Featuring Alexa
Too Many T’s
Issue 48 | September 2018
Agency
SERVICEPLAN GROUP
Creative Team
Global Chief Creative Officer Alexander Schill Creative Innovation Director Lorenz Langgartner Creative Innovation Director Franz Roeppischer Art Director Saurabh Kakade Art Director Pedro Gropo
Production Team
Too Many T’s Standaloft, Leon Rhymes Music Supervisor Henan Wensink Artist / DJ / Producer/ independent Savage Henry Director Robin Karow
Date
March 2018
Background
Too Many T’s were an independent, DIY Hip Hop crew from South London, known for their lyrical skills, and creative music videos as well as live performances. Locally recognized, they wanted to make the next step towards a bigger audience, especially in the USA.
Self-signed, without the big promotional and industry connections of a major label, they had to rely on their creativity.
Idea
A common way of promoting an upcoming artist to a bigger audience was by “featuring”: inviting an already famous guest artist on a track, usually from the same label. TMT’s didn’t have these connections. Nevertheless they managed to get probably the most famous voice in the world to feature on one of their songs. Alexa.
The #1 AI voice assistant by Amazon, already present in 100 million homes around the world.
“Featuring Alexa” was the world’s first song sung with a bot. Because the band left voice openings in the song, it could be performed live anywhere there was an Alexa device.
The way it worked was by rapping voice commands then waiting for Alexa to answer.
The video ended by commanding Alexa to play the Too Many T’s song “South City Court”.
Results
More than 28 million contacts, generating $5m in free media.
More than 3 million views of the video on YouTube, Facebook and Instagram. Streaming data showed there were more than 500,000 live concerts in 37 countries – meaning 500,000 plays together with Alexa, leading to more than $3,000 from streaming revenue. And instead of suing the band, Amazon contacted Too Many T’s to offer promotional support.
Our Thoughts
I’d love to know how a London band came to work with a German ad agency. But I’m very glad they did. This is not going to be the last time a brand gets to involve Alexa in dialogue but to get her to sing, wow! It gave me the biggest laugh of the day.
The music industry was the first to get a pasting from the digital revolution but as it has picked itself up, it has been the musicians themselves rather than the labels that have had the ideas that have kept them all making money.
Perhaps the fact that Too Many T’s don’t have a label tells you everything.