iPhone X stole the show at the 2018 Grammy Awards with a combination of partnerships, smart media placement, and iPhone X’s most buzzed-about feature: Animoji.

BACKGROUND & OBJECTIVES

In 2017, Apple released iPhone X featuring a messaging tool with enormous cultural potential: Animoji. At the time Animoji was a category first, allowing people to create and record custom, 3D versions of various animated emoji, using facial recognition to animate the emoji in real time. The brand wanted to give this innovation the largest possible stage to create awareness, to stimulate interest, and to enhance the desirability of its latest products.

Our objectives:

Excite: Drive overall views, impressions, and meaningful views of the Animoji films on social.

Inspire: increase search volume for the feature, inspire iPhone X owners to create and seek out custom UGC Animoji films, and in the process earn a massive amount of media.

STRATEGY

We wanted to put Animoji at the heart of culture, more specifically music culture. Animoji had organically shown up across social media as a creative way for people to karaoke their favorite tracks. We decided to do something at music’s biggest night – The 2018 Grammy’s. Without costly product integrations we chose to work with culture, instead of buying our way into the event.

To build a strategic foundation for the work, we looked at the connective tissue between the event, culture, and the product. A Grammy celebrates music and artistry. It is an award for self-expression. In today’s culture, unlike any other moment in history, every medium is a canvas for self-expression.

With the development of Animoji, Apple has given people a helping hand in a creative tool that unlocks a way to express themselves as never before.

EXECUTION

To rock the Grammys, Apple partnered with two massive, Grammy-nominated artists, Migos, and Childish Gambino, to create Animoji music videos for their hit songs. The Animoji videos, for Migos’ single, “Stir Fry,” and Childish Gambino’s hit, “Redbone,” aired directly after the artists’ big Grammy moments, drafting off Migos’ nomination for Best Rap Album and Childish Gambino’s live performance.

RESULTS

After debuting during the Grammys telecast Animoji saw immediate critical praise and racked up 30 million views online,[1] and earning over 250 million impressions.[2] The films also had the most sound-on social-media views in brand history, with 70% of viewers opting to listen.[3] We increased search for “Animoji” by 1300%.[4] We saw a 10% lift in Animoji content uploaded to YouTube and over 300,000 hours of UGC Animoji Karaoke content viewed on YouTube immediately after the event[5] and secured an additional $15 million in earned media for the work.[6] The excitement built for Animoji was vital for iPhone as internal research has shown new features are critical driver of sales.[7]

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2016 Whitman Research