For the 2018 iHeartRadio Music Festival in Las Vegas, the iHeartRadio social team wanted to explore the magic of Vegas and create mind-blowing and unforgettable moments that would drive an increase in social mentions and engagements.
To create magical moments that could only be found at the 2018 iHeartRadio Music Festival, the iHeartRadio social team first connected with magician and social influencer Julius Dein to plan an on-site activation. In what is known as the "iHeartRadio Social Stop," the iHeartRadio social team produced backstage segments featuring some of music's biggest artists and Julius. Musicians like Kelly Clarkson, Carrie Underwood and Brendon Urie from Panic! At The Disco were treated to unbelievable illusions and all of their reactions were captured by the iHeartRadio social team. These videos gave fans a behind-the-scenes look at all the action happening backstage at the Festival, and they generated national press attention.
To keep the Vegas magic theme going, iHeartRadio partnered with Guinness Book of World Records holder Tracy Lee Stum to develop a 3D chalk activation backstage at the Daytime Stage event on Saturday afternoon. Artists posed on what looked like a life-like deck of cards and interacted with KIIS-FM personality Jojo Wright for exclusive portraits and interviews that were shared across various social platforms. To get additional attendees involved, Tracy and the iHeartRadio team also created a 3D chalk mural for fans to pose on in the festival GA grounds. Fans could take a photo on the mural and post it using #iHeartDayStage for a chance to win tickets to the evening's show.
With a keen eye on social media trends, the iHeartRadio social team invited social phenomenon Baby Shark and their production company, Pinkfong, to perform at the Daytime Stage event. With Baby Shark selling out tours in Asia, the performance on the iHeartRadio Daytime Stage marked their USA debut and was featured on iHeartRadio's social media channels, iHeartRadio owned radio station social channels and was shared by viral outlets such as UNILAD.
In addition, iHeartRadio called on different influencers to help drive their social media success. iHeartRadio invited designer Katia Temkin to the event to create custom motion graphics for each of the performing artists. These graphics were shared across Instagram and provided as additional assets to artists. iHeartRadio also leaned on multiple YouTube influencers to create reaction videos to performances on the iHeartRadio main stage. Finally, iHeartRadio created custom iHeartRadio Music Festival GIPHY stickers to use as promotion across Instagram Stories and GIPHY Cam platforms, and added additional customization to artist and influencer Instagram Stories.
The iHeartRadio Music Festival was a two-day worldwide trending topic on Twitter, delivered 13 billion social media impressions, and produced over 20 million social media video views. The backstage magic videos with Julius Dein scored over 3 million video views and saw 221K unique engagements. The iHeartRadio custom gif package and Katia Temkin's custom motion graphics produced over 4.5 million views. Baby Shark's United States performance became a trending topic on Twitter in America. iHeartRadio's social strategy generated national press attention and over the Festival weekend, iHeartRadio social media mentions increased by 65%.
