Composing your life

Background

A regularly updated database is the key to a successful loyalty program but trying to get people to surrender information about themselves is increasingly difficult. They don’t want to fill in questionnaires and they don’t want to give out their email addresses. But that’s what Audi wanted. Information, freely given.

The task was to try to show that the data people provided would be used for more than simply trying to sell them more stuff.

To boost the action’s effectiveness it was decided to be sent on a key day for CRM: the client’s birthday, turning it into the brand’s birthday greetings message.

Idea

It was decided that the campaign should start on the Audi customer’s birthday, one piece of information that was already logged in the system.

They were mailed what appeared to be a birthday card containing a CD sleeve with a blank CD inside. They were invited to go online and create the musical soundtrack to their life and then record it on the disc provided.

Each piece of information the recipients gave about themselves was transposed into a musical note. So details about their hobbies, address, the cars they drove were all given a musical value.

Because every visitor to the site had unique data, every music track was unique as well, composed specifically from the information provided.

Audi’s birthday present to the customer, then, was the soundtrack of their life to date.

Having composed their music (and the more information that was provided, the richer the track), visitors could have their music e-mailed to them if they submitted their email details or they could opt to have random images attached to it before downloading the video.

Alternatively they could upload it to Facebook to share their music with their friends.

Results

200,000 individuals were invited to update their data and 76,000 opted to do so. In other words, there was a 38% positive response to the mailing and 15,540 email addresses were captured.

85% of those who responded downloaded their personalized music track and 27% of that group posted their melody up on Facebook.

Our Thoughts

This campaign was sent to us earlier in the year and we couldn’t quite fathom it out until Duncan Gray, Worldwide Creative Leader of Proximity, took it upon himself to tell us. So, if we are publishing this when it is no longer hot off the press, as it were, that’s our fault. But it is still worth sharing because it is so ingenious, the way it gives value back for the information received.

I would urge Eva Santos, next time she has a campaign as brilliant as this, to get someone from Proximity London to write up the awards submission form. I am sure that often Spanish-speaking agencies don’t do as well as they could at international awards festivals simply because their submissions are not written as lucidly as they might be. This is worth Gold at any show but in a couple of instances has had to settle for Silvers.