Yahoo! Music "Get Your Freak On"

The growing popularity of online video-sharing and digital music created a perfect combination for Yahoo! Music to engage music enthusiasts with a one-of-a-kind promotion. Yahoo! Music created a program called "Get Your Freak On" where fans are invited to star in user-generated music videos for their favorite artists and songs.
This ongoing program has resulted in wildly popular videos for music stars like Jessica Simpson, Christina Aguilera, and 'Lil Jon, but it's the video for megastar Shakira that put this program on the map. Fans of the Colombian-born recording artist were asked to submit short, hip-shaking video clips to be included in a fans-only music video for the song "Hips Don't Lie."

After thousands of fans submitted their videos, Yahoo! and Epic took the best entries and created a video mashup that was exclusively available on Yahoo! Music. The fans-only video quickly raced to the number-one spot on Yahoo! Music, and even surpassed the popularity of the song's actual video. The user-generated music video was viewed more than one million times in the first few weeks of release, and has been seen more than 12 million times to date. At the time of the premiere of the fan-video, Shakira's actual video was #1 on Yahoo! Music, and the following week her record jumped 92 spots to become the 6th best selling album.

Yahoo! recognized the potential for this high-profile promotion to engage Yahoo! Music loyalists and spread virally throughout the Yahoo! network. The marketing team created a comprehensive campaign to kick-start the WOM nature of this promotion, including banner ads running across Yahoo, integration on Yahoo.com, and editorial placement in Yahoo! Music and within Yahoo!'s Buzz module.

Yahoo! also played close attention to Shakira's fan base and integrated the campaign on "Yahoo! En Espanol" and worked with Shakira Fan Clubs.

Credit Information
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Client: Yahoo!
Agency: N/A
Budget: $15,000
Date of Campaign: Undisclosed