Category: Ads

The Day Shazam Forgot

Alzheimer’s Research UK partners with Shazam and does something deliberately uncomfortable. It gives the app the symptoms of Alzheimer’s. You use Shazam as you normally would, but the experience starts to break in ways that mirror memory loss. It is a hard-hitting way to feel, in a small moment, what daily struggle can look like.

The insight behind the campaign is about who needs to be reached. Most people associate Alzheimer’s with late life, but the disease can affect people as young as 40. The post cites over 40,000 people under 65 living with dementia in the UK.

The point is education through friction

This does not try to persuade with claims or statistics alone. It turns education into a lived interaction. Shazam is familiar and fast. Making it unreliable becomes the message.

The real question is how to make a misunderstood condition felt in a way that stays with people after the interaction ends.

This is a strong use of product behaviour because the disruption teaches rather than distracts. The intent here is public education, not app utility.

Why the Shazam choice is strategic

Shazam already sits in a high-frequency behaviour loop. By behaviour loop, this means a repeated habit people perform in real-life moments with very little effort or planning. That makes it a powerful carrier for a message about everyday disruption, because it arrives inside everyday life rather than as a separate awareness film.

Extractable takeaway: If you want people to understand a condition that is easy to distance or abstract away, place the message inside a familiar action so the disruption explains the reality better than a claim alone.

In consumer-facing digital experiences, familiar habits are often the best place to make a hard message land because the contrast is felt immediately.

What to take from this if you build digital experiences

  • Simulate a small part of the experience, not just the outcome, when the condition itself is hard to explain.
  • Put the message inside a familiar behaviour, so the contrast is instantly felt.
  • Use disruption sparingly and intentionally, so the discomfort has a purpose and does not turn into irritation.

A few fast answers before you act

What is “The Day Shazam Forgot”?

A Shazam partnership campaign that simulates Alzheimer’s symptoms to give users a direct, hard-hitting insight into memory loss.

Who is the campaign trying to educate?

A younger audience that may assume Alzheimer’s only affects people in late life.

What key fact reframes the audience assumption?

The disease can affect people as young as 40. The post cites over 40,000 people under 65 living with dementia in the UK.

What is the core creative technique?

Turning a familiar app experience into a controlled failure state, so the message is felt rather than only read.

Why use Shazam instead of a separate awareness film?

Because Shazam already lives inside everyday moments, the disruption arrives where memory lapses would feel personally relevant rather than abstract.

Qantas Out Of Office Travelogue

Qantas, Australia’s national airline, wants a new way to inspire travel with an increasingly younger audience. Their answer is a smart twist on a familiar behaviour. The out-of-office email. Instead of the usual “I’m away” message, Qantas turns it into a personalised travelogue powered by the user’s Instagram photos.

The mechanism is simple and effective. Qantas’ research shows that tips from friends and colleagues are a major driver for choosing the next holiday. So the brand uses Instagram’s API to transform a mundane autoresponder into something people actually want to read. A short visual story of where you are, what you are doing, and why it might be worth visiting.

What elevates the idea is the commercial bridge. The email does not just inspire. It incentivises recipients to book flights directly from the out-of-office message. This is social proof plus direct response, built into a format people already accept as normal workplace etiquette. The business intent is clear. Convert social inspiration into attributable flight demand inside the same interaction.

As a result, users created over 10,000 Out of Office Travelogues. The activity generated 100 million media impressions worldwide for Qantas.

Why this works as modern email strategy

Most marketing emails fight for attention in an overcrowded inbox. This one arrives with a built-in reason to be opened and read. It is a message you expect when you email someone who is travelling.

Extractable takeaway: When a brand can place a commercial message inside a communication people already expect, the marketing feels useful before it feels promotional.

It also uses the strongest distribution channel many brands overlook. People’s real networks. When your colleague shares their trip, even passively via an autoresponder, it carries more credibility than a brand-led destination ad.

This is one of the smarter ways to turn routine email behaviour into demand generation because it adds commerce without breaking the social norm that makes the message welcome.

The real innovation is the data-to-story pipeline

At a tactical level, the campaign is “just” an API integration. In practice, it is a reusable pattern. Here, data-to-story pipeline means turning user-owned content and simple signals into a coherent, bookable story unit.

  • Pull customer-owned content from a platform they already use.
  • Convert it into a lightweight narrative unit that fits a communication norm.
  • Add a clear, transactional next step without breaking the tone.

If you can operationalise that pattern, you can treat email not as static creative, but as a dynamic surface where personal context becomes relevant storytelling. Because the story is generated from a person’s real context, it feels more relevant and more trustworthy than static promotional creative.

