Cannes Lions

Apeshit

ICONOCLAST, Culver city / THE CARTERS / 2019

Film

Overview

Entries

Credits

Overview

Background

The cultural phenomenon of summer 2018, "Apeshit" is the first music video from the lead single of The Carters' -- best known as JAY-Z and Beyonce -- surprise album Everything Is Love.

Idea

“I can’t believe we made it,” sings Beyoncé in “Apeshit,” And to prove that she and her husband JAY-Z have made it, in the song’s accompanying video, Beyoncé delivers this line from the world's most famous museum, The Louvre.

Strategy

As the duo travel through the museum, they take center stage in a place that historically made little room for non-white artists, strategically highlighting non-white images already in the Louvre and interjecting their own blackness into a space that has never placed much value on it, claiming one of the centerpieces of European culture with gleeful defiance.

Execution

The music video was filmed in May 2018 and released June 16 as the lead single and music video from The Carters' Surprise album "Everything Is Love."

The video was released on Beyonce's YouTube/Vevo pages and promoted across her social platforms.

Outcome

Apeshit was an immediate hit, racking up YouTube views (it currently surpasses 170 million views) and cultural think pieces. But, the biggest impact was possibly for The Louvre. According to The Guardian, over 10 million people visited the Louvre in 2018, marking a 25 percent rise in visitors over the previous year, making it their best year since 2012, when 9.7 million visitors walked their halls.

“The Beyoncé video, like the opening of the Louvre museum in Abu Dhabi, ensured that the Louvre was talked about across the world,” said Museum director Jean-Luc Martinez. “[A]nd one of the consequences of that is the spectacular rise in visitor numbers last year.”