VOK DAMS China - Innovation in Branded Entertainment

Name of Organization / Company: VOK DAMS CHINA
Category: E01 - E12 - Award for Innovation in Marketing > E03. Award for Innovation in Branded Entertainment

Entry Title: AUDI URBAN ELECTRONICS

Essay:

Since its start in 2013, each year Audi China becomes the epicenter of China’s electronic music and creative arts community during the Audi Urban Electronics music festival: a heart-thumping, head-bobbing, nonstop lineup of International and Chinese DJ’s, audio-visual live acts and interactive installations hosted in the heart of Beijing. The event has developed into one of the city’s leading avant-garde events and aims to bridge technology and arts, corporate and cultural innovation.

In 2016, facing new event marketing and budget realities, marketers for the brand asked us to innovate the event by creating an approach that would significantly reduce the event’s marketing spend and carbon footprint while simultaneously extending the reach of the event to heights never before seen.

Based on the insight that the electronic music world is highly brand loyal to disruptive industry trends, in 2016 we tapped into the brand’s global arts network and took Audi Urban Electronics to the underground with global online music broadcasting platform Boiler Room.

Adopting the Boiler Room fan friendly format of interactive DJ stations and its highly effective widely followed live streaming platform, we were able to achieve considerable cost assurance while also expanding the reach of the avant-garde event and provide new perspectives on how we experience music.

The event was hosted in the Audi City showroom in downtown Beijing, with an evening designed to showcase a plethora of talents including audio-visual live acts, art installations and DJ sets.

Both brands, Audi and Boiler Room, teamed up to drive recruitment through social media activations.

The tie up with Boiler Room brought with it a collection of acclaimed underground DJs and producers such as Germany’s Fritz Kalkbrenner, Oliver Koletzki and Steve Bug, playing side by side with the Chinese electronic music duo Xiang Su, as well as independent producer and multi-media artists Lou Nanli (aka B6) and pianist Song Siheng.

Artist Ren Yuan presented in the installation “Perception” a real-time interactive system that becomes an extension of the eye of the viewer and transforms its reality based on the movements of those in its environment. Qian Hongling’s installation piece “Pixel Waveform” was composed of multiple 7-inch motion sensor IPS screens that translated physical movements into moving images to create a new dimension of audiovisual, technological art.

In terms of hardware, we utilized the existing facilities such as built-in LED walls while adding selected custom-made pieces and tech that matched both the aesthetic of the space and also the mood of the event.

The 6-hour lineup of International and Chinese DJs, audio-visual artists and interactive installations thrilled the Beijing underground & electronic music fans around the world via live stream on boilerroom.tv, LeTV and Facebook.

With Audi City Beijing as the stunning live venue and with live streaming platforms LeTV and boilerroom.tv as its digital counterparts, offline guests and online guests totaled more than 2.1 million viewers, a stunning result that connected Audi China with the world’s leading community of underground music fans and created a vision of Audi lifestyle at its hottest.

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