“Get ready for the online event of the century - a live audience with me, Murdoc Niccals. Thanks to our comrades over at Electronic Beats, you can watch me and 2D live on the sofa and ask anything you want. Or just tell me how much you love me. But keep it clean, yeah?”- Murdoc Niccals, Gorillaz

Being a ‘virtual band’ has prevented Gorillaz from doing live interviews… until now.

To celebrate the launch of their new album ‘Humanz’, we invited Gorillaz’ Murdoc and 2D to take part in their first ever real-time live interview, hosted at London’s YouTube space by BBCRadio1’s Mistajam and streamed live via the Electronic Beats YouTube channel.

Using the latest in motion capture and MR technologies, fans were able to tune in to see the characters take part in an entirely live and completely unscripted 30min interview, with questions taken from fans via social media.

Band led PR announcement released 48 hours out from the live stream, leading with commentary from the band members pushed out across their social channels, providing an embed code for media outlets to host the stream on their own site, using the Telekom Electronic Beats YouTube link.

The stream went live at 15.00 GMT on Thursday 20th April and fans were able to interact with the band by submitting questions via Twitter. Once the live stream was wrapped up, we then invited a select few media to take part in their own one to one interviews with Murdoc and 2D, creating 10 tailored exclusive content packages that would sit on their home channels, guaranteeing further earned editorial reach.

“We originally had the idea that it would be great to get cartoons interacting with the real world in an almost parallel real-time way and today you have all witnessed this. It has taken us seventeen years to get to that point... it just shows that Gorillaz is something that can take advantage of cutting edge stuff when it happens due to the DNA of what we created.” -Damon Albarn

Over 895,000 organic views of the interview on Telekom Electronic Beats’ YouTube channel, with 84% from a core millennial audience and over 600 fan comments per minute. Social engagement of 1,480,000 across all owned channels.

Extensive coverage of the interview broke across credible entertainment and music media including Rolling Stone, NME and Noisey as well as BBC 6Music. Exclusive media interview packages created on the day generated further pick up across Europe, generating an earned media value of over €850,000.

“We originally had the idea that it would be great to get cartoons interacting with the real world in an almost parallel real-time way and today you have all witnessed this.” - Damon Albarn

Using the latest in motion capture and Mixed Reality technologies, Telekom Electronic Beats have joined forces with the planet’s most successful virtual act to open up a new dimension in music and make the virtual, real. Here they have delivered fans the ultimate Gorillaz experience; the characters taking part in their very first real-time interview. Telekom Electronic Beats presents “In Conversation with Gorillaz” – Live.

Deutsche Telekom believe that “Life is for sharing”. Telekom Electronic Beats is a demonstration of this core value – the democratisation of music experiences for all.

Working with Gorillaz allowed us to not only differentiate our brand through a forward-thinking music partnership but also gave us the opportunity to showcase our category leading technology credentials through this world first which also created a tangible proof point of our belief in the power of sharing.

To leverage the natural level of excitement and intrigue surrounding the band and drive maximum engagement amongst fans, the live interview experience was scheduled to go live in the week prior to the release of the new Gorillaz album, Humanz.

True to Telekom Electronic Beats own authentic editorial style, a credible figure within the music industry was chosen to host the session (Mistajam) with our partners at YouTube supporting in providing studios at their London space.

Telekom Electronic Beats is one of the world’s most established music and lifestyle content marketing programs. Whilst it initially centred around music marketing, Telekom Electronic Beats now embraces the strong connection between music and other lifestyle areas such as design, fashion, art and tech.

In early 2017, Telekom Electronic Beats joined forces with the planet’s most successful virtual act, Gorillaz to find new and innovative ways to elevate music experiences for fans.

Since their first release back in 2001, Gorillaz have been constantly pushing boundaries, achieving success in ways entirely ground-breaking within popular music, whilst their live performances have gone from strength to strength, consistently breaking new ground in both scale and ambition.

The global Gorillaz fanbase is both hugely loyal and incredibly engaged –Telekom Electronic Beats wanted to find a way to give fans the opportunity to interact with the band in a whole new way.