Our idea was built around a partnership with bass music brand UKF. Founded by Luke Hood from his bedroom and nurtured by AEI Media, UKF is one of the world’s biggest YouTube channels – albeit under the mainstream’s radar – embodying the success to be had by ‘going your own way.’ UKF’s energetic music is also a perfect match for the partying occasions of our audience and, because they hadn't done a brand partnership before, gave Desperados the potential to rise above the competition.

Together we created City Hack. Over 6 months teams of creatives (DJs, promoters, visual artists and graphic designers) from 3 cities would battle it out to prove that they can ‘go their own way,’ throwing the sickest parties and impressing a panel of influential mentors in the mix. The winners would receive support from AEI to further their careers, hopefully following Luke Hood’s path to success.

Central to City Hack was a 10 part documentary on UKF. We began with a call to action to find talented DJs, visual artists, graphic designers and promoters based in London, Manchester and Bristol. Four mentors – including rapper Pavan from Foreign Beggars – helped shortlist the teams.

Over four challenges we saw the crews: produce music videos for specially commissioned tracks, featuring Plastician & Jammz, Medics and Sam Binga; commandeer boats and make a huge abandoned chimney smoke to promote a (Desperados) Red themed party; and steal the crowd from the world class lineup at the O2’s Building Six, bringing in local legends Roni Size, Chimpo and General Levy.

UKF’s social channels promoted the series and we provided additional content for Desperados’ channels. Edits were also used in paid for advertising on YouTube, Facebook and Twitter.

We even produced an exclusive branded EP, a first for any brand in bass music.

Business boomed! Desperados enjoyed +8% uplift in sales during the campaign peak, compared to the year before. We dramatically increased ad awareness among 18-34s, a massive achievement for a branded content campaign.

City Hack was officially Desperados' most successful UK promotion to date, smashing two core objectives:

Closeness up 15% (target was 4%)

Brand positioning of ‘Desperados is the life of the party’ soared 9% (target was 5%)

The series received 2 million organic views on UKF alone, with over 6.6 million social interactions – unheard of for a campaign targeting Millennials. Our songs were picked up by Radio 1 and broadcast to 500,000 listeners. The branded EP was streamed 31,000 times on Spotify and Apple Music, illustrating the credibility of the project.

Our proudest achievement? Helping the winners go their own way and secure paid work with AEI Media. They are well on their way to global EDM domination!