We created the first ever evolving music video. A video the changed the more it was viewed shared and liked. Not only the visuals changed, but four new versions of Ella Mai’s hit song “Boo’d Up” were created as well, evolving from simple a capella to a fully orchestrated version with a marching band.

For the 61st Grammy Awards, the Recording Academy wanted to drive excitement, engagement and viewership by creating a never-been-done-before experience for the fans and artists who make up today’s music community.

The world of musical discovery has evolved -- artists are discovered on YouTube, fans connect with their favorites on social, and the relationship between fans and artists is closer than ever. The Grammys wanted to celebrate this ever-evolving music community by creating a new music video experience with the objective of driving engagement leading up to the awards show. The experience had to incorporate an artist that exemplified today’s culture, and had to have a unique take on the music video to ultimately land the Grammys at the center of the music community.

The beauty of music is that it’s constantly changing and evolving. But in the last 30 years the music video has largely stayed the same. It moved from TV to YouTube but you still watch it once... and you're done. So to promote the 61st GRAMMYs awards we wanted to create the world’s first evolving music video. A music video that would change the more fans watched it. Making them want to keep coming back to watch it more and more. We partnered with 2019 GRAMMY nominee Ella Mai to create new versions of her hit song “Boo’d Up” that were only unlocked the more the video was viewed, shared and liked. Each evolution gave fans something new to see, hear and talk about. And what started as a simple, black and white a cappella video evolved into colorful extravaganza filled with dancers, a marching band, and more.

To drive engagement and celebrate the music community, we capitalized on fan behavior and music discovery with a unique distribution and outreach strategy.

We drove discovery by publishing videos to YouTube when the Grammys was topical and fans were seeking out nominees. Since YouTube is not able to show aggregated views, we built a microsite that housed the videos with the aggregated view count. With each new version, we grew earned media by orchestrating a social campaign with The Recording Academy, Ella Mai and influencers like DJ Mustard. We tapped fans through Ella Mai fan sites, and used paid social targeting to fans of Ella Mai and similar artists. PR picked up the story quickly, commenting on the unique concept and remarkable talent.

Our partnership with the up-and-coming Ella Mai elevated her to the illustrious category of prior Grammy partners like Kendrick Lamar and Taylor Swift.

The Evolving Music Video, featuring Ella Mai launched on February 7, 2019. The first music video begins as a simple black and white video for the GRAMMY-nominated song “Boo’d Up,” with paired down, soulful vocals by Ella Mai. The music video then evolved and transformed over the next four days to become more epic and dynamic, as fans tuned in and views increased. The final evolution of the Music Video, V4 was released on February 9, 2019 - the day before the GRAMMY Awards. And a final supercut featuring all four video evolutions was released, February 12.

The films had a national and global target audience of music and pop culture lovers, as well as fans of the GRAMMYs and Ella Mai.

The films were released on grammysevolving.com, where people could continually check in to see the latest evolution release. The films were also promoted on The Recording Academy's channels.

To drum up excitement for the big day, the Evolving Music Video was released the week of the GRAMMYS. New versions of the video released almost daily as the view count increased, with stylistic changes fueling fan engagement and amplifying anticipation for the show.

The videos played on YouTube for optimal discovery, and were hosted on a GRAMMYS microsite as well to show off the aggregated views. In total, the videos accumulated over 84,000 views and 161 million media impressions. Ella Mai fans commented on the pleasure of seeing and hearing new versions of the song, and couldn’t wait to see what was next. Overall, the campaign may have aided Ella Mai’s 13% social growth since February. The campaign exemplified the GRAMMYs innovative approach to music distribution and consumption.