When fans hear the opening notes of “Unwritten” by Natasha Bedingfield, they’re immediately taken back to Lauren Conrad driving down the PCH in her convertible, starting her new chapter on The Hills. Heading into MTV reboot The Hills: New Beginnings, our main objective was to hit fans with a big case of nostalgia, and what better way to accomplish this than tap into the song and artist that so fiercely defines this show/decade.
Simply re-introducing fans to the song wasn’t enough. Our strategy was to create experiences that fully transported them back to these iconic opening credits and immersed them in all the feels that this song produced. We knew that in order to bring this magical song back into the cultural zeitgeist, we needed its creator, Natasha, to join in on the ride. With her help, we aimed at providing unique experiences around a familiar feeling.
We built three custom activations around “Unwritten” and Natasha Bedingfield. First, we partnered with Natasha and popular karaoke App, Smule, to offer fans around the globe the opportunity to record a virtual duet with Natasha. Next, we brought Natasha and the cast of The Hills: New Beginnings to surprise and delight fans with an Unwritten singalong inside the elevators of MTV. Finally, we gave fans the ultimate opportunity...to be featured in their very own version of The Hills: New Beginnings opening credits featuring (obviously) Unwritten.
Smule Activation: We’ve seen over 550K in-app engagements from our Smule partnership, with 40K users singing “Unwritten.” Of those, 25K have been duets with Natasha Bedingfield. “Unwritten” has been listened to 360K times in the Smule app since launch in June!
TRLevator: We had just under half a million views on this package across The Hills owned social accounts. In addition, Natasha and the cast of THNB promoted on their own social pages.
Opening Credits Generator: Since this activation’s launch we’ve had 25K submissions on our dedicated site.
