The marketing campaign for the upcoming Grammy Awards includes a new mobile application that enables music fans to create and share their own visual musical experiences based on their favorite songs and photos.

The creative for the ?We Are Music? campaign features a musician or musical group and follows an element that builds and explodes to symbolize the emotion in the music. The mobile app enables users to create their own similar visual experiences for their favorite music.

?We are thinking of the app as a companion experience to the Web site, and the rest of the campaign,? said Ricardo Diaz, director of creative technology, TBWAChiatDay, Los Angeles. ?We want people to have this amazing musical experience wherever and whenever, as long as they have their device.

?Music is inherently social, so it was important to us that the mobile piece works both as a singular and as a group experience,? he said. ?It is a way for friends to share music and interact with each other in real life while also being connected.

An interactive, communal experience
In addition to the mobile app, the campaign includes an interactive microsite and print, outdoor, digital and TV ads. Grammy nominees Adele, Foo Fighters, Bon Iver, Bruno Mars, Paul McCartney, and Skrillex are featured in the campaign creative.

The Grammy Awards will air live on CBS on Sunday, Feb. 12.

The campaign was developed by The Recording Academy, which puts on the Grammy Award every year, and TBWAChiatDay Los Angeles.

Social media and mobile play an important role in the campaign as a way to allow fans to connect to the music they love in a visual way.

The Wearemusic.grammy.com Web site and the mobile app, which will launch soon, enable music fans to create and share their own visual musical experiences based on their favorite songs and photos.

With the We Are Music app, a user's photos and songs are transformed into an interactive, communal mobile experience. 

Once the app is loaded, the user will see a 3D rendition of the visuals from the We Are Music campaign creative exploding into particles and reconstituting itself.

A prompt directs users to select a song and photo. Using the top menu, users can select a song from their iTunes library, without ever leaving the app. The song immediately begins to play and the photo moves in time to the music, all the while exploding and reconstituting itself.

Users can open the bottom menu to select a photo from their gallery, or they can take a picture and watch that turn into particles and react to the music while the iPhone flash strobes to the beat.

Users can also connect with nearby friends via Bluetooth or WIFI, with one person controlling the music for everyone.

Every new song a user downloads and every new picture they take provides a new experience so the app stays fresh.

Pushing the boundaries
Last year was the first time the marketing campaign for the Grammys included a mobile app.

?It was more of a utilitarian app whereas this year?s is about the entertainment,? Mr. Diaz said.
The Recording Academy and TBWAChiatDay both learned a lot from that experience that they could apply to the development of this year?s app.

One of the biggest learnings was how long it takes to build a user base in mobile. They also discovered ways to create an app that offers a real-time and real-world experience.

This year?s app was designed to be a standalone piece of entertainment with the hope that it becomes evergreen and lives past the life of the show, so fans can interact with the Grammys all year long.

?This year we have a much better idea of how to use complimentary media drivers to build that base more efficiently and quickly,? Mr. Diaz said.

?We wanted to make it very easy for the user to engage,? he said. ?We also wanted to push the limits of the iPhone platform.?

Final Take
Chantal Tode is associate editor on Mobile Marketer, New York