Case Study at a Glance
company description
VUSH is a sexual wellness brand committed to championing self-love and pleasure
COMPANY LOCATION
South Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
why ben
Deep expertise in the music industry and long-standing creator connections—including Cardi B
Ability to execute campaign support with both product placement and influencer marketing
founded
2019
the blueprint
Tease the launch of new generation of VUSH products with a tailor-made integration into the music video for Cardi B’s single, ‘Up’
Engage with Cardi B to promote the product launch with social posts + discount code for fans
the platforms
Youtube, Instagram
The Perfect Match
In the music industry today, there’s an increasingly symbiotic relationship between artists and brands. As artists see more pressure and incentives to create cool, high-production music videos, brands can provide funding to support these efforts—and gain visibility with an artist’s following in the process.
BEN’s music team has a deep bench of experience architecting these partnerships, working with musicians and their reps to get ahead of new content opportunities and craft brand alignments that support the content creation while presenting the brand in a meaningful, authentic way. When the team reviewed the creative vision for Cardi B’s single, “Up,” they saw an opportunity. Cardi B is a pop culture icon for sexuality and sexual wellness—a topic she regularly promotes on her social channels. With a growing number of sexual wellness brands interested in removing the stigma around their products, BEN knew the right brand partnership could yield big results.
Enter: VUSH, a sexual wellness brand looking to transform the way people think about pleasure, wellbeing and self love. The company was gearing up to launch its next generation of products and grow brand awareness.
BEN’s team made the connection between VUSH and Cardi B, designing a custom strategy to ensure Cardi B maintained full creative license and to drive returns for VUSH in brand awareness and sales
The Creator
A Partnership Primed for Success
For BEN, ensuring creators maintain autonomy in their creative process is important—and the partnership between Cardi B and VUSH is a study in why. Initially the music video extras were tapped to promote the Majesty 2, a product in VUSH’s new line. But when Cardi B walked on set, she opted to hold the product in a scene by herself. As a result, the Majesty 2 was featured prominently, VUSH logo visible, in the hands of the video’s star.
BEN worked closely with both parties to ensure the music video and product pre-sale would launch the same day to best amplify traffic to VUSH’s website. The music video garnered over 69M views on YouTube within 30 days, driving pre-sales and exposure for VUSH. Cardi B’s decision to promote the product herself also attracted a flurry of media attention, leading to coverage of the partnership in publications like Rolling Stone and Elite Daily.
Social Momentum, Enduring Exposure
The BEN team architected the social campaign with Cardi B to drop the day the official launch happened to maximize exposure. Cardi B posted on her Instagram and incentivized click-throughs to the VUSH site with a 20% off discount code. The feed post, which highlighted the music video integration, got over 1.1M likes. Cardi B’s three-frame Instagram Story featuring the Majesty 2 resulted in over 125K swipe-ups to the VUSH website.
Amplifying the placement with social content ensured that product talking points and calls-to-action could be incorporated while emphasizing Cardi’s alignment with VUSH.
The brand continued to see ROI from the campaign, with the discount code in use for a month after the campaign ended. Moreover, the music video has garnered over 175 million YouTube views to date, demonstrating the evergreen value of music video integrations.
The key to this successful partnership didn’t just come from the artist or brand alone—but instead, it was a result of the authentic match.
