In 2014, the Brand Publishing team was challenged to attract younger, socially active audiences into the Lincoln digital ecosystem, demonstrating the new Lincoln brand values while ideally opening a door for audiences to explore the new Lincoln product offering. We knew that, to be successful, we would need to cut through the noise and produce stories that could lead to contextually relevant conversations, make audiences think this could be a brand for “someone like me,” and ideally build an engaged audience that might be open to further content from the brand. Such an opportunity arose around Lincoln’s Grammys buy. 

THE OBJECTIVE 

• Introduce Lincoln as a modern, relevant luxury brand 
• Demonstrate that the brand values artistry and respect for individuality to an audience that is interested in the Grammys
• Cut through the social noise during the Grammys
• Connect cultural audiences to a product message

The resulting Lincoln campaign we built for the 2014 Grammy Awards was an evolution from the Luxury Uncovered retail campaign, wherein we peeled back the layers of preconceptions and badging to get to the core of what's important to shoppers. For this cultural moment, we brought the concept to life with an interactive musical performance by Aloe Blacc and a troupe of exceptional dancers, and then peeled back the layers of how it all came together in a campaign with the editorial theme "Music Uncovered." This digital campaign included a YouTube takeover and an interactive partnership with Interlude, where a consumer could follow four unique storylines of the same music video, each from a different point of view. 

To bring real time Grammys audiences into the digital experience, while paying off the concept of “Music Uncovered,” we created content to be published during the Grammys as each main category aired. To accomplish this, the Publishing team researched the backstories of the main nominees - stories that would particularly appeal to fans. Since we couldn’t use the respective artists’ and songs’ names, we commissioned an illustrator to build out visual stories representing the stories of the nominees. I brought in a fantastic illustrator whose work I’d seen on Tumblr, who used strong lines and minimal colors and was able to depict a narrative or metaphor in a simple drawing that could stand out in the social feeds. 

Using real-time targeting with this social creative during the Grammys as a hook, we drove audiences into the Lincoln brand ecosystem, connecting all the conversations through a sponsored #MusicUncovered tag. In targeted social posts and on the Lincoln channels, we featured the interactive performance as well as stories featuring Blacc's creative process, choreographer Ryan Heffington's approach, the interactive directors' inspiration, and more. Once in the brand environment, Music Uncovered audiences were introduced to Luxury Uncovered product content, thereby closing the loop between culture, content, and commerce.  The social posts drew the highest engagement of any brand content published during the Grammys, and pulled in an above-goal audience for the brand. 

Assets from this campaign were resurfaced in social throughout the year as they became culturally relevant again and again, creating an exceptional return on investment for the brand campaign.

Illustrations by Christopher DeLorenzo.