My role: Creative Direction, Social Copywriting and Overall Digital Advertising Design and Art Direction
Agency: UM Worldwide
The Break, a Content Series
The Break content series explores today’s hip-hop economy and how young arbiters and creators break through conventions.
The stories feature some of the most innovative and often unknown, young talent – From rapper Tierra Whack, who broke convention with her social-media-inspired 15 minute long album, to producer Nick Mira, who started selling beats in his bedroom, to the creators of LVRN, applying their own D.I.Y. approach to record labels, to even lesser known roles like Summer Walker the studio designer and Jeremy Baiden the social media guru.
Not only was this the first video series on RapCaviar, it was also a first-of-its-kind partnership that went beyond typical branded content on Spotify. We co-created the program from scratch with the Spotify team. This including everything from the purpose of the content, talent selection, and the stories. We made it clear to RapCaviar that this was not about promoting Sprite product, but rather inspiring the brand’s audience to make their own way.
The videos lived on the RapCaviar playlist list like a song would–a one-time exception that RapCaviar made just for this program.
Because of our shared vision, Sprite & RapCaviar also organically promoted the content via Social Media and PR to inspire youth beyond the Spotify platform.
The Break/Breakthrough became a launchpad for Sprite by authentically championing the passions of African American teens – upping the ante on how culturally relevant brands engage key audiences with inspirational, aspirational content that moves them, and the culture, forward.
Credits
Director Scott Lazer
Production Tre Native
Executive Producer Charlie Clark
Producers David Kwon Kim, Brandon Smith
DP: Matt Batchelor
Editor Adam Sauermilch
Creative Director Andrea Messer
Creative Strategist Tristan O'Donnell
Content Manager Luz Corona
Press
Respect Magazine
Rolling Stone Magazine
Hip Hop Wired
Results
Over 15.8 MM Impressions
3.9% sales lift vs same period last year
The ‘Sprite is cool’ metric increased by 12% among African American youth who were hip-hop fans, and the metric skyrocketed to 37%, further proving the resonance between the content and our core audience.
We learned that the more our audience saw our content, the higher the lift: Those who saw our content 10+ times had a ‘Sprite is cool’ lift of 19% vs. those who saw our content fewer times.
With very minimal branding throughout the content, recall saw a 49% lift among the exposed. This almost doubled the recall lift benchmark on Spotify, effectively placing us back on top of AA youth’s minds.
Our audience loved the content. Even after the campaign ended, the episodes stayed on the RapCaviar list for 3 more weeks, whereas previous videos RapCaviar produced would remain for only 1 week before being pushed off due to engagement algorithms.
Social posts promoting the content had an engagement rate that was 73% above the benchmark.
Budget
USD $1 Million to $10 Million