Axion "Banner Concerts"

Axion, Dexia’s youth bank, has always supported youngsters between 12 and 25 years old in all aspects of their lives. As an ever increasing number of young bands are striving -in vain- for MySpace-fame and at a time when the international music industry is struggling to survive, Axion decided it was time to give young music bands a little push, financially and logistically. Axion, Dexia’s youth bank, has always supported youngsters between 12 and 25 years old in all aspects of their lives. As an ever increasing number of young bands are striving -in vain- for MySpace-fame and at a time when the international music industry is struggling to survive, Axion decided it was time to give young music bands a little push, financially and logistically. Via the banner concerts the young bands got a lot more exposure than if they had only used their MySpace pages. Axion introduced an internet-first: “Axion Banner Concerts”, streaming live-gigs in the frame of traditional banners. They booked an impressive media-plan on popular websites and organised a contest to select 25 young, up-coming bands to play a concert in these 6 million banners. They also installed a voting system for the public to elect a winner who will get a real gig at Ancienne Belgique, one of Belgium’s biggest concert halls with live streaming on their web TV-channel. This motivated the competing bands to embed their banner concert in their fan’s blogs and social network pages, giving their music even more exposure. This innovative campaign was not only a creative and technological showcase, foremost it connected Axion youth bank on a profound level with the needs of today’s young musicians. - 25 young bands got an exposure for their live-gig via 6.807.442 banner impressions on well-known internet sites; - By providing an “embed”-option, we generated another 43.479 impressions via viral embeddings on fan pages and blogs. Some of these generated more than 20% click-through; - The campaign website attracted 44.845 unique visitors, 7.581 people voted for their favourite band (a majority voted by premium SMS instead of free web-vote). 2x Gold Cannes Lions Direct Winner.

Agency: Boondoggle Leuven, Belgium.