THE 14TH ANNUAL SHORTY AWARDS

The Shorty Awards honor the best of social media and digital. View this season's finalists!

The Pop Out

Entered in Earned Media

Objective

The objective was to prolongue and further celebrate the excitement of the Pop Out - a culmination of music's biggest stars competing for the top spot in hip-hop, that Amazon Music livestreamed to millions of music fans. Our livestream of this event allowed masses of fans to experience this live concert (the venue only holds 17k capacity, but Amazon Music brought it to far more fans) and so being given the opportunity to 'attend' this event proved to be highly valued by fans. This catapulted Amazon Music and it's livestreaming offering into the spotlight. The event was a viral moment, with many big names performing on stage, giving fans a night they wouldn't forget. As the brand that brought this experience to so many fans, we needed to think about ways that we could extend this and keep the celebration going. We knew we had a a rare opportunity to continue to celebrate this fandom, during a period where Amazon Music, a challenger brand, was top of mind for hip-hop music fans. How could we keep the event top of mind across the following weeks, and how could we help fans remember that it was Amazon Music that brought them this incredible memorable experience?

Strategy

Out strategy and plan centered around making our activation fan-forward. The fans and the artists are one - they power eachother and experience this all together. We wanted to celebrate that and make it feel like a moment that was equally as meaningful to those on the stage as those off the stage. We found eneregy in the photo that went viral of all the artists on the stage, and envisioned a similiarity to the legendary photo 'A Great Day in Harlem'. This led us to the concept of 'A Great Day in Inglewood'. We captioned this photo with a very simple but very profound 'Us', to summarize the union of all the involved artists and the union of fans. What we needed to do was identify a way to amplify this across the country as quickly as possible and as loudly as possible. We determined that OOH would offer us this opportunity and sprinted to identify high impact placements in key cities across the US that could be leveraged immediately. We needed to select locations that would be meaningful to fans, to the artists, and that would allow us to erect these billboards in unexpected ways. This needed to be a 2 way activation - one that fans ad artists could see and experience and feel a part of, just as much as it was a an advertisement.

 

 

Results

Upon launching these bilboards, fans and KOLs in the hip-hop genre were quick to spot these and share them, with key channels for this fandom sharing their sightings. These included Rap TV, Hot New HipHop and Complex. Combined, we measured over 30 million earned impressions, with over 300k likes, and thousands of comments. The main billboard was the one we strategically placed right outside the venue where the event happened in Inglewood, which captured strong appeal.

Media

Entrant Company / Organization Name

Amazon Music

Links

Entry Credits