|
The Bay:
|
The Bay is using popular audio scanning mobile app Shazam to drive listeners to the retailer’s website in a new national radio campaign.
From now until Christmas, Bonnie Brooks, president and CEO of the HBC-owned retail chain (and its long-serving radio spokesperson), is promoting the store’s one-day Bay Day sales with 30-second radio commercials – a different ad running each day for each sale.
Listeners who have the Shazam mobile app active when the spots air are taken to that particular item on the Bay’s mobile website.
The app recognizes special codes embedded into each radio spot, which are produced by Pirate Radio in Toronto.
After casual conversations with the Shazam team in Canada, it became clear that the special codes can “be embedded in really any audio file,” said Patrick Dickinson, senior vice-president of marketing at The Bay.
|
The Bay:
|
The campaign will run until Christmas Eve with The Bay promoting the Shazam tie-in with daily newspaper ads across the country.
According to Dickinson, the app is a way for the retailer to connect with younger shoppers.
“Because we are attracting a younger audience, we have younger merchandise in the store, we have contemporary brands now, and this is a great way to get to that consumer, get to that type of audience and connect with them,” said Dickinson.
“It seemed like the one-day sales, where we have a different ad going out every single day, would be a great example of how to make this work, so we gave it a shot,” he added.
At the end of the campaign, Shazam will provide The Bay with a report on “how many people are tagging it [and] how many unique people are utilizing the service by individual spot,” said Dickinson. “We put that data together with our own data – how many unique visitors we get to the web and what our conversion rates are – and it gives us a leg up in terms of evaluating this as a new media and to determine how best to proceed,” he said.
