PREROLL CONCERTS

TitlePREROLL CONCERTS
BrandSTUDIO BRUSSEL
Product/ServiceYOUNG MUSICAL TALENTS
Category D01. Social Video
Entrant DDB BRUSSELS, BELGIUM
Idea Creation DDB BRUSSELS, BELGIUM
Media Placement MINDSHARE Brussels, BELGIUM
Credits
Name Company Position
Tom Meijer DDB Brussels Art Director
Silke Beurms DDB Brussels Copywriter
Peter Ampe DDB Brussels Creative Director
Odin Saille DDB Brussels Creative Director
Jolien Elegeert DDB Brussels Art Director
Romy Vierhouten DDB Brussels Account Executive
Francis Lippens DDB Brussels Business Director
Sven Verfaille DDB Brussels Designer
Wietse De Ridder DDB Brussels Designer
Kirsten Vanderbeke DDB Account Executive
Dorian Van Bever DDB Head of digital
Kenn Van Lijsebeth DDB Copywriter

The Campaign

This year the winners of Studio Brussel’s contest were awarded with an audience bigger than ever before through the pre-roll concerts. With targeted pre-rolls, we made the winners the digital opening act for some of the world’s biggest stars like Coldplay, Drake and Daft Punk. When searching for one of these stars, you wouldn’t get just any other commercial as a pre-roll, you would discover our contest winners as the opening act for the music you were looking for. This way we linked the young talent on YouTube to similar artists, increasing the chance of finding an interested fan base, and elevating their success.

Creative Execution

As a radio station, annoying music lovers is the last thing on our mind. That’s why we chose skippable pre-rolls over un-skippable ones. Not only does this mitigate any irritation, it also allowed us to measure the interest of our audience without focusing click-throughs: if they didn’t skip the opening act after 5 seconds, we knew they showed genuine interest in the new artists. Our pre-roll concerts aired during 13 days.

• The opening acts could be skipped after 5 seconds but 40% watched the complete performance. • It gave them a fan base of over 525.000 people. • One participant even sold out his own solo show twice, became the number 1 in the Belgian charts and played on Rock Werchter as well.

First we decided on the platform we would use to promote these new artists. YouTube is one of the most popular platforms to discover new music, so it seemed like a good fit. From triple A artists to small indie groups, they’re all on it. But the quantity of music on YouTube had two downsides as well: firstly, simply putting your music on there wouldn’t make it stand out. And secondly: with a ton of musical genres available, you’re not even sure you would reach the right audience.That’s why we linked each of the winners to well-known artists with a similar music style. By piggybacking on their success (and search volume) we would ensure not only the required reach, but also a higher chance by matching their style to the style of our artists.