Alexa, play Sonidos de Canarias

Alexa, play Sonidos de Canarias: Canaryfulness (2019)

Try it here (Alexa) 🇪🇸 Try it here (Alexa) 🇲🇽

🎯 Goal and client

Canaryfulness is a skill with a simple purpose: to offer relaxing music while bringing a tourist destination into people’s homes, adding everyday usefulness and value at home. The Alexa skill fits into the dreaming stage of the traveler’s customer journey. The Canary Islands slip into people’s homes through one of the most popular uses of this new home assistant technology: relaxing music.

We carried out this project in 2019 with DEC BBDO (now BBDO & Proximity Spain) for Promotur Turismo Canarias S.A.. The aim of this voice experience was to accompany the Canaryfulness promotional campaign on a new channel: conversation on smart speakers. The campaign launched on YouTube, Spotify and the web.

The Alexa skill was a finalist in The Chatbots Tourism Awards 2020, organized by SEGITUR and FITUR.

💬 Voice interaction

Start with “Alexa, pon sonidos de canarias” (“play Canary Islands sounds”) or “Ok Google, abre sonidos de canarias”. You’ll choose one of seven 45-minute pieces of music inspired by seven natural landscapes of the Canary Islands (Gran Canaria, La Gomera, Tenerife, Lanzarote, La Palma, Fuerteventura and El Hierro). The music was composed by Samuel Aguilar. You can choose the sounds of a stream, the ocean, the wind, waves and more. Each comes with a relaxing melody.

• To skip to the next track, call your assistant and say “siguiente” (“next”).
• To go back to the previous track: “anterior”.
• To find out what’s playing, call your assistant and say “pregunta a sonidos de Canarias qué está sonando” (“ask Sonidos de Canarias what’s playing”).
• You can stop the skill at any time by saying “para” (“stop”).
• To change track, call your assistant and say “abre sonidos de Canarias y pon otra canción” (“open Sonidos de Canarias and play another track”).
• Once you have a favorite, you can simply say “Alexa, pon alma pura en sonidos de Canarias” or “Alexa, abre sonidos de Canarias y pon brisa inspiradora” (track names).

🤖 Channel

Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant. A unique brand experience for devices without a screen (voice-first) and with a screen (multimodal).

🌍 Reach: languages and countries.

Available in every country that uses an assistant (Alexa or Google Assistant) in Spanish from Spain (es-ES) and Mexico (es-MX).

💻 Which technologies and libraries did we use?

Amazon Alexa features:

• AudioPlayer, Alexa’s native feature for playing audio longer than 4 minutes.

Google Assistant features:

• Media Responses, Google Actions’ native feature for playing audio longer than 4 minutes.

💎 How did we build this voice app?

We did the initial experience design together with DEC BBDO, working on the brand experience. The goal was to present the destination’s strengths naturally, through music and a conversation designed to optimize the user experience of voice interaction. The conversation design paid special attention to navigation (offering a few, very easy options), to weaving in information about the destination (balanced within the dialog) and to making the most of native features suited to the skill (such as whispering). This experience was then built in two formats: an Alexa skill and a Google Action.

🗓 Key dates

• 06/14/2019: Launch of the Canaryfulness campaign. Social media promotion and press release.
• 08/19/2019: Soft launch on Alexa, to improve the model that understands users (NLU).
• 11/26/2019: Soft launch on Google Assistant.
• 01/09/2020: Finalists in The Chatbots Tourism Awards 2020 at FITUR.

🔗 More information

• In the Spanish Amazon Alexa store, amazon.es.
• Press release, Turismo de Islas Canarias (06/14/2019) (in Spanish).
• The Chatbots Tourism Awards 2020 (in Spanish).