In travel and hospitality categories where peer recommendation shapes intent, that makes email a distribution surface, not just a notification channel.

The real question is how far a brand can turn trusted everyday communication into measurable distribution without damaging the trust that makes it work.

What to watch if you replicate this pattern

The moment you use personal photos and automated messaging, the trust layer matters.

  • Permissioning and transparency. Make it obvious what is being pulled and why.
  • Control. Users need an easy way to curate what appears.
  • Brand safety. You need guardrails so the travelogue stays on-message without becoming intrusive.

What to steal for email-powered demand generation

  • Hijack a legitimate email type. Out-of-office replies get opened because the recipient expects them.
  • Turn personal content into a controlled story unit. User photos feel authentic, but only work when users can curate the output.
  • Embed the commercial action inside the narrative. Inspiration and booking sit in the same interaction, so intent has no time to cool down.
  • Use networks as distribution, not “audiences”. Colleagues and friends are higher trust than any destination banner.

A few fast answers before you act

What is the Qantas Out of Office Travelogue?

A personalised out-of-office email reply powered by the user’s Instagram photos, designed to inspire travel and drive bookings.

Why is the out-of-office format such a good carrier?

It arrives with intent and legitimacy. People expect it, and it is naturally tied to travel.

What is the core growth loop?

One person travels. Their network sees the travelogue via everyday email behaviour. The recipient gets inspired, and is pushed toward booking directly from the message.

What has to be true for this to scale?

Users need clear permissioning, easy curation, and a direct booking path that feels like a natural next step rather than a hard sell.

What results does Qantas report?

Over 10,000 travelogues created and 100 million media impressions worldwide.

Coca-Cola: First Drinkable Advertising

You are looking at a Coke Zero ad on a billboard, on TV, in print, or even on radio. Instead of just watching it, you Shazam it. On your phone, Coke Zero appears to pour into a glass on-screen, and that moment converts into a free Coke Zero coupon you can redeem at select retail stores across the US.

The premise is blunt and smart. Many people think they know the taste of Coke Zero, but they actually do not. So Ogilvy & Mather creates a campaign where the quickest route from awareness to belief is not another claim. It is immediate trial.

How “drinkable” advertising is engineered

This execution turns Shazam into a universal call-to-action layer across media. Here, “drinkable” means the ad triggers a mobile pour moment that turns into a redeemable coupon for immediate trial.

  • Any channel can trigger the experience. Billboard. TV. Print. Radio.
  • The smartphone becomes the conversion surface. Visual payoff first, then the coupon.
  • The coupon bridges straight into retail. “Try it now” becomes a physical action, not a brand sentiment.

The important part is not the novelty of animation. It is the end-to-end path from message to product-in-hand, because the Shazam trigger and coupon make the next step unambiguous.

Why this works as shopper marketing, not just a stunt

The campaign is designed to reduce the classic friction points that kill trial. In performance-led shopper marketing, the fastest path from awareness to belief is reducing trial friction and making redemption immediate.

Extractable takeaway: If you want trial, design the interaction so it ends in redemption, not in more content.

  • No guessing what to do next. Shazam is the behaviour.
  • No abstract promise. The ad demonstrates “taste” by pushing you to the real thing.
  • No delayed gratification. The reward is immediate and concrete. A redeemable coupon.

It is experiential marketing that does not require a pop-up installation or a live event. The experience travels with the media buy.

This is shopper marketing done right. It treats media as the first step of redemption, not as a detour into “engagement.”

The real question is whether your media can trigger immediate trial without adding steps or new infrastructure.

Steal this: Shazam-to-trial loop

If you are trying to drive trial at scale, this is a reusable model.

  1. One trigger across channels. Create a single interaction that works across channels.
  2. Mobile as the conversion surface. Use mobile to make the experience feel personal and immediate.
  3. Redemption, not delay. Close the loop with a retail mechanic that is simple to redeem.

Do that well, and “engagement” stops being a vanity metric. It becomes a measurable bridge to purchase.

A few fast answers before you act

What makes this advertising “drinkable”?

Shazaming the ad triggers a mobile experience that ends in a free Coke Zero coupon. It is designed to turn exposure into real-world trial.

Why use Shazam in the first place?

It provides a consistent interaction across media formats, including channels where clickable links do not exist.

What business problem is this solving?

Driving immediate trial for a product where many people assume they already know the taste, but have not actually experienced it.

What is the key CX detail that makes it work?

A simple, familiar action. One step to trigger, then a clear reward that can be redeemed in-store.

How do you prove this is more than a stunt?

Measure Shazam activations and coupon redemptions, then compare trial impact against a similar media buy without the redemption mechanic.