Mountain Dew and Billboard partnered to reach the Gen Z audience with an out-of-the-box, social-first content campaign that married the target consumer’s passions for hip-hop, gaming and live experiences. The resulting series, coined “Crowd Control” (also stylized as #MtnDewCrwdCntrl), celebrated the fans that “dare to do” by creating interactive, livestreamed concert experiences that rethought crowd participation in the live and social media environments by incentivizing fans to engage with their favorite artists in real-time.
The Crowd Control interactive livestreams were produced in conjunction with Billboard Hip-Hop Live, a new editorially curated concert series that furthered the magazine’s commitment to hip-hop culture, the genre’s brightest rising stars and their most passionate fans.
The series kicked off with Maryland native Rico Nasty who captivated her Long Beach crowd with hits from her sophomore album Anger Management. Weeks later, the show's second iteration was produced in Atlanta where Grammy-nominated rapper Gunna performed fan favorite tracks from his early mixtape days before hyping the audience with chart-topping hits like “Drip Too Hard” and “Baby Birkin” for his hometown crowd. #MtnDewCrwdCntrl returned to New York for a grand finale where Offset, one third of hip-hop supergroup the Migos, performed verses from his solo debut Father of 4 before he was joined on stage by his superstar wife Cardi B and their daughter Kulture for a family rendition of the hit single, “Clout.”
Each show featured Crowd Control breaks in the setlist where fans were given the opportunity to engage with the headlining artists whether they were in the venue or watching on their timelines:
- Social commentary was continuously integrated into the livestream via lower third graphics which incentivized further engagement from fans watching and waiting to see their names on-screen
- Fans sent messages and song requests to the artists by posting to Facebook or Twitter with the #MtnDewCrwdCntrl hashtag. During each Crowd Control break the artist responded to select messages before performing a fan-selected song
- Viewers cast their votes via a live twitter poll to determine the opening song of the night in the minutes leading up to the artist’s set
- Consumers who lived outside the series' host cities sent video testimonials explaining why they were the biggest fans of Rico Nasty, Gunna or Offset. The grand prize winners of each sweepstakes won fly away packages for two (inclusive of hotel and airfare) along with VIP access to the show while the runner-up’s participated in livestreamed video calls with the artists during breaks in their respective Billboard Hip-Hop Live performances.
- Online viewers used the #MtnDewCrwdCntrl hashtag to vote for their favorite audience outfits of the evening. The winner of the “Style Cam” competition and her friends then joined the performing artist on stage for the final song of his set before meeting him backstage during an exclusive meet and greet.
The series was hosted by journalist, TV personality and cultural commentator Brandon “Jinx” Jenkins who, alongside each performing artist, engaged with the in-venue and livestream viewers to ensure that both audiences understood the breadth of interactive elements throughout the show.
Across the board, the Crowd Control series outperformed Billboard branded content benchmarks and campaign KPIs:
- A robust distribution plan drove viewership of the Livestream and supplemental content like promotional graphics, hi-res photography, editorial features and sponsored episodes of Billboard News across Billboard, Mountain Dew and artist social handles. Holistically, the campaign delivered 49MM social impressions and 339K social engagements
- The cross-platform livestreams delivered 5.4MM social impressions (overdelivering by roughly 20%) and over 800K video views that far outpaced the Billboard benchmark of 30K views per livestream
- Alignment with top talent garnered press from more than 30 outlets including Billboard, VIBE, Complex, Uproxx, USA Today, People, MSN, AllHipHop, HotNewHipHop etc. The mass coverage resulted in over 1.9 billion press impressions
- The series was attended by more than 2000 consumers across the three markets while the original target was to host 300 attendees per show.
Video for Billboard x Mountain Dew: Crowd Control
