MSN Music, Messenger and Sprite

I just caught this post at Principius which reveals a very interesting brand integration through the MSN Music site.

MSN Music has a new setion called “The Scenario” which includes polls and music recommended by Miles Thirst and a number of featured artists and they have also created a new channel on MSN Radio called “Thirst Radio”.

The team over at MSN have also put together a few things for MSN Messenger as part of the deal as well…of course they have the usual sort of stuff…backgrounds, user tiles and emoticons…but they have also created…“The Conversationator”. “The Conversationator” is an “activity” for MSN Messenger which allows you to send little audio grabs from Miles Thirst to your other buddies on MSN Messenger while IM’ing them…a little annoying, but its the first external marketing use of this sort of technology on Messenger we have seen. [principius]

As is noted later, the Agency (Ogilvy) is really not behind this at all, but rather it’s based on a deal that was struck by MSN (who built the experience) and Mediavest, the Media Agency for Sprite / Coke.

As a Mac user, I can only check parts of the site out, but I have to say it’s definitely cool. I don’t know how you would find the site – perhaps as simple as browsing the hip-hop section on MSN or spotlight content… It will be interesting to see whether it’s purely online, or whether there are additional placements which try to attract the youth market.