Nova Entertainment has secured the likes of Optus and Qantas yet again, as it dials up its live music brand Red Room with its second global tour, calling it “one of the biggest content marketing initiatives ever undertaken.”
The Red Room Global Tour will take roughly 28 competition winners on a tour spanning 11 days in four cities – Dublin, London, Dubai and Sydney – and includes exclusive performances by Ed Sheeran, Jason Derulo, Craig David, Rudimental and Adam Lambert, among others.
Optus has signed on as a lead partner of the tour for a second year, along with Qantas, The Star and new brand partner Dubai Tourism.
The first Nova Red Room Global Tour kicked off in August last year, while the first live music event under the Red Room brand was launched nearly three years ago.
Nova chief digital and marketing officer Tony Thomas told AdNews that the 2015 event is the culmination of learnings from the first global Red Room, as well as being a much bigger program of activities and experiences.
“We learnt last year that it's not just about the live music experiences that happen on the Global Red Room but it's also about the experiences that happen inbetween,” Thomas said.
“So we, and our partners, are creating and planning experiences in between the live music and our crew is going to be able to capture that content and distribute that content across our assets and our partner assets almost continuously, 24 hours a day.”
“The whole idea of the experience economy is really showcased by what we do with Red Room.”
Qantas Group executive brand, marketing and corporate affairs, Olivia Wirth, told AdNews that the brand signed on for a second year because it's the opportunity to be part of a “money can't buy experience” that connects to the youth market.
“For us music is a great way to build engagement with the younger market and that is obviously a core component of this; building a relationship with that market via music and via another brand that they also trust in Nova,” Wirth said.
“Firstly they do travel and we would like to be part of the consideration set when they're choosing an airline. But secondly it's important to start the relationship young... ultimately they become the business traveller of the future.”
“So it's important to have relevant touch point across the life cycle.”
The other factor Wirth said was that it was a “natural part” that Qantas could play in the event given its is an experience about travel.
“If you're looking at experiential marketing you're always looking for that natural fit and this is one of them,” Wirth added.
Thomas said the content that comes out of the Red Room tour, both content generated by Nova and user-generated content, will be distributed across Nova and its brand partner's various channels.
Nova itself will broadcast highlights from the tour on its Smallzy's Surgery show from 7pm to 10pm, while Jonathon Moran from Nova's Confidential on Nova will share content and interviews on Sunday nights from 7pm.
Lead partner Optus will also be generating video content which it will be sharing thorough its social and online assets.
Thomas said the content marketing element of the tour is one of the key way Nova is looking to evolve itself as a business, following its rebrand from DMG radio to Nova Entertainment at the beginning of last year.
“The opportunity is to work with not just the clients that come to us for our radio business, but to work with clients outside of what would be our standard radio industry footprint,” Thomas said.
“Our view is to be really strong in content marketing you've got to be platform agnostic, you have to deliver content to an audience where they are, and that’s is where our business has moved to.
“We aren't necessarily reliant on our radio assets that we have but they obviously help in terms of amplifying content. But in the future, we will deliver work that stands along from our radio business, but also leverages it.”
Nova's creative agency, Create, is a key pillar in its content marketing strategy moving forward in what Thomas said is a “significantly growing part” of the business.
“It's becoming a really important growth area of the market and we’re becoming really regarded for the quality of work that Create are doing,” Thomas said.
“We might work with a creative agencies to produce the content, or we might take the expertise that we've got internally and work against a creative agency on some briefs. I think in the word where great ideas and content can come from anywhere, media owners are well placed because they've got that audience at their disposal.”
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