Challenge
Since its beginnings, Beats by Dre had proudly established a strong, niche following around its iconic lineup of products but with the imminent release of Dr. Dre’s biopic Straight Outta Compton, there was an underlying desire to do more than sell headphones and instead, start a cultural conversation that celebrates the diversity of our pasts. Challenge Beats By Dre wanted to use the Straight Outta Compton film as an opportunity to simultaneously celebrate the success and influence of N.W.A and more specifically, Dr. Dre on music culture and hip-hop while further increasing brand awareness for Beats by Dre. Because the film explores the harsh realities of life in South Los Angeles during the late 1980s as well as the meteoric rise of N.W.A, the campaign needed to focus on the importance of one’s roots.
Solution
The team created a customizable meme that allowed people to “rep their city” by uploading their own photo and filling in the blank on the “Straight Outta _______” prompt. Beats tasked PMG to help drive engagement across desktop and mobile devices via the campaign’s microsite (meme generator). People around the world immediately gravitated to this platform for self-expression in celebrating their heritage. So much so that the meme quickly became a full-fledged viral sensation that was bigger than the Straight Outta Compton movie itself, reaching an incredible 1.2 billion people worldwide. The social and multi-channel strategy aimed to leverage the broad cultural momentum of the #StraightOutta meme through various paid efforts. PMG actively boosted not only memes shared by celebrities, but also the “best of” consumer memes, thus driving organic amplification of unique user-content in real-time. Over the course of the campaign, an impressive 8.7 million memes were created and shared. PMG took the mobile experience a step further by creating a unique iAd unit which allowed users to create memes directly in-ad and share to their social networks. The seamless iAd experience paired with an extensive SEM campaign to capture search traffic; resulting in an inter-channel campaign with widespread impact and incredible results.
Results
Known as #StraightOuttaSomewhere, this groundbreaking campaign successfully catapulted from a simple meme generator to a viral social trend seeping into the fabric of American culture. With the viral nature of the meme gaining momentum and trending number one across Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, the press made sure to follow suit. At the campaign’s peak, 15,000 #StraightOutta tweets and retweets were sent out per minute. In the end, over 100 major news outlets and blogs praised the campaign as a clever marketing effort that not only pushed the Straight Outta Compton film into mainstream culture but also “took over the Internet.”
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