Turning a Film Launch Into a Cultural Phenomenon
Beats by Dr. Dre is one of the world's leading music and lifestyle brands. To support the release of Straight Outta Compton, the brand wanted a digital campaign that reached well beyond hip hop fans and made the film a global talking point.
PMG built a simple idea: a meme generator that let anyone "rep their own city" by finishing the line "Straight Outta ____." A custom in-ad unit, celebrity and influencer amplification, and paid search kept the trend moving, while Alli showed the team in real time which content and creators were driving engagement.
#StraightOutta became the number one trend on every major social network, reached 1.2 billion people, won 7 Cannes Lions, and lifted online revenue 30%.
With the highly anticipated release of Straight Outta Compton, the biopic featuring the origin story of pioneering hip hop group NWA (and Beats' co-founder), the brand sought to launch a digital campaign to promote the film, create affinity through social engagement, and extend the reach of the campaign's videos. With Beats already being the leading music and lifestyle brand in the world, PMG's objective was to go beyond the core hip hop community and engage a broad range of fans and consumers globally.
Inviting the World to Tell Its Own Origin Story
We sought to tap into the broad cultural momentum of the film with a simple idea: create a customizable meme that allowed people to "rep their own city." Users would show the world their own origin story by uploading their photo and filling in the blank after "Straight Outta ____." Consumers participated via the campaign's microsite across desktop and mobile devices, and Beats' family of celebrity endorsers were mobilized to extend messaging to their fans.
The team used Alli, PMG's operating system, to see which fan communities could carry the meme well beyond the film's core audience. Alli Audience Planner surfaced personas of hip hop fans, sports fans, and cultural communities most likely to adopt and remix the meme, so the team could identify the right celebrity partners and cultural moments to accelerate participation.
Igniting a Global Wave of Participation
PMG built a media and creative program that used mobile and social media to drive engagement. To create a frictionless experience and generate user content through mobile, we created a unique iAd unit that allowed users to create memes directly in-ad and share to their social networks. We then amplified the talent content and curated "best of" consumer content through the brand's social channels, including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube. Our influencer activation led to organic amplification of the #StraightOutta meme. To ensure the campaign maintained support across all channels during the flight, we also launched an extensive SEM campaign to capture search query traffic related to the movie and the meme.
Alli brought Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and SEM data into one view, so the team could see which memes and creators were driving the biggest engagement lift as it happened. With every channel's results in Alli Data, planners put more behind the content and moments where the trend was accelerating fastest.
Owning the Cultural Conversation
7 Cannes Lions awards 1.2B People reached worldwide #1 Trend on every major social network 8.7M Pieces of user generated content 30% Online revenue increase
#StraightOutta catapulted from a simple meme generator to a viral social trend seeping into the fabric of culture. With memes generated from hip-hop and sports fans to celebrities, brands, and even the White House, users jumped on the opportunity to make a statement.
With the viral nature of the meme gaining momentum, #StraightOutta became the number one trending item simultaneously on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, something never achieved before. At the campaign's peak, there were an average of 15,000 #StraightOutta tweets and retweets per minute.
The press made sure to follow suit. The campaign was covered in over 100 major news publications and blogs (including CNN, Washington Post, MTV News, Fortune, Forbes, Business Insider, BuzzFeed and a lot more) as a clever marketing effort that not only pushed the film into mainstream culture, but also "took over the Internet." The earned media had a reach of more than 1.2 billion people worldwide.
In addition to being the top trending item on social networks, the campaign was also the top searched term on Google and Bing.
Another indicator of just how pervasive the meme got was how other marketers jumped on the bandwagon and created their own memes, such as 7-Eleven, Snickers, and Whataburger, to name only a few. The movement also jumped into the political realm, as the White House (controversially) used it to sell the proposed nuclear accord with Iran (i.e., Straight Outta Uranium). In other words, this campaign didn't simply deliver on media impact, but in fact, established culture.
Alli Brand Equity tied brand and business signals together in real time, giving the team continuous visibility into how the viral movement was moving from cultural momentum to commercial impact. Beyond social engagement, the campaign was also instrumental in driving sales for Beats by Dr. Dre, as online revenue jumped 30% during the campaign period, with some products seeing transaction lift as high as 289%.
