We built this campaign around the 25th anniversary of The Notorious BIG’s Life After Death and Christopher Wallace’s 50th Birthday. For the anniversary, we collaborated with Spotify on a multi-platform activation including a video with 10 of Biggie’s lyrics carved into stone (a play on the ‘10 Crack Commandments’) and OOH advertising in New York, Los Angeles, and Toronto. Spotify also delivered a homepage takeover campaign on web and mobile.
We also had out of home support with Amazon and significant platform features on Amazon, Apple Music and Tidal.
We had additional OOH advertising in the key markets listed above, including unique Neon posters of the iconic King Of New York photo in major cities in Australia.
We kicked off Biggie’s birthday weekend with the launch of his first new single in 17 years – ‘GOAT’ featuring a verse from Ty Dolla $ign and hooks by Nigerian newcomer Bella Alubo. The track itself is Afrobeatsinfluenced and designed to grow his audience in Nigeria and the African Diaspora.
On 21st May, we leaned into Biggie’s status as The King Of New York by lighting up the Empire State Building in his honour, partnering with New York City’s Metro Transit Authority to distribute 50k limited-edition MetroCards featuring Biggie (lines were up to five hours to get the cards and they sold out in one day), we partnered with Barclay’s Center in Biggie’s borough of Brooklyn to show a tribute on the giant oculus screens outside of the venue, and we partnered with Amazon on a series of murals – one in each borough of New York, honouring Biggie’s lyrics, additional out of home support, and a metro station takeover in Brooklyn with wraps on the turnstiles.
Game phenomenon Heardle chose Biggie’s hit ‘Juicy’ as its song of the day on Biggie’s birthday, and Twitter gave him a custom emoji. New York showed up again for Biggie on 10th June as Lincoln Center honoured Biggie with a free outdoor orchestral concert of his music conducted by Miguel Atwood Ferguson and streamed live on Twitch for fans worldwide. The celebration continued with a partnership with Fortnite to include ‘GOAT’ and ‘Juicy’ in Fortnite Radio.
Our campaign generated significant traditional and earned media including a post by Spike Lee (MetroCards were on eBay for $5,000 by 21st May); a 12% streaming lift on Life After Death, sustained for six months; helped grow Biggie’s share of listeners 18-24% to his largest listening demographic (vs. prior to the campaign when that demo was even with listeners 45%) and amplify The Notorious BIG as one of the most important rappers of all time. Audience in key markets outside the US grew from 5% to 14% over their pre-campaign streaming baselines.
Project Budget
Demographics
