O2 & Emeli Sandé in £7m O2 Tracks marketing push

O2 has recruited the multi Brit award winner Emeli Sandé to be the face of its new music app O2 Tracks in a major new £7.3m through-the-line advertising campaign.

O2 Tracks, available now, brings the UK’s Official Singles Chart Top 40 direct to customers’ phones and reaffirms O2’s commitment to bringing a range of music experiences to its customers, following hot on the heels of O2’s Priority Ticketing activity with Michael Bublé and global megastar Beyoncé.

[library asset=5650]Emeli stars in a new television ad, directed by Ben Newman, which features her finishing a gig and travelling on the Tube to come face to face with a fan listening to her on O2 Tracks. The ad premiered on O2’s Facebook and Twitter channels on Wednesday 6th March, made its TV debut during Wednesday’s episode of ITV1’s new drama ‘Lightfield’ and can be viewed now at http://o2lin.kr/O2TracksAd.

“As a songwriter and music fan I’m always keen to find out what’s made the Top 40 every week,” said Emeli Sandé. “Never has there been such a diverse time for music and O2 Tracks is fantastic because it means I don’t have to do anything to keep up. All the latest entries are there on my phone so I can listen to them wherever I go. It’s a great way to discover new music!”

The campaign will also feature digital and mobile advertising, as well as interactive outdoor ads that let people interact with the Official Singles Chart and listen to 30 second previews of every single Top 40 track. O2 is also running major advertising on Twitter and Facebook, including a global first where more than 9m of Facebook’s mobile users saw O2 Tracks ads at the top of their newsfeed and could directly install the app.

Meanwhile, O2 has launched the search for the UK’s Ultimate Top 40 at www.o2.co.uk/tracks, a new site where users can vote for their favourite Top 40 track of all time. The site, which works seamlessly on mobiles, tablets and desktops, contains every song that has ever been in the Official Singles Chart – more than 22,000 – and lets users vote for and listen to samples of every chart song since 1952. The top ten most voted for tracks will then appear in the O2 Tracks app each week.

“O2 has a proud heritage in offering our customers brilliant music experiences and O2 Tracks forms a key part of this,” said Sally Cowdry, Consumer and Marketing Director for O2. “We’re thrilled to be working with Emeli to promote the app and continue our tradition of working with some of the world’s best artists.”

O2 Tracks makes keeping up with the latest music better value and easier than ever by automatically downloading chart updates overnight via Wi-Fi and storing the songs on the mobile. It brings together the best qualities of a streaming service (with the ability to access regularly-updated music) and the best of a mobile storage service (meaning customers can listen to music when they don’t have access to either a Wi-Fi or mobile network).

Official Charts Company Managing Director Martin Talbot says, “The UK’s Official Singles Chart was 60 years old last year and this exciting evolution for 2013 now enables music fans to carry the chart in their pockets, everywhere they go. O2’s brilliant new service promises to be the most high profile music subscription launch that the UK has ever seen.”

The app is available to download now on Apple’s App Store and Android’s Play Store and will be available for Blackberry and Windows Phone very soon. Customers on O2 get an eight week free trial and then pay £1 a week directly onto their bill for O2 Tracks while those on other UK networks have a two week trial and then £4.99 a month.

Chris Gorman, CEO of MusicQubed, O2’s mobile music partner said: “O2 Tracks is simple for customers to install, simple to update, simple to subscribe to and most of all simple to use. We are proud to help O2 bring mobile music to the masses for the first time anywhere in the world. With unlimited access to 60 of the UK’s most popular tracks, often before other music services, MusicQubed is excited about the potential for O2 Tracks to change the way people listen to music on their mobile phones.”

The campaign was created by VCCP and uses media booked by Zenith Optimedia.