In 2018, AXE was on a mission to increase its credibility in the number one passion point for Gen Z guys—music. The brand tasked us with creating a campaign that dropped AXE squarely in the U.S. hip hop zeitgeist in a way that felt true to the brand and teen hip hop culture in an effort to drive engagement and relevance.

AXE the Label took undiscovered SoundCloud music artists from anonymity to notoriety by turning the music streaming service into a collaboration tool with the platform’s most influential rapper and producer: Lil Yachty + Zaytoven

We hijacked SoundCloud’s unique commenting tool, which lets you comment along a song’s timeline (a feature typically used by listeners to show their love for a song) and let undiscovered artists show their talent instead—co-creating new tracks with our rapper/producer talent.

Several strategies were implemented to contribute to the success of AXE the LABEL. First, AXE tapped into the insight that 91% of music artists are struggling unknowns—with 20MM of them uploading to SoundCloud hoping a music label will discover them as the next big thing. This insight helped narrow in on the format of the campaign which specifically targeted Gen Z guys who love music. We leveraged unique partnerships with Lil Yachty, Zaytoven and SoundCloud as well as aspiring Gen Z artists (our “AXE guy”) to ignite conversation prioritizing outlets seen as authorities in music and culture. Lastly, we developed assets and access to create socially shareable stories that would land where Gen Z “lives” - on social feeds.

We launched with Yachty dropping an unfinished track on SoundCloud and challenging his followers to finish it. To do this, we hijacked the platform’s unique commenting tool, which lets you comment along a song’s timeline (a feature used to show your love for a track) and invited users to show their talent instead. Over 44K artists jumped in, commenting with their hook. Yachty picked his favorite and our winner scored a co-writer credit.

Next, Zaytoven created and dropped beat kits—original music elements any artist on SoundCloud could use to co-author an original track. Every track was reviewed by Zaytoven and Yachty and 10 unknown artists got their break, earning a spot on our playlist and an artist credit next to one of SoundCloud’s most influential talent.

Finally we AXE'd our own labels for 10 never-before-heard-artists—each received a personalized AXE can to symbolize their breakthrough into the music industry.

In the end, AXE broke 10 undiscovered artists into the music scene, innovated the way artists collaborate on a social music platform, earned the most listens ever on a branded track—1.56MM (ANARCHY by Lil Yachty/Gina Lappo), the most comments in the history of SoundCloud—44.6k and became the first-ever branded track to reach #15 on SoundCloud’s charts. Proving that AXE can take undiscovered artists from anonymity to notoriety… Without the music labels.

Other results:

116.9 million impressions

76% increase in positive AXE brand mentions

104% over SoundClouds benchmark for user submissions