Warner Bros. Records Launches Latest Twist in Street Marketing & Mobile Media
BURBANK, CA, 13 Jun 06 - In a new strategy with broad implications for expanding record labels’ street marketing efforts, Warner Bros. Records has arranged for daily photo and video coverage of the 2006 Vans Warped Tour® to be captured and sent to the Buzznet community website in near-real time directly from camera phones. Select tour artists and staff will document the action using phones equipped with single-click photo upload technology from ShoZu.
The campaign will enable fans anywhere in the world to track both on-stage and behind-the-scenes activities as they happen at the 50-day musicfest, running from June 15 through August 13, at www.buzznet.com/warpedtour
Users with ShoZu-enabled phones can also have the latest images from the tour automatically sent to their handsets for on-the-road access by subscribing to ShoZu’s free new ZuCast service.
In addition, for the first time, fans will be able to interact directly with the artists as they travel by posting comments on the Buzznet site either from a PC or a ShoZu-equipped phone. Comments will be delivered almost instantly to the artist’s ShoZu-enabled handset. Performers also have the option to post a reply to the site from their phones, opening a mobile dialogue between band and fan.
Participating artists include punk-pop stalwart Less Than Jake, which has just released the new album “In With the Out Crowd” and was also last year’s #1 Vans Warped Tour merchandise seller; and rock quartet Armor For Sleep, whose most recent release was last year’s dark concept album “What To Do When You Are Dead.”
The ShoZu/Buzznet relationship we have formed for this year’s Vans Warped Tour is a fresh way to connect artists and fans on a grassroots level,” said Jeremy Welt, Vice President of New Media for Warner Bros. Records. “It takes advantage of all of the newest communications technologies, including camera phones, user-generated content and social networking. It’s as close to real-time as you can get. It’s available to users anywhere and on virtually any wireless network. And it’s mobile. This is where today’s fans live.”
The campaign marks the latest entertainment industry collaboration for ShoZu, a provider of interactive media solutions enabling fast and easy access to photo sharing communities, mobile blogs, videocasts, podcasts and other web content directly from users’ cellphones. ShoZu previously enabled mobile video blog coverage of the U.S. debut of Australia’s The Veronicas in New York in February as well as the SXSW music/film/interactive conference in Texas in March.
The free, downloadable ShoZu application enables users to share camera phone images with a wide range of online communities as well as receive photo and video “ZuCasts” on their handsets by subscription. Camera phone images can be shared more easily, quickly, less expensively and at higher resolution than any other alternative. Files are uploaded or downloaded invisibly in the background without the need to open a mobile phone browser, wait for pages to load, interrupt phone calls, start over in the event of a dropped connection, or sync to a PC.
ShoZu image-sharing services are currently available on 48 Symbian, Windows Mobile and Java handsets, more than any competitive service. Supported models are listed at www.shozu.com/portal/tour.do?operation=showhandsets
About ShoZu
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