hook'd
BRAND VOICE / ORIGINAL CONTENT / DIGITAL CAMPAIGN
Karaoke is great... minus the heckling, the Journey, and the sound of your own voice. Wouldn't it be better on your own terms?
Enter Hook'd: the social music app that turns the camera on your voice. Engineered by Princeton-based technology firm MuseAmi the iOS app marries the joy of karaoke with a pocket-sized recording studio. Real backing tracks and vocal effects replace tinny mics and bad midi covers, while a supportive community of peers ousts the traditional karaoke audience, a.k.a. a bunch of sloshed bar mates screaming "Freebird". Pretty cool, right?
Despite my deep fear of public singing, I helped build the Hook'd brand from the very beginning, owning all slogans, manifestos, original video campaigns and web copy. My small creative team had a big task: to create vibrant and engaging video and social campaigns to reach the elusive "Under 25" demographic.
A home run was necessary. Teens do not give second chances.
The launch campaign included:
- A series of digital spots featuring real kids (above), that were utilized as Youtube pre-roll and within other digital ad spaces.
- Strategic partnerships with our featured artists, as well as YouTube and Vine stars (influencers if you're into jargon)
- Putting our new users to work creating out of the box content for us. People submitted Hooks that were funny, sincere, and even a little weird.
- SXSW experiences, MTV Europe takeovers and user/artist collabs with top artists
The campaign was simple, direct, fun... and it worked. Hook'd launched with hundreds of thousands of downloads, an immediately engaged user base, and one very happy client. Our press included TeenVogue, Paste Magazine, The New York Times and international purveyor of cool, MTV.
To this day, Hook'd is one of my favorite projects. I can't even call it work, because the product and the demographic are every creative's dream.
