The Campaign

Daniel represents every child who has been silenced through technology. To help Daniel and many other children to speak up, we turned to what once silenced them. Technology against technology. The Shazam app can recognise almost any sound in the world. Even high frequencies none of us can hear. By projecting inaudible sound waves we made technology give silence a voice hence Daniel speaking up. In collaboration with the Shazam app, we created an inaudible soundtrack to give silence a voice. After embedding this soundtrack on in out-of-home billboards, people managed to unmute Daniel and listen to his cyberbullying experience right then and there on the Shazam app microsite. Aside from the victim’s experience, people could also listen to the bully and the bystander’s point of view, learning how to spot on the signs and how to unmute other children.

Creative Execution

We made use of digital screens that projects a sound with a frequency inaudible to the human ears, also displaying a message from Daniel that encourages people to open the Shazam app on their smartphones to detect the sound and recognize the silence via an ultra-sonic watermark. Once the sound has been detected by the Shazam app, it links to a microsite, which shares the experiences from the perspective of Daniel, the victim, as well as of the bully and bystander. These are based on actual cyberbullying cases in Singapore. The microsite contained special advices on what one can do as the victim, parent or teacher. Media sites were strategically handpicked to bring Daniel to life and raise awareness around the issue of cyberbullying. The media installations were exhibited at Clear Channel’s bus shelters, DECK art space, as well as at Republic Polytechnic and Dover Court International School.

- Unmute Daniel has been exhibited at Republic Polytechnic, at Dover Court International School and it is now a permanent exhibition at the DECK art space. - Aside from Southeast Asia, Daniel can already be heard in the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, Brazil, Denmark, France, Turkey, Ukraine, Portugal and Spain. Day by day, more public organizations are joining us in this fight against cyberbullying. - The campaign has evolved the Shazam app into a gateway for content discovery, using technology as a powerful tool to unmute bullying, replacing silence and fear with awareness and hope.

This integrated campaign utilises technology to communicate with its target audience of youths and parents. The campaign character, Daniel, represents every child who has experienced cyberbullying. Daniel sends a message in frequency none of us can hear. Recognised by Shazam app and the Sound Watermark technology. When the message is read by Shazam, the application becomes a powerful tool against cyberbullying helping Daniel to speak up. Shazam, the app synonymous with music discovery has evolved to become a powerful gateway for content discovery, recognising silence via an ultrasonic watermark playing from Out-Of-Home installations. It has been downloaded over 1 billion times, in over 190 countries, and users usually ‘Shazam’ over 20 million times a day.