It's fiendishly brilliant - Shazam a Debenhams song and you'll see the John Lewis penguin
The pre-Christmas retail advertising war isn't just being played out in newspapers, on billboards and on TV.
The major players are taking the battle to some unlikely places – such as apps like Shazam.
For the uninitiated, that's an app that will listen to a piece of music and identify it for you with spookily-high levels of accuracy.
But Shazam can’t run on goodwill alone and has to run adverts – which is where the retail shenanigans begin.
When users Shazam Julie London's Fly Me to the Moon, as used by Marks & Spencer, and Paul McCartney and the Frog Chorus' We all Stand Together, from Debenhams' festive campaign, they also get to see an advert.
The advertiser? None other than John Lewis.
It’s fiendishly clever – TV viewers enjoy the tunes in the M&S and Debenhams adverts and turn to Shazam to find out what they are.
Before they know it, they've got the John Lewis penguin Monty staring at them on their smartphone and everything that has gone before is a distant memory.
Is there an opportunity for one of their rival retailers to pull the same trick against John Lewis?
No – if you Shazam Tom Odell's Real Love, you’ll also get the John Lewis penguin under your search result.
Maybe the other big retail names will learn from this and sharpen up their act next year in an attempt to beat John Lewis to the Shazam win.
