Rihanna X Apple Music Halftime Show.
For our inaugural Apple Music Halftime Show we knew we had to make a statement. After years of lackluster Pepsi (?!?) Halftime productions, Apple Music and Rocnation went big and brought back Rihanna. The world had already counted Rihanna out. No one thought she’d ever come back to music. So we turned years of waiting into anticipation for her return.
The show was awarded 2 Emmy’s, a Cannes Gold Lion in Entertainment, and set the stage for what Apple can bring to the Super Bowl Halftime Show.
Thanks to Rihanna’s rabbid fanbase, everyone was waiting to see what she’s going to bring to the big stage. We simply called our campaign Rihanna Returns.
After the iconic announce post of Rihanna simply holding a football on our classic Apple white background, we continued the campaign with our trailer. The film culminated with a simplest gesture - Rihanna shushing her haters.
TRAILER
The trailer broke the internet. Received 78M views. And became one of Rihanna’s most viewed posts ever. The memes followed.
When people tuned into NFL games, RiRi continued to come out of the shadows and teased the show.
BROADCAST
The internet went wild.
The week of Super Bowl. We released a steady stream of content to bring her global fan base to life. Rihanna being a truly global artist we wanted to show that everyone is excited for her return. From a little girl in Barbados, to burly NFL fans, the world’s been waiting for Rihanna’s Return.
RIHANNA WEEK.
On Super Bowl Sunday, Rihanna took the stage and showed the world that she’ll forever be the queen. With a fantastic stage design by Willo Perron she floated above the stadium and broke the internet by revealing she was pregnant. Watch it here on YouTube.
THE SHOW.
On Apple Music, concurrent listeners surged 331%, the hour after the show became the biggest of her career, and Anti entered the top ten in 20 countries. Her catalog then delivered its largest streaming week ever, 166.1 million U.S. on-demand streams, up 156%, while she jumped from No. 22 to No. 1 on the Billboard Artist 100 for the first time.
If you still haven’t seen enough, peep the full campaign case study here: