Honda came to Billboard looking to increase the brand affinity of Honda Stage, the brand’s esteemed music program. To inspire a new generation of fans, Billboard identified musicians who have pursued their dreams with unwavering determination and created Honda Backstage short films with them. The latest features Grammy-nominated Nathy Peluso. Nathy’s story resonated because of her fierce professional determination. She left Argentina for Madrid to pursue her dream of being an artist, performing spoken word poetry on the street and working as a server to make money while she wrote music. She released her debut album Calambre in 2020 and earned a pair of Latin GRAMMY nominations that ignited explosive growth for the Argentine musician.
Our primary goal was to drive mass viewership and engagement with Honda Stage content by combining mass distribution with custom social moments. By transforming Honda Stage into a platform for original, cinematic documentary storytelling, Billboard created an immediate and meaningful connection with Honda's target consumer. and reached them with paid and organic social content across Billboard.com, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, and TikTok.
The docu-style short film was supplemented by two visually-arresting performances where Nathy’s pristine vocals and multi-piece backing band captivated audiences from the Honda Stage.
The Coronavirus pandemic brought on limitations that affected not only our production, but our ability to work with Nathy. We originally planned to shoot in the United States with Covid-safe on set health protocols as recommended by the CDC. However, due to travel bans, Nathy’s ability to travel was restricted. We were forced to restructure our plans, but still managed to make the shoot possible by flying to Barcelona and shooting with a small crew. The quick improvisation saved our production timeline from being compromised.
To drive mass viewership and engagement on social media, we distributed Nathy’s content across Billboard and Billboard’s Latin verticals, rolling out the ‘Honda Backstage featuring Nathy Peluso’ documentary in three chapters followed by two performances of “MAFIOSA” and “DELITO.” These videos were shared in long-form on YouTube, Billboard.com, Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook, and in short form on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok. The content also lived in a branded hub on Billboard.com with branded content articles and Honda pre-roll. This wide variety of content distribution allowed us to combine organic and paid strategy to reach Honda’s target consumer. We also created custom social moments that went live on Billboard’s Instagram Story in which Nathy pointed fans to her documentary and performance videos.
Our overall goal was to increase Honda Stage’s brand affinity through mass viewership and social engagement. With our cross-platform distribution strategy and custom social moments, we successfully delivered 14.2M cross-platform views and surpassed our engagement benchmark by 140%. The eclipsing of our engagement benchmark with this campaign shows that the content resonated with consumers not only on a personal level, but so deeply that they shared the content on their personal profiles.
