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CETW11: ComQi says 'Shazam!' to DOOH/mobile interactivity (Video)

ComQi has come out with an audio-based alternative to cumbersome QR codes, based on the popular Shazam app.

November 10, 2011 by Christopher Hall

Digital signage solutions firm ComQi made perhaps the most intriguing announcement at the year's fall CETW expo with its partnership with the Shazam mobile app. Shazam, previously used to recognize songs on the radio, can now be used to connect with brands and agencies by tagging audio from digital signage screens.

CETW, or Customer Engagement Technology World, is a broad-spectrum consumer-engagement technology show held twice a year, in San Francisco in the Spring and New York City in the fall. ComQi demoed the app/partnership at the show earlier this week.

Stu Armstrong, ComQi's U.S. managing director, said Shazam is the fourth-most downloaded mobile app, putting it squarely behind such stalwarts as Facebook and Twitter and noted that fact means it is already on most consumers' smartphones. And the partnership between the two further marks the "mainstreaming" of digital signage.

But the new partnership is just part of ComQi's strategy to continue growing as a full-service marketing strategy partner for its clients, said Nathalie Garson, the company's director of marketing communications.

"ComQi believes that the future of digital signage is in multi-channel message management, in embracing these new ways of reaching consumers so the medium becomes both a one-to-many as well as a one-to-one medium," Garson said. "This will enable advertisers to, in addition or instead of a CPM basis, pay on a cost-per-activation basis, when consumers actually interact with the advertising."

To this end, the company has developed an interaction management platform that allows consumers to interact with digital signage in a number of ways, she said, and the first it is bringing to market is its partnership with Shazam.

Garson's comments also echoed sentiments expressed by several digital signage and digital out-of-home firms at CETW: that digital signage companies are working to become more de facto partners in understanding and acheiving clients' needs through whichever medium, rather than just serving as providers of hardware, software or even content.

While many digital signage experts decry the use of audio in most digital signs, the ability to embed an audio tag that will take customers to a brand's website or provide incentives is a significant announcement. (And some ComQi staffers quietly suggested that there was a workaround in the works that would eventually address that issue.)

See ComQi's video explaining the Shazam partnership below, and try tagging it with your phone's Shazam app:

Read more about digital signage/mobile interactivity.