"UNLOCKED" with Rihanna

Though I have been following Rihanna since her “Pon de Replay” days, I have not been a big fan. But in recent years, with top charting hits, I have been paying a lot more attention to the star. She was recently named No. 1 on Forbes list of Social Networking Superstars, ahead of both Lady Gaga and Justin Bieber, with 23.8 million Twitter followers and 59.6 million Facebook. Because I spend so much time researching, learning and thinking of new ways to utilize social media, I had to take notice to The Rihanna: UNLOCKED campaign.

The promotion of her 2011 album release Talk That Talk, came at a difficult time because Rihanna was on tour at the time. It is typical for an artist, to do different appearances and for the label to leak content, Island Def Jam was looking for a new and creative way to share content with fans.

Named ‘Best Use of Social Media’ Award at the 2011 Creative Media Awards, UNLOCKED, is a Facebook app that asked listeners to “like” her fan page, which allowed them to go on missions to uncover content. Fans were able to unlock lyrics, Rihanna’s new “R” logo, the single “We Found Love”, her new website, the album’s release date and its cover.  Well what was the ROI on the campaign?

• Fans created 928,000 "stories"
• 118,000 tweets were created by the campaign, which equated to 5,000 per hour
• 420 million total Wall impressions
• Talk That Talk entered the Billboard charts at number 3 with 198,000 albums sold
• "We Found Love" was the most listened to song on Facebook in 2011 and has since then gone triple-platinum 

This is once again, a great example of how record labels are willing to think outside the box, in creating marketing campaigns for artists. It is not just about the masses but providing unique creative content for each individual fan. UNLOCKED is only the beginning for Rihanna, as she has recently started her 777 tour (7 performances, in 7 cities across 7 countries).