CASE STUDY
American Express Unstaged Concert Series
“Unstaged: An Original Series from American Express,” a collaborative effort including VEVO and YouTube, has pushed both in-concert and at-home viewing experiences to the next level, integrating social media and other features into branded interactions that transform viewers into participants. The concert series has received 100 million content views since its first show in August 2010.[1]
See the video experience here —> Amex Unstaged
According to American Express CMO John Hayes, “The ‘Unstaged’ program received 22 million views in 2012 alone, with an average viewing time of 25 minutes per person.”[2] A smash hit from the start, the first show, featuring Arcade Fire, logged 4 million streams and an average of 22 minutes of viewing time per person. [3]
American Express also leveraged social media platforms like Twitter to get fans engaged and promote shows. The brand even conducted an experiment to see whether it could sell out a show by promoting it with a single tweet. The show sold out in a matter of hours.[4]
The concert series program has had a major impact for partners, brands, fans and music artists alike. The live streaming efforts have helped make six of the Unstaged acts’ albums hit number one or two on the Billboard Hot 200 albums chart.[5]
The “Unstaged” concert series continues to be a prime example of how branded experiences can elevate a company while simultaneously serving partners and customers. American Express gain real-time intelligence around how customers enjoy their concert experiences.
“We don’t just know the absolute numbers [of concertgoers]…we know whether you went to dinner beforehand or afterwards, and there’s a lot of commerce opportunities around that. We know if they like going to dinner in a certain place in a certain city – we can facilitate our partners and restaurants with that. We’re not talking about perceptual information, we’re talking about real behaviors.” [7]
1 http://mashable.com/2012/09/06/the-killers-face-to-face-live-stream/
2 http://www.billboard.com/biz/articles/news/branding/1535914/american-express-cmo-john-hayes-on-unstaged-social-media-and
3 http://blog.midem.com/2011/08/how-unstaged-changed-musicbrands-forever/#.UUjA1FpARX8
4 http://www.billboard.com/biz/articles/news/branding/1535914/american-express-cmo-john-hayes-on-unstaged-social-media-and
5 http://mashable.com/2012/09/06/the-killers-face-to-face-live-stream/
6 http://www.billboard.com/biz/articles/news/branding/1535914/american-express-cmo-john-hayes-on-unstaged-social-media-and
7 http://www.billboard.com/biz/articles/news/branding/1535914/american-express-cmo-john-hayes-on-unstaged-social-media-and