We believe entertainment is a fundamental human need, and nowhere is entertainment more spectacular than at MGM Resorts International.
In 2016, Nashville Unplugged: The Story Behind the Song launched in fall of 2016 at Mandalay Bay. The show is a country music influenced storytelling roundtable that brings the most successful, hit songwriters from Nashville right to fans at Mandalay Bay. This interactive, impromptu all-acoustic show helps fans understand what goes into writing a song. Fans also learn the history of many of their favorite songs.
The show is co-hosted by prominent country music songwriters:
Aaron Benward has written songs for the television shows Project Runway, and most notably, the television series, Nashville.
Travis Howard has written 10 songs over three number one albums for Miranda Lambert. He has also written for Dierks Bentley and many other country artists.
MGM social media launched the "Go Write Me" campaign to raise awareness of the Nashville Unplugged show at Mandalay Bay.
Objectives:
1) Build awareness of the show and its format on social media
2) Showcase the immense talent of the hosts, Aaron Benward and Travis Howard, as well as the performing guest songwriters
3) Build a connection between the talent and fans
Strategy:
Utilize social media to crowd-source an owned song to build awareness of the show, its talent, and its format.
Implementation:
Mandalay Bay launched the "Go Write Me" campaign to crowd-source this social media driven . Mandalay Bay social media audiences were asked to contribute lyrics for a song that Nashville Unplugged hosts Aaron and Travis would use to co-write and premiere live at Nashville Unplugged. Fans were told the name of the song "Rock Bottom" - crowd sourced during a live Nashville Unplugged show. From there, social media fans shared their lyrical genius.
The MGM Resorts social media team crowd-sourced these lyrics via organic and paid posts to increase the reach of message.
The song was revealed at a live show, and was broadcast in real time on Facebook-live.
Key Features:
Organic social media posts calling fans to share lyrics for inclusion in the song
Paid social media posts calling fans to share lyrics for inclusion in the song
Access to talent for creation of pre-promotional social media content
Willingness of talent to write a song based on fan lyrics
Facebook live for the reveal of the crowd-sourced song; organic post
The Go Write Me campaign generated 150+ user-generated lyrical entries from social media, and resulted in one owned crowd-sourced song.
Fans were able to tune into Mandalay Bay's Facebook Live to see if their lyrics made the final song.
Aaron Benward and Travis Howard were able to showcase their immense songwriting skills, and in turn, showcase the premise of the Nashville Unplugged show, the story behind a song.
