Last week, I took the kids to see Daddy’s Home, with Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg.
During the pre-previews (the drivel that they show you before they actually show upcoming movie previews), there was an ad with a Shazam logo in the bottom left corner of the screen.
For those of you familiar with Shazam, you know to whip out our phone and open the Shazam app whenever you see that logo.
Usually, when you Shazam, you’ll get details about a particular song.
Can’t remember the name of that song on the radio? Shazam it.
Forgot which label released this song by your favorite artist? Shazam it.
Unable to recall the name of the artist pumping out of the store’s speakers? Shazam it.
You get my drift.
If you need to identify a song, Shazam was the app for you.
Although not quite as ubiquitous as “Xerox”, the term “Shazam” has essentially become synonymous with music identification.
But sitting in the theater, Shazam was prompting me to open it up and get details for some innocuous promotion or another.
You can imagine my amazement being asked to Shazam for non-music identification purposes.
Please try to contain your excitement, I’m not done.
And this was not the first time that I was asked to Shazam for a non-music discovery end.
The last time was during some weekend football preview show a few weeks ago.
The show segment was brought by Coke Zero and during the segment the Shazam logo appeared on screen as the sports casters talked about Coke.
The gist of their banter was that I could get a free Coke if I Shazamed before the segment ended.
Not to miss out on an opportunity to get some free shit, I did and got this.
Shazam was on some straight promotions shit!
Now, if you’ve ever used Shazam, you know that they’ve got ads a plenty.
No big deal.
Shazam a song and you’ll get back a result plus a bunch of music-related ads from Pandora, Rhapsody or iTunes.
Scroll further down the page, and the ads become less music-related and now you’re just being marketed at.
Usually, these ads are a minor nuisance – an ancillary element of the result that’s being returned.
So it’s not totally unheard of that Coke Zero was leveraging it for promotional purposes.
But what made it unique was that it was only returning the Coke Zero ad and no music.
Seeing it again at the movies reinforced the fact that Shazam is looking to expand it’s utility beyond music identification into marketing and advertising.
Personally, I think it’s a smart move.
We live in an era where folks routinely rock and use multiple devices simultaneously.
We watch TV while tweeting.
We surf the internet while shopping.
Folks are already used to Shazaming to get song info.
Why not Shazam to get a free Coke, or enter a sweepstake, or even schedule a test drive while we’re at it?
The possibilities are limitless.
I’m curious to see where else that Shazam logo is going to show up.
Have you seen a noteworthy implementation of Shazam recently? Feel free to share in the comments below.
Stephen Chukumba 