The VIBE Media Group, a leading urban music and culture brand, was looking to grow site traffic, expand brand awareness, and drive incremental ad revenues from its website, VIBE.com. To achieve these objectives, VIBE created a rap-battle contest, VIBE Verses, in which independent rap and hip hop artists were invited to record their lyrics and post them on a specially-created VIBE Verses website where fans would vote for their favorites.
To ensure the success of this campaign, VIBE turned to UNBOUND Technologies. We queried our social graph and immediately identified the most socially-connected rap and hip hop artists—the influencers. We engaged these artists and provided them with a widget that enabled them to share lyrics with their fans. Within four weeks of implementing the UNBOUND Technologies solutions, the contest went viral. User-generated video streams exploded from 10,000 to 1.2 million per month. VIBE.com community registration quadrupled to 80,000, and VIBE experienced an 800% return on investment, leading John DeMarchi, GM VIBE Digital Media, to say, “This is the future of VIBE Media.
