‘Real’ music fans rewarded by Billboard magazine’s Fan Checker Machine

Ogilvy Brasil created an outdoor dispenser for Billboard Magazine on the corner of newstands in São Paulo, offering free copies to members of the public able to prove that they are ‘real’ fans of the artist on the cover. It appears that the campaign was over a few weeks, with a number of different cover artists shown in the video below:

People were invited to plug their iPhone into the ‘Fan Check Machine’, which would then analyse their music library. On the basis that fans of the artist would have loads of their songs on their phones, those with more than 20 songs were treated with a complimentary magazine and a message related to the artist – one of which being ‘Congrats! You have more songs by Joss Stone than her own mom’. (I wasn’t even aware Joss Stone had more than 20 songs).

Those with fewer than 20 songs had their loyalty questioned. The machine ‘responded’ to one person with ‘Are you really a fan of No Doubt? I doubt it’.

This type of engagement-reward installation (not dissimilar to the Coke Small World Machine posted up earlier in the week) seems to work well and the technology involved in this could very well apply to other brands – imagine extra levels for Angry Birds if you’ve already downloaded the game, or the opportunity to download a bonus track if you have an artist’s new album on your phone – but I would personally be a bit wary of plugging my phone into something when I don’t know what sort of access it has.

Involved agency: Ogilvy Brasil

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