The American branded entertainment market is extremely saturated; “branded content” can mean anything from product placement and media deals to content creation. Now, more than ever, brands are competing with each other to tell their stories in every platform, digital or broadcast. Restrictions pertain only to certain product categories in the U.S., such as alcoholic beverages and kid’s products. This means that product placement, content creation and integrated media deals are becoming more common, and with the market flooded by increased brand presence, standing out is becoming a real challenge.

The re-imagination began with a live event. We reimagined every aspect of the experience, starting with the venue: that’s why Fox Studios was transformed into a vintage record store. Then we designed a state-of-the-art, rotating, round stage. This physical space consisted of concentric circles, with Beck standing in the center, surrounded by a rotating ring of audience members, who were in turn surrounded by 167 musicians from around the world.

The architectural design of this reinvented stage created a unique surround-sound-and-visual experience. Specially-designed binaural head microphones and a 360-degree camera production allowed us to capture the whole audio and visual performance digitally, so online users could feel as if they were actually present in the room as they experienced the concert on the website.

“Hello, Again” immediately catalyzed conversations online between the people we had hoped to target. Press like Wired Magazine, Billboard, Rolling Stone and Gizmodo, and celebrities like David Bowie, none of whom had ever mentioned Lincoln before, wrote about the campaign, earning us over 290+ million media impressions, and over 250 individual blog posts. Our entire campaign generated over 1 million views on YouTube. But the most telling summary of the campaign came from Adweek, who nailed our strategy when they wrote, “The campaign has drummed up a fair amount of attention for a brand nobody thought was capable of surprising anyone.”