In a situation where all music events were cancelled, “Puma Music Tour” opened a window on a new way to experience live music events.

Thanks to video games and live streaming platform Twitch, music has now thousands of possibilities to offer new kind of shows.

Video?games?are?being?the best place to host?virtual?events because?they?have?changed.?Players?aren’t?just?playing,?they?are?connected?to?

their?friends?through?gaming.

"Puma Music Tour” allowed to formalize digital live events that should become in a very next future one of unmissable Entertainment standards.

Alonzo is one of the main hip hop ambassadors of Puma Brand. The artist and the brand have enjoyed a relationship for 5 years now. Alonzo is a strong pillar of French hip-hop community and one of the rap godfathers from Marseille as well. In this strong relationship, Puma is always here to support Alonzo and vice versa. In this COVID context, Alonzo released a special EP “Pack de 6” so Puma had to help him to spread his new creation and be closer to his fans.

There?was only one city?that?was?COVID free, without?any?lockdown and capable of hosting a live music performance… The City of Los Santos in GTA V.

Even 8 years after its release, GTA V is still very strong across the world and is part of pop culture.

The game is listed in the Top 15 best-sellers every year and on Twitch, GTA Role Play category is in the Top 5 most viewed category. But most of all, GTA owns this street DNA that fits perfectly with hip-hop music.

Thus, Puma and Alonzo hosted the first live music event ever in GTA V. This music show was available through a GTA Role Play server and broadcasted at the same time on Twitch.

Like in a real music show, fans could cheer close to the in-game stage and share their enthusiasm into the Twitch chat.

The strategy was all about how to digitalize an IRL event and make sure that even if the music show was set up within GTA world, it respected the rules of a live event.

We knew that creating an in-game show was something cool but we wanted to go further and offer this social connection feature to the fans, the one that you can find in GTA.

We decided to create the music show within the game helped by a GTA independent developer team in order to create an amazing live show accessible through the GTA server.

We also worked with a Twitch streamer to broadcast the event to a wider audience. In-game, avatars could attend the show and event take selfie in front of the main stage like in real life and on Twitch viewers could watch the live, comment, cheer and ask questions to Alonzo.

First, we had to design Alonzo’s character.

We reproduced Alonzo from his haircut to his face.

We implemented Puma brand creating unique and official clothes and shoes.

For the show, we defined a track list and worked on the scenography to connect each song to specific visual effects. During the live, Alonzo was behind his mic to perform a set of songs including hits from his new EP “Pack de 6”.

In game, our streamer took the control of Alonzo’s character to let the artist focus on his singing.

Regarding the broadcast, we created specific creative assets to open the live, the pause and the end of the show including the official poster of the gig.

We communicated on the show like a traditional hip-hop event. Media strategy was 100% focus on PR (0€ invested in paid media)

Influencers were targeted to amplify the live experience and drive traffic.

Puma Music Tour was the best PR campaign ever realized by Puma France :

It reached hip hop core media and lifestyle / mainstream media

In the French rap game, Alonzo and his show have been validated by other hip-hop artists

It created a first connection between rap world and gaming world and after the event we have observed several collaborations between these two worlds.

Results:

> 1,4M?estimated?impressions of #PumaMusicTour?

> Trending?Topic n°13 in France the?day?of the?event?(04/24)?

> 10K?peak ?Live?viewers?on Twitch?

> 80K+?viewers?

> 1M comments on Twitch??

> 11,3M estimated impressions by press release?with 100+ press coverage in all Europe