A marketing tool for Facebook Messenger focusing on the music industry, taking advantage of dwindling email marketing by reaching fans through direct messaging apps.

Marketing teams in the music industry have grappled with a yearly decrease of 10% in email sign-ups over the past five years and an alarming 3% social organic reach. Moreover, the younger demographic, especially 50% of individuals aged 11-18, prefer messaging over email, which is popular with just 4% of this group. This shift in user preference presented an opportunity for a more direct, app-based marketing approach.

Collaborating with clients and stakeholders at Universal Music Group & Sony Music UK allowed us to intimately understand our core user: the marketing teams of top record labels. Proximity to users facilitated a seamless understanding of their challenges through regular calls, visits, interviews, and workshops, thereby crafting practical problem statements.

With a lean, user-centric approach, we prioritized authentic user needs from actual data, resulting in documents such as personas and "how might we" statements. These needs informed our roadmap, bolstered by research, user stories, and success metrics. This essential documentation streamlined the project, keeping the team focused on attainable goals while offering users a glimpse into future updates.

Our small team effectively prioritized high-value, low-effort tasks, consistently delivering value. We evaluated requirements collectively, addressing technical limits and brainstorming ideas. This led to sketches, journeys, and low-fidelity prototypes, with key figures from UMG and Sony often participating in the workshops to explore new concepts.

Designs underwent usability and viability testing, with validated work backed by functional specs that avoid development confusion. Final concepts, aligned with our style guide, transitioned into visual design. Post-release, solutions were monitored and compared against predefined success metrics.

Talkbe empowered Universal Music Group to create custom chatbots for top artists, reaching a new audience. The UMG marketing team achieved a 75% read rate and a 25% click-through rate, significantly higher than email's 17% / 3%. Additionally, Detonate festival sold out 2400% faster.