YouTube is a platform for storytellers, and every artist in the world has a "YouTube story" to tell. Musicians all over the world are leaning into YouTube in unique and powerful ways to creatively express themselves, grow their reach and engage with fans.

But our research suggests that a relatively small portion of the music industry believes that "YouTube is valuable to the music ecosystem". They see the value in YouTube as a video distribution and discovery platform, but many in the industry don't see/appreciate the bigger role that the platform has played in the artist success.

With our Artist Spotlight Stories series -- and especially this Shawn Mendes installment in the series -- we set out to change that perception by shining a light on the YouTube stories of some of the biggest and most successful artists in music today.

Our Artist Spotlight Stories documentary series offers intimate and personal video portraits of artists who are pushing the boundaries of creativity and connecting with fans in unique and powerful ways on YouTube. The series is meant to shine a light on artist journeys and how they have leveraged YouTube to be successful, in hopes that their stories inspire others in the music community to do the same. For Shawn, we tapped YouTube and longtime friend Casey Neistat to make a documentary film that would resonate and be successful with the YouTube generation.

We set out to make films that are broadly appealing, and expose the artist's YouTube story to a wider audience (of potential Shawn fans, as well as the global music industry). In addition to making a high-quality film that Shawn and his fans love (Shawn called the film "the best movie that will be made about me, ever"), we made sure the film was unmissable and culturally impactful by promoting it with OOH in NY & LA, digital, social, programming, press and experiential.

The film premiered at Casey's 368 Studios in NYC on September 27, 2018 with an exclusive event with Shawn, Casey and 100 superfans. Shawn and Casey watched the film in the audience with fans, and then did a fireside Q&A to answer fan's questions about making the film. The film then went live on Shawn's YouTube channel the next day with the (at the time) new Premieres feature, bringing fans around the world together virtually to experience the launch together and concurrently. That same day, our OOH in NY & LA, digital, social, programming, press support went live as well.

Since launch, the film has over 7.5M views (including a record 34K concurrent viewers in the Premiere), 300K likes, and has been covered by 30+ press outlets including Billboard, ABC News, E! Online and Tubefilter.

At the launch event in NY, Shawn said: "This is the most authentic video, story, movie on me that will ever be released. I mean that.. this is one of the most special things I've ever done."

Beyond the success of the film itself, the series as a whole has helped shift industry perception that "YouTube is valuable to the music ecosystem" +20 points.