TASK
Educate audiences on the life of Bessie Smith and her contribution to the current landscape of culture and society. Use music as a pathway to connect audiences with Bessie Smith’s story and build buzz and engagement for the film across multicultural audiences and millennials by amplifying media conversations and press coverage.
ANSWER
- Develop a two-city tour spanning the disciplines of experiential, public relations, talent recruitment and management, and non-traditional out-of-home advertising.
- Identify and leverage strategic and organic partnerships with influencers and celebrities.
- Provide social media moments to incite engagement and maximize awareness for Bessie and HBO within the multicultural, young creative and professional target audience.
- Create excitement and buzz in multicultural press outlets.
- Generate organic social media buzz.
RESULTS
- Talent that was a part of the #Bessie81Tour tweeted/Instagrammed from the event including Stacy Barthe, Bryan Michael Cox, DJ D-Nice, Solange, and Janelle Monae
- On Instagram alone, over 157,000 likes and comments amounted to 8.2MM impressions
- On Twitter, over 1,900 mentions of the #Bessie81Tour garnered 55.6MM impressions
- Press coverage of the #Bessie81Tour garnered over 262MM impressions to date (online)
- A targeted media buy across multicultural audience skewed sites, TV and print placements delivered over 16MM impressions and a .45% CTR, eight times higher than the industry standard
- Bessie ranks amongst the most watched HBO Original Film premieres in the last five years and delivered the most watched HBO film debut among African-Americans since 2007
