Interview with Josh Patridge (Shazam) about marketing, business, strategy and new products
At the MBLT 2017 conference, Mobio founder Alexey Pisarevsky interviewed Josh Partridge, Shazam Vice President for EMEA, Latin America and Canada.
Josh spoke about Shazam's strategy in the world, integration with Snapchat, Shazam Codes, as an alternative to QR codes, visual recognition of Shazam Visuam, Shazam AR images and many other things. In the video there are Russian subtitles, and under the cut, you can read the text transcript.
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In your presentation you told about Shazam for brands , this service is available in 50-60 countries. How do you deal with such geography? To sell brands, you need salespeople, field offices.
Well, we practice a couple of approaches. We have teams on the ground: offices in the USA, the UK, and recently we opened an office in Berlin. In other countries, we work through local partners. In Russia, for example, this is the company Brainrus. Their employees talk to media agencies, find out how brands can use Shazam's advertising opportunities, our technology and access to audiences.
What is the most popular advertising format brands?
We offer traditional banner advertising in our application. There is also Shazam Connect, a solution that allows you to use our recognition technology and use the “second screen” in the advertising message. Works in conjunction with advertising and content broadcast on TV. In addition, we recently launched image recognition (Visual Shazam), so now you can “shazamit” images.
( Advertising campaign with Coca-Cola , source: www.shazam.com )
An example of working in Russia is a recent collaboration with Nescafe , in which we set up the recognition of video performances of dancers who competed in a large reality dance show. Spectators could “shazamit” dances and receive additional information. The project lasted 10 weeks, during this time, viewers took advantage of features more than half a million times.
Advertising campaign with McDonads , source: www.shazam.com
In terms of brand sales, which countries are most important? Except the USA, of course.
We have users in 190 countries, working on such a vast geography is a difficult task for a small company. Therefore, we are active in about 45 of these markets. There is a good volume in North and South America, you can also talk about large markets in Europe: Great Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Spain. This is the foundation of our business. Russia is also of great importance to us.
By the way, an interesting fact about Russia: I started working at Shazam three years ago, and then Russia was not in the top 20 of our markets. But over the past year and a half, your country has entered the top 5.
In terms of audience size?
Yes, by the number of users.
But not by revenue, I think. This has not happened yet.
Yes you are right. First, users, then everything else. We have been actively working in Russia for a year now, and the results are very good. We really like the pace of development.
And how are things going in emerging markets? In Africa, for example.
Everything is very good in South Africa. In Africa, as you understand, the problem is the prevalence of smartphones. In South Africa, with this order, as well as in Nigeria. In other African countries, the situation is worse. But, obviously, we are interested in North Africa and the Middle East, we are actively working there.
Is it difficult to sell brand integration? As far as I understand, this is a long process, each integration is a separate project, right?
Good question. We have different advertising products, some of them, as you rightly noted, are separate projects, and their sale requires more time. But we also have ready-made solutions. That is, complex formats, and simple, "boxed". This allows us to start small and then offer more specialized solutions as our market presence grows.
I think we can quickly and simply solve two problems: to explain to the client what Shazam is and how our technologies can help him to establish contact with the consumer. Shazam is a link between music and a mobile device. Thanks to the technology of recognition of music and visual images, we give brands the opportunity to "get" into the mobile device of the consumer through their advertising on TV, in print media, packaging of products.
Do you plan to open new sales offices?
Of course! We opened an office in Germany this month, the team will meet there in April - June, so by the middle of the year this unit will begin full-fledged work. We plan to open offices in other countries. The point is that we need to grow responsibly, we are a small company, so we are always looking for profit. But expansion, of course, is our priority.
You recently announced a partnership with DanAds , a publisher platform that allows customers to purchase advertising on their own. Does this mean that soon in Shazam advertisers will buy their own advertising?
Now it's too early to talk about it. The DanAds deal was concluded in the context of our work with labels. Labels - Sony, Universal, Warner, some smaller record companies - love to promote new albums, singles. We give them access to this platform, where they customize their campaigns as they need, taking into account all the targeting criteria. So here we are talking more about our relationship with labels.
And what is for more traditional advertisers, say, application developers?
We are pleased to work with agencies, carry out "traditional" orders. In addition, we actively cooperate with advertising exchanges. That is, you can buy advertising in Shazam in any way convenient for the advertiser. Want - through the exchange, you want - through our sales offices.
