Agency: The Marketing Arm
Client: AT&T
As a sponsor of the 2008 Summer Olympics, AT&T wanted to align itself to the 18-24 year old audience as a brand that provides entertainment. The goals of the Team USA Soundtrack campaign were to engage the audience while enhancing their game-watching experience. In addition, the campaign had to show AT&T’s complete support for Team USA.
To achieve its goals, AT&T launched the Team USA Olympic Soundtrack, consisting of 16 new and exclusive songs from Sheryl Crow, the Goo Goo Dolls, 3 Doors Down, Nelly and Taylor Swift. Each night, one song was debuted during prime time on NBC and Telemundo to a backdrop of a video montage of the day’s Team USA highlights. The commercials drove viewers to download AT&T songs, ringtones and answertones. It also pushed them to the AT&T Olympic website, WAP site, U-verse and retailers where they could view full-length music videos of the songs as well as behind the scenes content about the athletes and artists. In addition, NBC arranged for 3 Doors Down to sing their song “The Champion in Me” on America’s Got Talent and put Sheryl Crow on The Today Show. The artists, labels, publishers, AT&T and iTunes donated all proceeds from the downloads to Team USA. Then AT&T went out on the road with Olympic gold medalist Michael Phelps and U.S. Olympic Committee COO Norman Bellingham to promote a $1 million Team USA donation from consumer downloads of the soundtrack.
All told, AT&T sold 700,000 downloads — seven times their original estimate. The $1 million proceeds was 10 times their original estimate. The campaign generated more than 60 million media impressions. And of those consumers who downloaded content, 65% said they had a more positive impression of AT&T because of their experience, while more than half said they were likely to purchase and recommend AT&T products and services in the future.
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