Women’s Voices — A Product Marketing Story

This post is part of a series about the women behind ‘Women’s Voices’, an in-app story created by Deezer for International Women’s Day:

Part. 1: Women’s Voices — A Product Story
Part. 2: Women’s Voices — A Brand Story
Part. 3: Women’s Voices — A Data Story
Part. 4: Women’s Voices — A Product Design Story
Part. 5: Women’s Voices — A Product Marketing Story

My name is Camille Bonenfant and I have been a Product Marketing Manager for 3 years now at Deezer. I am the link between Product, Global Marketing (Social Media, Press Relations, CRM, Customer Support, etc.) and Local teams (local marketing directors and specialists in Deezer’s key markets). I ensure everything our product offers is well communicated, from showcasing new smart playlists to highlighting podcasts, to promoting the #MyDeezerYear experience, and much more. My day-to-day work consists in building marketing plans, helping brand teams create powerful stories, briefing Social Media and Press Relations teams, etc.

I was introduced to the soon-to-be ‘Women’s Voices’ project by Product Manager Aina after it was decided that Deezer would create a special experience for International Women’s Day. At that stage, we didn’t know what the in-app story would look like but we knew our objective was to raise awareness on where women stand in music, and give our users the power to change things. My role was first to accompany the Product teams in the creation of the story and provide them with marketing insights. Then, my main mission was to onboard the Brand, Local and Marketing teams in order to build a consistent marketing strategy, with a 360 approach. The idea was to speak about this project with one voice and one branding message on all our channels (e.g. emails, social media, PR, Deezer Community, etc.). I was also in charge of coordinating specific local needs and the creation of visuals, among other things. Lastly, as a Product Marketing Manager, I needed to make sure that the launch of the project was successful, to follow the various marketing metrics (e.g. the number of PR hits aka the number of articles that picked up the news, the engagement rate on social media, the stream rate after direct communication, feedback on Community, etc.), and to analyze the impact of our communication on product usage.

The main challenge I faced was the number of people involved. As the idea was to have a consistent 360 approach, more than 10 different teams were involved, and we had to make sure they were all on the same page at each step of the project. It was a great opportunity to test new, innovative media of communication though. For example, thanks to the help of the Growth and Customer Success teams, we created a Google Web Story, which is a format Google developed to reach wider audiences. We used it for non-Deezer users and journalists in particular in order to give them a glimpse of the experience and encourage them to download the app to discover the full story.

Among the many things I’ve learned from this experience is that we really are at an early stage in terms of women representation in the music industry. Although I suspected such a situation, I didn’t know that there were, for instance, only 3% of women in technical jobs (e.g. sound engineer, stage manager, lighting designer, etc.) in the music industry. On a brighter note, I was happy to discover that the first person to use autotune was a woman! Besides facts and figures, I have also learned a lot from the people I have been working with, may it be on SEO optimization for a blog post, or on diversity and inclusion, thanks to the internal initiatives our HR team put in place.

One of the things that I love about this project is the theme. Women representation in the music industry, and also in today’s society, is a hot topic, and a very important one for me. This project was the perfect opportunity for me to learn more about it and identify the Deezer data that clearly highlights the issue. For instance, my favorite part of the ‘Women’s Voices’ story is the card that reveals the genre that has the lowest representation of female artists (only 4%!) I think that, as a music and podcast streaming platform, it’s our responsibility to emphasize the challenges that minorities are facing in these industries, and to inform our users. We want them to become aware of the situation, and we wish to give them the tools to improve these numbers. In some way, I feel like we are doing our part for this international fight, by raising awareness and provoking debates on social media. Then it’s up to all of us as music listeners to change our habits (what artists we listen to or what content we share for example) and make a difference. The power is in our hands.

I also love the fact that all the teams at Deezer agreed that this shouldn’t be a one-day effort. In addition to the in-app experience, we are doing our best to make a lasting impact, for example through the launch of the ‘Women’s Voices’ collection that will stay in the product permanently (on both mobile and web). What I would love to see is a clear increase in favor of female artists in the share of streams in the long run. If we were to implement a similar experience next year, I would love to see that numbers have changed for the best. I also hope that we will achieve our goal to start the debate and create conversations about women behind music. Finally, and most importantly, I simply hope our users will learn something new thanks to our experience.

To conclude my take on ‘Women’s Voices’, I’ll say a few words about my favorite woman’s voice. It’s the one we don’t hear on the radio. It’s the one we hear on the streets — the unified voice of thousands of women chanting the same slogan. It’s the voice of my favorite singer but also the voice of my neighbor. It’s the voice of all those women who don’t know each other but trust each other for a better future, and know that we need role models in the various career paths that the music industry offers to inspire millions of emerging talents in new generations.

This post is the last part of a series of articles written by some of the women behind the ‘Women’s Voices’ project. You can find the links to the previous articles at the beginning of this post and on the blog’s homepage.

If this type of projects motivates you and you would like to help us make an impact, apply for one of our open positions!