And are you planning to launch a platform that allows application developers to buy advertising space from you?
Not now. At this stage, we focus on working with labels. Brands already have access to our advertising formats. The system you are talking about, it already seems to be, it is only implemented by programmatic platforms. At the same time, there are specific advertising formats that can only be bought directly from us.
Tell me, why is Shazam still no real competitors? What's the secret? Do you have a unique technology, or were you just the first in this market?
I think a couple of factors work here. First and foremost, of course, technology. We recognize faster and more accurately than anyone else.
And what, no one can do anything like that?
Exactly. We are leaders in the music recognition market. The second factor is the brand. The word Shazam is already often used as a verb, "shazamit", and people know what it means.
In general, a unique situation, plus technology, plus brand awareness and function. “Shazamit” and get the result - users already perceive this process as magic. All this together makes our application unique, so we are leaders in our field.
Why doesn't Shazam recognize the song if I sing it myself?
Shazam is "sharpened" for accuracy. We spend a lot of effort on technology development, database expansion. When the user "shazamit" song, he receives absolutely reliable information. Recognition of motives sung does not allow for such accuracy. In this matter, we prefer never to err and not to make assumptions like "it looks like you sang such a song."
People use Shazam because we give them reliable information. In my presentation, I mentioned the TV show Beat Shazam , which will soon begin in the United States. In this show, participants will try to guess the songs faster than our service. We like the idea. This show is a great way to strengthen our brand. At the same time, of course, the very emergence of an idea proves that the results we give out are incredibly accurate.
Do you plan to launch Beat Shazam in other countries?
In the US, the show goes on the Fox channel. Obviously, it would be great to launch the same show in other countries, but so far this is not a question. The show begins in the summer, the producers were the guys who did The Apprentice and Survivor. In particular, Mark Burnett. Perhaps in other countries we will also do something similar, but for now the show is being broadcast only in the USA.
Last December, you integrated with Snapchat. Can you share the first results?
While everything is at the initial stage, they were integrated only a few months ago. We have not actively promoted Shazam to Snapchat yet. But the results and without promotion are staggering. Specifically, I can’t say anything about numbers, but the function of music recognition on Snapchat has already been used a million times. (See how it works here )
And this is only the beginning, together with Snapchat in the future we can certainly do even more interesting things.
Are there plans to integrate with other applications?
Yes. We are now focusing on integration for Samsung Smart TV , which was announced at the SXSW conference. This year is our priority. Well, Snapchat is also a very big project. At the moment, there are no other plans, these two are still enough.
What do you think, why QR codes in the end did not become popular?
I believe this technology appeared prematurely. Five or six years ago, smartphones were not yet something trivial. In addition, in 2011-2012, the mobile application market was quite small, most users were limited to the browser on their mobile devices.
That is, both technologically and ideologically, the market was not ready; at that time people hadn’t "plunged into the mobile" with a head like today. Recently, by the way, we launched Shazam Codes ...
Yes, I just wanted to ask you what your codes are better for.
Here you can talk about two reasons. First, today, people use a smartphone as a universal device, connecting everything and everyone. It is important.
Secondly, before, nobody downloaded the QR code reader on your smartphone. We understand that no one wants to download the application in order to interact with the brand. And the Shazam codes will work because we already have a huge user base, they recognize the Shazam logo and know what our application does.
The bottom line: the habit, combined with the need to use smartphones and the audience that has already been gathered, results in a scalable solution that can be useful to brands.
(Shazam Code, source: www.shazam.com )
Content recognized by Shazam can be created for free?
Shazam can read QR codes, but if we talk about Shazam codes, this is an advertising format, so brands pay for using it. In the future, things can change, of course. But at this stage, we are focusing on advertising.
Many customers bought ads in this format?
Yes! Before Shazam Codes, we launched Visual Shazam and started working with major brands. For example, in the US, we made 600 million bottles of cola recognizable. In addition to Shazam Codes and Visual Shazam, we did Shazam AR , so we are seriously investing in working with visual images.
We not only tell our users how they can use new functions, but also work with brands, explaining what advantages new technologies give them. Already today, large campaigns are being launched, soon there will be even more. In Russia, these formats will soon also be fully utilized. While I can not give you specifics, I can only say that the campaign is really large-scale.
And other platforms? You have an app for Apple Watch, iMessage. Where are you planning to go next? Maybe Facebook Messenger?
