RBMA NYC
2013
Campaign development, design, strategy and direction for the 2013 Red Bull Music Academy in New York City.
With questlove as the academy’s most visible ambassador, we built a campaign which used portrait and event photography, original commissioned illustration for each event, and a bold type-driven calendar system to create awareness in both niche music communities and New York City at large. The entire mission was in service of paying tribute to the city as the birthplace of so many modern forms of music expressed globally - which were brought here for a 30 day long celebration.
This academy was one of Red Bull’s most successful culture marketing activities and became a benchmark for their future work in that space, including music, art, and beyond.
The goal was to fully conceptualize, design and produce robust multi-channel marketing and promotional campaign which included: subway dominations, Colossal wallscapes, traditional billboards, wildposting as well as digital banners and site takeovers including Fader, Pitchfork, Complex, Pandora and Spotify. All festival materials including unique artwork for all events, all media and participant materials including but not limited to t-shirts, tote bags, ID badges and vouvelle wheels. Staff, design and produce a daily newspaper with 80,000 circulation to be distributed at strategic locations around the city during the festival – as well as be on-call for any and all needs that arose throughout the academy and festival.
A daily newspaper was produced by the name of The Daily Note - to execute the content development, production and printing of the magazine, i oversaw (alongside a very talented editor by the name of Piotr Orlov) the hiring of a full service editorial staff featuring alumni of The FADER, XLR8R, Village Voice, FACT and a slew of other great music and NYC editorial insitutions. It was printed daily in a quantity of 80,000 copies, sent to Pennsylvania to print nightly at 11pm, and shipped back to NYC the following day for street distribution. It was executed for the full month of the academy.
The identity was also applied to Red Bull Radio - a 24/7 always on internet radio station I managed the daily execution of social graphics, promo and advertising for as an extension of our live event activities.
© Justin Thomas Kay 2024