Making the love happen on Pandora
For the past 5 months, I have been working with a team of secret agents at Pandora to help me create one of the most unique marriage proposals ever.
Concept
My girlfriend and I have been together almost 6 years, so I figured it’s about time to get the ball rolling. I feel I’m a pretty creative person, so I wanted to do something really unique. I saw that guy propose through Portal and the one with the internet memes, and I knew I had to do something along those lines, but meaning something important to the both of us. Then bam, she goes out and buys a new Hyundai Veloster with the Pandora app built in… what a genius idea. I fired off a general support request to Pandora to see if it was possible, and what an overwhelming response of help did they want to offer.
Process
I started to work with the team at Pandora and they told me this has never been done before, so they would be more than happy to help… that’s when I knew this was going to be it. After working with the creative and technical teams to figure out the best medium, getting passed to their audio advertising team to get a script together and recorded by an awesome voice actress, and once it was finalized it went back to ad trafficking to test out my ad and see if it worked. Of course, it worked out perfectly. (Throughout this whole process, I had to lock down my email account and step out for “unexpected” phone calls a lot - luckily I’m a planning ninja.)
The Day
A week prior to this point, I still hadn’t figured out “when” to do it. I was graduating from college from the University of North Texas, projects and finals were due, and she had to go out of town the weekend before. My mom kept calling me and asking if I was going to have a graduation dinner after graduating, and what family would be there… That’s it! I’ll do it graduation night! I picked up the ring from the jeweler and had my best friend set up the ad credentials while I walked the stage.
The Moment
After leaving my graduation, we headed towards Lewisville from Denton to go to the restaurant. I picked this particular restaurant because it was the perfect distance and time away so I can have the right number of songs play before my ad came up. I told her I made a “Midnight City” by M83 station and I wanted her to hear some of the songs that played on it. I started counting the number of songs that played in my head as we got closer to the restaurant. Right when I got on the service road, the ad fired off. I was the most calm and collected person up until that point. My knees became shaky, my voice felt weak, and I had forgotten everything I thought I was going to say. She heard her name, and then heard it again, and she started picking up things in the car because she thought I was playing a joke on her… then she realized that this was actually happening and she just looked at me in awe with a smile on her face. When the ad ended with a pause I said, “I know this isn’t the most traditional proposal, but Maggie, will you marry me?”
Of course, she said “yes” and was still in a bit of a shock. We pulled into the restaurant and walked in to find both of our families sitting there already knowing the news, waiting to congratulate the both of us. I am pleased to say, Maggie had no idea how I was proposing and she said she couldn’t have been more surprised and it couldn’t have been executed any more perfectly. You can listen to the original audio ad in my other posting.
Even though we just got engaged, Maggie had been planning our wedding for a while and now she’s finally putting it all down on paper. We have a date of June 13th (which is our current anniversary), but we’re still figuring out the year. That will be all in good time though.
I would just like to thank the entire Pandora team and every single person who worked on it to make it such an incredible night in such a unique way. First live streaming radio proposal? I think so. I’m glad that we kicked off our relationship in such a fresh and modern way, and Pandora helped us make that happen.