I said today, we are constantly looking for ways ... You know, if our users want to use Shazam to solve a particular problem and this requires a new technology, we strive to make this technology available to them. So we always consider something new.
You mentioned iMessage, it was one of our very first integrations. As well as the Apple Watch. We evaluate emerging technologies in the context of our business, decide whether the solution being created will be scalable and whether our users need it. If the idea seems good, we will implement it. At the moment, there is nothing on the horizon. But in the future something else will be, I am sure.
Does virtual reality attract you? Will Shazam work in VR?
We focus more on augmented reality, not VR. As I said, we recently launched a couple of large campaigns using AR, one in the US, the other in Australia. They use QR codes that open up access to augmented reality. A similar campaign will also start soon in Russia. So we are more involved in augmented reality, not virtual.
Can you remember your worst day at Shazam?
The fact is that we have no bad days at all. With our growth rates, investments, scaling. When I came to Shazam, my team consisted of one person. Today, there are much more people under my control, and we are entering new markets.
Everyone at Shazam adores their work. I’m certainly in love with her. So I have no bad days. There are difficult days, but not bad. And this is good. What are bad days at work, I remember from my previous experience. I worked at Yahoo for 6 years ...
Have you had bad days there?
Actually, no, bad days were before, because I worked in the field of finance for a long time. But, fortunately, I was lucky, I found a job at Yahoo and Shazam. I love what I do, and I think that I was very lucky.
Do you remember any decision or project that did not “shoot” at Shazam?
In our industry, it is important to make decisions quickly. We have a peculiar way of thinking: if something did not work, we can’t say that it is a failure. We must try, do it again, but better. This is the beauty of work in the field of mobile. Something tried - did not work - changed the strategy - got experience.
I don’t think we had failures at Shazam. Something turned out better, something worse, but we always learned. Mobile industry is wonderful because we have such an opportunity - constant movement forward, improvement. In more traditional industries, only the planning stage can take a couple of years, but here everything is completely different. We tried to do something, it did not work out, we gained experience that will allow us to do it better next time. This is a global difference. So we had no failures.
I think this will be the end. It was nice to chat.
Subscribe to our youtube channel to watch more interviews with mobile industry experts. For example, in the Mobio Talks playlist, you can watch interviews with Irina Shashkina (LinguaLeo), Max Donskikh (Game Insight) and Dmitry Navoshya (Sports.ru).
Josh spoke about Shazam's strategy in the world, integration with Snapchat, Shazam Codes, as an alternative to QR codes, visual recognition of Shazam Visuam, Shazam AR images and many other things. In the video there are Russian subtitles, and under the cut, you can read the text transcript.
')
In your presentation you told about Shazam for brands , this service is available in 50-60 countries. How do you deal with such geography? To sell brands, you need salespeople, field offices.
Well, we practice a couple of approaches. We have teams on the ground: offices in the USA, the UK, and recently we opened an office in Berlin. In other countries, we work through local partners. In Russia, for example, this is the company Brainrus. Their employees talk to media agencies, find out how brands can use Shazam's advertising opportunities, our technology and access to audiences.
What is the most popular advertising format brands?
We offer traditional banner advertising in our application. There is also Shazam Connect, a solution that allows you to use our recognition technology and use the “second screen” in the advertising message. Works in conjunction with advertising and content broadcast on TV. In addition, we recently launched image recognition (Visual Shazam), so now you can “shazamit” images.
( Advertising campaign with Coca-Cola , source: www.shazam.com )
An example of working in Russia is a recent collaboration with Nescafe , in which we set up the recognition of video performances of dancers who competed in a large reality dance show. Spectators could “shazamit” dances and receive additional information. The project lasted 10 weeks, during this time, viewers took advantage of features more than half a million times.
Advertising campaign with McDonads , source: www.shazam.com
In terms of brand sales, which countries are most important? Except the USA, of course.
We have users in 190 countries, working on such a vast geography is a difficult task for a small company. Therefore, we are active in about 45 of these markets. There is a good volume in North and South America, you can also talk about large markets in Europe: Great Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Spain. This is the foundation of our business. Russia is also of great importance to us.
By the way, an interesting fact about Russia: I started working at Shazam three years ago, and then Russia was not in the top 20 of our markets. But over the past year and a half, your country has entered the top 5.
In terms of audience size?
Yes, by the number of users.
But not by revenue, I think. This has not happened yet.
Yes you are right. First, users, then everything else. We have been actively working in Russia for a year now, and the results are very good. We really like the pace of development.
