When we learned Lady Gaga’s new album would be a drastic departure from her larger-than-life persona, that this album had a “raw, unfiltered” sound to it, we knew there was something special there. This was a chance to reintroduce the world to a global icon in a way that felt completely different from what fans expected. Instead of the overly produced, polished stadium tour, we would take this new, raw and unfiltered Lady Gaga on a dive bar tour across the country––authentic to the ethos of her album, as well as to where artists such as Gaga get their starts, and to the real places so many of our drinkers have Bud Lights together. We also live-streamed the shows via Facebook Live to millions watching at home. It was a massive leap for the FB Live platform: No major artist had ever released new music in such a way before.

We were bringing Gaga into such small, intimate places, which was an amazing experience for the few lucky fans (around 100 for each show) who got to attend. To bring these performances to the masses, we partnered with Facebook Live to stream all three shows on their platform. This gave us a platform that not only gave us massive reach, but one that let us interact with fans in real-time as they watched the show. The actual live show production was expensive––we had four HD cameras, two of which were handheld, and two iPhone cameras, giving us six different POVs contributing to the live show. Overall, our shows garnered over six million live views.

We delivered record-breaking reach throughout the tour, with more than 2.3 billion media impressions and nearly 2,000 stories. Consumer engagement extended beyond the dive bars through Facebook Live streams, drawing an audience of 6,000,000+ nationwide, 9,621% more viewers than a typical three-day arena tour.

The challenge was a big one: How do you pair one of the biggest icons of our generation with America’s biggest beer brand in a way that feels true to both? Our strategy was to marry a truth about Lady Gaga’s new album, that she was going back to her roots, to a more authentic, unfiltered sound with a truth about Bud Light––it’s a beer enjoyed with friends in real, unpretentious places. The idea was to juxtapose this truth with what you expect from a massive artist’s tour with to create something truly exciting for fans.

Bud Light and Lady Gaga were in talks about a partnership, centered around the launch of her first album in over five years. While Bud Light has a long history of sponsoring tours, festivals and artists, they’d never partnered with an artist to help launch an album. Our brief was to find a way to launch and promote her album in a way that was unique to her, while doing it in a way that gave Bud Light a meaningful role.

Our campaign had two main objectives: First, to generate mass awareness of Gaga’s new album, which was a departure from the highly produced, dance pop that brought her fame. Second, to demonstrate that Bud Light can bring music to fans in a special way.