We developed a campaign that offers unique opportunities and experiences relevant to multicultural millennials, pre-paid customers, and Walmart shoppers. Our team utilize a content integration approach through paid media partnership to organically connect with consumers. The #freestyle50 launch event was held in New York to promote a buzz about the campaign.

The national call-to-action involved consumers submitting a freestyle rap over a 300 Entertainment track, use the hashtag #freestyle50challenge and tag @verizon on Instagram and Twitter. Their freestyle had to demonstrate how they “freestyled” their way through life.

Began PR strategy and roll out from 11/8/16 - 11/16/16, including pitches, media advisories and securing interviews for partners and influencers.

Executed a media buy with Radio One across 5 target cities in the Southeast market including Atlanta, Raleigh, Baltimore, DC and Miami

Leveraged DJs across each station as ambassadors for #Freestyle50 to drive participation in the campaign and the “freestyle your way through life” narrative

Organic integration into radio content as opposed to commercials, weaving in pre-paid offer messaging

From11/29/16-12/9/16, aspiring hip-hop artists submitted their video entries displaying their creativity and lyricism on social media and entered displaying their creativity and lyricism on social media.

Through strategic partnerships with each radio stations radio on-air talent selected five artists from each of their cities to compete live, on-air for an opportunity to perform at the freestyle cypher finale event airing on 12/12/16-12/13/16.

The Verizon #freestyle50 Challenge exceeded all projected KPIs across every single campaign measure.

Throughout the campaign’s timeframe, #freestyle50 secured 43 national media placements across a diverse range of top tier outlets including Forbes, Huffington Post, The Breakfast Club, Sway in the Morning and Billboard. Additionally, the campaign was heavily covered by leading hip hop outlets including Complex and XXL.

On social media, the #freestyle50challenge hashtag yielded 175.25 social media impressions through 30,610 Tweets and 5,208 Instagram posts, including organic posts by such celebrities as R&B artist Trey Songz (11.4 million followers) and influencers like DJ Envy (711k followers). The freestyle50challenge hashtag used 30,558 times. The numbers were a historic amount for an unpaid Verizon social media campaign.

Over 8,000 entry videos were received, effortlessly shattering projections and the industry average for a corporate sponsored contest.

Lastly, the campaign delivered results against the primary objective: encouraging purchase of Verizon’s 7GB for $50 pre-paid plan among multicultural Millennials. Despite our unorthodox approach to messaging the offer, sales rose by 14% in the Southeast market and 10% nationally during the campaign period.