And how are things going in emerging markets? In Africa, for example.
Everything is very good in South Africa. In Africa, as you understand, the problem is the prevalence of smartphones. In South Africa, with this order, as well as in Nigeria. In other African countries, the situation is worse. But, obviously, we are interested in North Africa and the Middle East, we are actively working there.
Is it difficult to sell brand integration? As far as I understand, this is a long process, each integration is a separate project, right?
Good question. We have different advertising products, some of them, as you rightly noted, are separate projects, and their sale requires more time. But we also have ready-made solutions. That is, complex formats, and simple, "boxed". This allows us to start small and then offer more specialized solutions as our market presence grows.
I think we can quickly and simply solve two problems: to explain to the client what Shazam is and how our technologies can help him to establish contact with the consumer. Shazam is a link between music and a mobile device. Thanks to the technology of recognition of music and visual images, we give brands the opportunity to "get" into the mobile device of the consumer through their advertising on TV, in print media, packaging of products.
Do you plan to open new sales offices?
Of course! We opened an office in Germany this month, the team will meet there in April - June, so by the middle of the year this unit will begin full-fledged work. We plan to open offices in other countries. The point is that we need to grow responsibly, we are a small company, so we are always looking for profit. But expansion, of course, is our priority.
You recently announced a partnership with DanAds , a publisher platform that allows customers to purchase advertising on their own. Does this mean that soon in Shazam advertisers will buy their own advertising?
Now it's too early to talk about it. The DanAds deal was concluded in the context of our work with labels. Labels - Sony, Universal, Warner, some smaller record companies - love to promote new albums, singles. We give them access to this platform, where they customize their campaigns as they need, taking into account all the targeting criteria. So here we are talking more about our relationship with labels.
And what is for more traditional advertisers, say, application developers?
We are pleased to work with agencies, carry out "traditional" orders. In addition, we actively cooperate with advertising exchanges. That is, you can buy advertising in Shazam in any way convenient for the advertiser. Want - through the exchange, you want - through our sales offices.
And are you planning to launch a platform that allows application developers to buy advertising space from you?
Not now. At this stage, we focus on working with labels. Brands already have access to our advertising formats. The system you are talking about, it already seems to be, it is only implemented by programmatic platforms. At the same time, there are specific advertising formats that can only be bought directly from us.
Tell me, why is Shazam still no real competitors? What's the secret? Do you have a unique technology, or were you just the first in this market?
I think a couple of factors work here. First and foremost, of course, technology. We recognize faster and more accurately than anyone else.
And what, no one can do anything like that?
Exactly. We are leaders in the music recognition market. The second factor is the brand. The word Shazam is already often used as a verb, "shazamit", and people know what it means.
In general, a unique situation, plus technology, plus brand awareness and function. “Shazamit” and get the result - users already perceive this process as magic. All this together makes our application unique, so we are leaders in our field.
Why doesn't Shazam recognize the song if I sing it myself?
Shazam is "sharpened" for accuracy. We spend a lot of effort on technology development, database expansion. When the user "shazamit" song, he receives absolutely reliable information. Recognition of motives sung does not allow for such accuracy. In this matter, we prefer never to err and not to make assumptions like "it looks like you sang such a song."
People use Shazam because we give them reliable information. In my presentation, I mentioned the TV show Beat Shazam , which will soon begin in the United States. In this show, participants will try to guess the songs faster than our service. We like the idea. This show is a great way to strengthen our brand. At the same time, of course, the very emergence of an idea proves that the results we give out are incredibly accurate.
Do you plan to launch Beat Shazam in other countries?
In the US, the show goes on the Fox channel. Obviously, it would be great to launch the same show in other countries, but so far this is not a question. The show begins in the summer, the producers were the guys who did The Apprentice and Survivor. In particular, Mark Burnett. Perhaps in other countries we will also do something similar, but for now the show is being broadcast only in the USA.
Last December, you integrated with Snapchat. Can you share the first results?
While everything is at the initial stage, they were integrated only a few months ago. We have not actively promoted Shazam to Snapchat yet. But the results and without promotion are staggering. Specifically, I can’t say anything about numbers, but the function of music recognition on Snapchat has already been used a million times. (See how it works here )
And this is only the beginning, together with Snapchat in the future we can certainly do even more interesting things.
Are there plans to integrate with other applications?
