam live on national radio 3FM (and nailed it four more times)

The Brief

Allstars asked for a low budget, creative campaign that could generate free publicity (at least 100.000 impressions) and result in more bookings (20%).

Execution

Limited by the budget of a cover band, we had to go for a free publicity approach: We created simple and short videos of Allstars playing various songs. Set up in their rehearsal space with an iPhone/Shazam app in front of them. One video for every song we successfully fooled Shazam with. We put all the videos on theworldsbestcoverband.com and sent a press release of the project to relevant blogs/media. After that, the project got picked up and shared a lot.

Except for some gas, pizza's, a big background banner (€200) and lots of hours, no money was spent creating this campaign. The idea, videos and website were all produced in-house. Despite the low budget, we got Allstars 700,000 impressions online, a live performance on national radio 3FM and a 40% increase of bookings.v Suddenly, people from all over the world were listening to a little Dutch cover band called Allstars: - 40% increase of bookings - 700.000 impressions (website views, blogposts and social media shares) - Allstars was invited to fool Shazam live on national radio 3FM (and nailed it three more times) - Allstars even received supporting messages from some of the original artists they covered

The Strategy

The target audience: potential bookers of cover bands (for parties, weddings, festivals, birthdays etc.). This is a very broad audience, so we wanted to generate as much free publicity as possible. First: By tapping into the popularity of one of the biggest music platforms (Shazam) Second: By doing something that's never been done before. We went for the hacking-the-system approach and decided to fool Shazam.