Warner Music Group: Saylists
Warner Music Group and Apple Music sought an innovative solution to help young people overcome speech impediments. They aimed to leverage their extensive music catalogs and technological capabilities to transform tedious speech therapy repetition into an engaging, accessible experience for this audience.
Creative Idea
Popular music was algorithmically analyzed to turn tedious speech therapy into engaging sing-alongs.
Warner Music Group and Apple Music leveraged an algorithm to identify popular songs with therapeutic repetition patterns, curating "Saylists" on Apple Music where singing along transforms tedious speech therapy into an engaging, musical experience.
Creative Strategy Deconstructed
Company
Warner Music Group and Apple Music possessed the immense music catalog and data analysis capabilities to identify therapeutically valuable songs.
Category
Music streaming typically focuses on entertainment and discovery, but this campaign introduced a novel therapeutic application.
Customer
Young people with speech impediments found traditional repetition exercises tedious, seeking an engaging and enjoyable method for practice.
Culture
The pervasive cultural role of music, making repetitive tasks enjoyable, created a natural fit for therapeutic practice.
Company
Warner Music Group and Apple Music possessed the immense music catalog and data analysis capabilities to identify therapeutically valuable songs.
Category
Music streaming typically focuses on entertainment and discovery, but this campaign introduced a novel therapeutic application.
Strategy:
Leverage entertainment platforms to transform tedious therapeutic exercises into engaging, accessible experiences.
Customer
Young people with speech impediments found traditional repetition exercises tedious, seeking an engaging and enjoyable method for practice.
Culture
The pervasive cultural role of music, making repetitive tasks enjoyable, created a natural fit for therapeutic practice.
Strategy:
Leverage entertainment platforms to transform tedious therapeutic exercises into engaging, accessible experiences.
Results
In just 1 week, the campaign garnered 42 million views. It achieved €150 million in earned media. The media spend was €0. The campaign was praised as "Apple's next great invention" by El Mundo and "recommended for use in classrooms by Cambridge University". Various media outlets including BBC, Forbes, The Telegraph, Yahoo! News, ITV, Adweek, The Drum, Fox News Channel, Daily Mail, The Irish Times, and MacRumors covered the campaign, with Record of the Day also featuring it. Warner Music Group and Apple Music collaborated on the initiative.
42 million
views in 1 week
€150 million
earned media
€0
media spend
Strategy Technique
Build an Utility, Not an Ad
Instead of traditional advertising, the campaign developed a practical tool - Saylists - that genuinely helps young people overcome speech impediments through music.
Explore Technique
Creative Technique
Unexpected Utility
The campaign transformed popular music into a functional tool for speech therapy, providing an engaging and accessible method for young people to practice problem sounds.
Explore Technique
Craft Breakdown
This campaign's craft is exceptional primarily due to its groundbreaking idea that ingeniously leverages digital technology and music curation to address a critical social need, amplified by a brilliant media strategy.
The development and sophisticated application of an algorithm to analyze over 70 million music tracks for specific phonetic repetitions demonstrates exceptional digital craft, forming the technical backbone of the entire Saylists system.
The precise and purposeful curation of existing popular music into targeted playlists, based on their inherent phonetic value for speech therapy, showcases a deep understanding and innovative application of music as a therapeutic tool.
The campaign's magic truly comes from the seamless synergy between an ingenious idea, powered by advanced digital craft, expressed through the universal language of music, and strategically disseminated through exceptional media planning to achieve widespread impact.
