One of country music’s fastest rising stars, Wyatt Flores has been on a whirlwind climb. With total streams in the hundreds of millions, Spotify identified Wyatt as a star on the rise, particularly in the growing red dirt and Appalachian genres, and wanted to bulk up support around the release of his debut EP across the brand’s platforms - on social, on the app, and in real life.
In talks with the Spotify team, we determined that a short run of social content specifically for Wyatt’s EP release would speak to existing fans that have been bought in on Wyatt’s talent from the ground level, reach new fans who had likely heard his viral song “Please Don’t Go”, and convert fans of country music who hadn’t yet heard of Wyatt.
Our team followed Wyatt and his crew around New York City, documenting the band’s daily activities before playing to a sold out crowd that evening at Bowery Ballroom. Riding along in their tour van, we headed to the center of the universe: Times Square, asking questions along the way about his new record and the Life Lessons that inspired the work.
With a shoot date set for two weeks from our initial kick off – working around Wyatt’s busy tour schedule and coinciding with a scheduled show in New York – we got to work on creatively ideating on what exactly we would have Wyatt do in front of the camera, while simultaneously (and immediately) jumping into pre-production.
The team toyed with other creative concepts for content capture – from custom Lotería decks to celebrate his Mexican heritage, to personalized FFA blue jackets, outfitted with patches and embroidery to represent how far he’s come since being a part of his local chapter in high school – but landed on a straightforward, docu-style approach to follow a small-town kid on the road, culminating in his first sold out show in the big city.
Our production team worked on short notice to secure permitting to film in the city, focusing on a location as close as possible to Spotify’s regular recurring Times Square digital billboard. We landed approvals to film near the iconic red stairs, which centered us directly underneath the out-of-home placement we designed (and with critical help from the media team were able to run a day earlier than originally scoped) in support of Wyatt’s forthcoming EP.
The contrast of an up-and-coming country artist from Stillwater, OK driving to visit his 200-ft. tall billboard in Times Square was engaging enough to catch users’ attention, and meaningful enough to keep it. Wyatt, in particular, is known through his music for his reflections on the small town experience, focusing on topics like the cycle of poverty and the difficulties of chasing a dream from the middle of nowhere. This set our crew up to capture Wyatt’s authentic reaction to a major life event and career milestone. Along with his parents via FaceTime, we were collectively invited to process with him the raw emotions around the magnitude of that moment.
Spotify also came around the new release with support on one of its most popular curated playlists called “homegrown.” Wyatt was asked to host a takeover of the playlist, selecting which of his songs would live in the playlist and serving as the first-ever artist to grace the cover of the playlist. Some of his best soundbites from our shoot were turned into Playlist Clips, a new interactive feature within the Spotify app that allows users a behind-the-scenes look at the music selected for the playlist, directly from the artists featured.
The no-fuss and no-frills approach to our time and our interview with the artist is certainly reflective of his take on country music, but what we weren’t expecting was for Wyatt to be such a fount of wisdom at his young age. At 22 years old, we witnessed Wyatt handling a meteoric moment in his young career with astounding grace, and heard first hand from the artist all about the chronicled learnings and takeaways that inspired his debut EP, work worthy of the title “Life Lessons.”
Our videos taking viewers behind-the-scenes and on the road with Wyatt Flores racked up 338k views - which is approximately 390% more than videos posted during the previous 90 days, on average. The campaign and new EP encouraged listenership as well as views, with Wyatt’s monthly average listeners on Spotify increasing from 3.1M to 3.7M in the time since our campaign. His EP garnered 1.4M first week streams on Spotify, occupying 45% of streamshare in the market. Feedback from the fans through comments on the videos made one thing clear: music lovers are just as excited about Wyatt’s future as we are.