Yes. We are now focusing on integration for Samsung Smart TV , which was announced at the SXSW conference. This year is our priority. Well, Snapchat is also a very big project. At the moment, there are no other plans, these two are still enough.
What do you think, why QR codes in the end did not become popular?
I believe this technology appeared prematurely. Five or six years ago, smartphones were not yet something trivial. In addition, in 2011-2012, the mobile application market was quite small, most users were limited to the browser on their mobile devices.
That is, both technologically and ideologically, the market was not ready; at that time people hadn’t "plunged into the mobile" with a head like today. Recently, by the way, we launched Shazam Codes ...
Yes, I just wanted to ask you what your codes are better for.
Here you can talk about two reasons. First, today, people use a smartphone as a universal device, connecting everything and everyone. It is important.
Secondly, before, nobody downloaded the QR code reader on your smartphone. We understand that no one wants to download the application in order to interact with the brand. And the Shazam codes will work because we already have a huge user base, they recognize the Shazam logo and know what our application does.
The bottom line: the habit, combined with the need to use smartphones and the audience that has already been gathered, results in a scalable solution that can be useful to brands.
(Shazam Code, source: www.shazam.com )
Content recognized by Shazam can be created for free?
Shazam can read QR codes, but if we talk about Shazam codes, this is an advertising format, so brands pay for using it. In the future, things can change, of course. But at this stage, we are focusing on advertising.
Many customers bought ads in this format?
Yes! Before Shazam Codes, we launched Visual Shazam and started working with major brands. For example, in the US, we made 600 million bottles of cola recognizable. In addition to Shazam Codes and Visual Shazam, we did Shazam AR , so we are seriously investing in working with visual images.
We not only tell our users how they can use new functions, but also work with brands, explaining what advantages new technologies give them. Already today, large campaigns are being launched, soon there will be even more. In Russia, these formats will soon also be fully utilized. While I can not give you specifics, I can only say that the campaign is really large-scale.
And other platforms? You have an app for Apple Watch, iMessage. Where are you planning to go next? Maybe Facebook Messenger?
I said today, we are constantly looking for ways ... You know, if our users want to use Shazam to solve a particular problem and this requires a new technology, we strive to make this technology available to them. So we always consider something new.
You mentioned iMessage, it was one of our very first integrations. As well as the Apple Watch. We evaluate emerging technologies in the context of our business, decide whether the solution being created will be scalable and whether our users need it. If the idea seems good, we will implement it. At the moment, there is nothing on the horizon. But in the future something else will be, I am sure.
Does virtual reality attract you? Will Shazam work in VR?
We focus more on augmented reality, not VR. As I said, we recently launched a couple of large campaigns using AR, one in the US, the other in Australia. They use QR codes that open up access to augmented reality. A similar campaign will also start soon in Russia. So we are more involved in augmented reality, not virtual.
Can you remember your worst day at Shazam?
The fact is that we have no bad days at all. With our growth rates, investments, scaling. When I came to Shazam, my team consisted of one person. Today, there are much more people under my control, and we are entering new markets.
Everyone at Shazam adores their work. I’m certainly in love with her. So I have no bad days. There are difficult days, but not bad. And this is good. What are bad days at work, I remember from my previous experience. I worked at Yahoo for 6 years ...
Have you had bad days there?
Actually, no, bad days were before, because I worked in the field of finance for a long time. But, fortunately, I was lucky, I found a job at Yahoo and Shazam. I love what I do, and I think that I was very lucky.
Do you remember any decision or project that did not “shoot” at Shazam?
In our industry, it is important to make decisions quickly. We have a peculiar way of thinking: if something did not work, we can’t say that it is a failure. We must try, do it again, but better. This is the beauty of work in the field of mobile. Something tried - did not work - changed the strategy - got experience.
I don’t think we had failures at Shazam. Something turned out better, something worse, but we always learned. Mobile industry is wonderful because we have such an opportunity - constant movement forward, improvement. In more traditional industries, only the planning stage can take a couple of years, but here everything is completely different. We tried to do something, it did not work out, we gained experience that will allow us to do it better next time. This is a global difference. So we had no failures.
I think this will be the end. It was nice to chat.
Subscribe to our youtube channel to watch more interviews with mobile industry experts. For example, in the Mobio Talks playlist, you can watch interviews with Irina Shashkina (LinguaLeo), Max Donskikh (Game Insight) and Dmitry Navoshya (Sports.ru).
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/330432/
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