Microsoft’s phone brand Lumia has turned to one of the world’s biggest Multi Channel Networks, Rightster, to increase online audience engagement around its #lumiamusic campaign in the UK, Russia, France, Germany, Poland and Italy.
The campaign, developed alongside Warner Music, sees recent Grammy winners Clean Bandit challenge YouTube vloggers across Europe to submit their own crowd-sourced versions of the video to No.1 single Rather Be using Lumia handsets.
Rightster, which acquired Base79 and Viral Spiral last summer, now boasts a network in excess of 1,950 content owners and over 7,500 online publishers. It is ranked as the largest MCN outside of North America and the fourth-biggest in the US. It operates an ‘upload once, commercialise anywhere’ cloud-based software platform.
Thirteen notable YouTubers from across Europe posted their ideas, asking their subscribers for help. They encouraged the use of the #LumiaMusic hashtag by their followers.
Clean Bandit chose the winning entry by Włodek & Karol from Polish channel Lekko Stronniczy, which was all shot by a Lumia 930 in RAW. The duo will now collaborate with the band on their next music video. To date, the campaign has driven 8.3m views and over 473,000 likes.
Ian Samuel, Managing Director, Rightster Brand Solutions, commented: “We are delighted to partner with Microsoft Lumia on this ambitious project. With the recent explosion in “influencer marketing” it’s great to see brands taking the next step and combining this with amazing talent like Clean Bandit. Brands are finally identifying the importance of global You Tube Network partnerships in delivering on both the art and the science of marketing on the platform. Rightster is now the only ‘international’ MCN and our agnostic approach to talent makes us the de-facto trusted guide for global branded content projects.”
Tara Powadiuk, International Media Partnerships Lead for Microsoft, commented: “Rightster has been instrumental in extending the reach of this online video-driven campaign. The company demonstrated a great network and in-depth knowledge of how to reach the right influencers and the right audiences, to drive awareness of the Lumia phone and its impressive 4K video quality, across all six countries. The interest from consumers for the content created by the YouTube stars is exactly what we were looking for, this is set to this continue to peak in the coming months when the new Clean Bandit video is launched online.”
Włodek & Karol from Lekko Stronniczy said of their win: “We are absolutely thrilled to be named the winner of the competition, and to have the opportunity to work with Clean Bandit on their next video. We were worried during the shoot when we dropped the phone, and had fears of having to start all over again, but thankfully it still worked and nothing was lost. We loved the end product, and are over the moon that Clean Bandit do too.”Music Business Worldwide
