The BRIT Awards 2020 has revealed the full impact of its digital campaign for this year’s show, revealing increases across social media activity, sales and streaming.
Hosted by Jack Whitehall, last week's ceremony at The O2 featured live performances from Billie Eilish, Celeste, Dave, Harry Styles, Lewis Capaldi, Lizzo, Mabel, Rod Stewart and Stormzy.
Overall uplift across winners and performer album sales was up 28% (compared to 15.1% in 2019), equivalent to 14,000 extra sales. That figure excludes Billie Eilish, who was No.1 on midweeks pre BRITs. Streams across tracks by performers increased by 29%, equivalent to around 3m extra. Dave’s Mastercard Album of the Year winner Psychodrama and Lizzo’s Cuz I Love You were the biggest beneficiaries, rocketing No.57-14 and 136-35, respectively, in the UK albums chart.
The world premiere of the official Bond theme song No Time To Die by Eilish reached 11.9 million views on YouTube - beating the 10.8m views combined across all performances in 2019 for the week immediately following the BRITs. The total YouTube views across all 2020 performances is currently at 20.9m, nearly double what it was at the same stage in 2019.
Geoff Taylor, CEO BPI & BRIT Awards, said “With enormous combined reach across terrestrial TV, radio, online streaming and social media, the BRITs has become a truly multi-platform, global event reaching many millions of fans around the world. It was a specific goal this year to achieve greater cultural and sales impact and we have made great progress towards that goal.. As we look beyond our 40th birthday, we are passionate about making the BRITs the most compelling and accessible showcase anywhere in the world for the best British and international talent.”
Digital music partner Amazon Music hosted the Official BRIT Awards 2020 Playlist across all four of their streaming tiers which have been refreshed post-show to include live performances. Over one million people tuned into Amazon Music UK’s Twitter account to watch their live coverage of The BRITs red carpet, hosted by Amelia Dimoldenberg and Harry Pinero.
Elsewhere, a new partnership with TikTok, which saw the video sharing app exclusively host the Red Carpet Live Stream, recorded 1.4m views, the biggest viewership for a global TikTok live stream out of the UK, while new YouTube live stream hosts Patricia Bright and Munya Chawawa presented the show to an international audience, which achieved cumulative views of 1.1m.
Overall, the BRITs grew its overall follower numbers by 13% across all of its social accounts combined for @BRITs – up to 3.825m from 3.375m in 2019.
On Twitter, six of the top 10 worldwide trends on the night related to the show. The BRITs was the most tweeted about show in the UK last week - with almost double the volume of tweets than Love Island. On the night, nearly 600k tweets were sent about the show, with 213.5m impressions (9% increase from 2019) and 2.6 million likes. The BRIT Awards Twitter video views totalled 5.4m (3% increase from 2019).
The BRIT Awards 2020 digital campaign was led by BPI director of digital Giuseppe De Cristofano, chairman of the BRITs digital committee Tony Barnes, Zosia Morris and Tom Young, executive producers for content agency Somethin’ Else.
Tony Barnes, senior director, digital & business development, Virgin EMI, said: “The results from all the digital activity surrounding the BRITs this year have been exceptional. Thank you to all the partners and platforms who have helped us achieve these remarkable results, and of course thank you to all of the artists who promoted, posted and engaged with our activity in the lead up and on the night. The BRIT Awards are reaching and engaging more people around the world on more platforms than ever before, and that is brilliant for our artists and for British music as a whole.”
De Cristofan added: “It’s great to see our digital strategy paying off with such a large increase in engagement and follower growth."
