L'observatoire Data & Créativité by iligo

Make It Metal

Sony music was about to launch a new album of CROSSFAITH, a heavy metal band from Osaka. Hundreds of heavy metal albums being launched each year around the world, Sony wanted to sell this album in an innovative way.
As most of the band’s target audience spend a considerable time online, Sony decided to engage this community with an authentic, personalized and digital experience.

The insight was to leverage what metal fans love doing most, head-banging. So, the album’s first single DIAVOLOS will be give away, but it needed to be earned by doing head-banging.
Fans have to headbang in front of their webcam to unlock a live-stream of a new four-minute track for as long as they sustained their headbanging. Further rewards included personalised artwork of their headbanging efforts generated from the image tracking algorithm and imperative animated visuals.

With a thorough analysis of how people headbang based on a sample of 50 metal fans, the team was able to study velocity, angles and movements.
The consistent parameters were further used to adjust the motion detection so when accessing the site, fans could headbang naturally, meaning at a 45-degree angle and 30km/h.
The algorithm behind the website kept a record of total headbanging movements, which were rewarded in three different levels. With the parameters ranging from 600 – 700, 700 – 800, and above 800. The data was then fed into Optical Flow, a motion tracking program that reacts to color and brightness.

Within the first few hours of the online launch, more than 20 thousand fans engaged with the microsite across 114 countries. This resulted in 80% increase in projected sales, and sold out shows across CROSSFAITH’s tour.