The BRIT Awards 2021 with Mastercard reveal event night major uplifts across digital activity

The BRIT Awards 2021 with Mastercard today reveal the full impact of their digital campaign for this year’s show, which sees significant increases across social media activity in what has been a unique and ground-breaking year, not only for The BRIT Awards, but also for the events and live music industry. The BRIT Awards was the first major indoor music event to welcome a live audience as part of the Government’s Event Research Programme (ERP).

The show broadcast on ITV and ITV Hub in the UK from The O2 arena in London on 11th May hosted by Jack Whitehall and featuring exclusive performances from Arlo Parks, Coldplay, Dua Lipa, Elton John and Years & Years, Griff, Headie One, Olivia Rodrigo, Rag’n’Bone Man & P!nk with the Lewisham and Greenwich NHS Trust Choir and The Weeknd. Of the 4,000 audience, 2,500 were key workers and their guests, with their tickets gifted by the BRITs.

Performances and highlights are available now on The BRITs’ official YouTube channel.

Ahead of the show, a BRITs Red Carpet Live Stream was hosted on Twitter, TikTok and YouTube, which saw presenters AJ Odudu and Yasmin Evans interviewing nominees, performers and guest presenters as they arrived on the night, resulting in over 800,000 views.

Non-UK viewers were able to watch the main show exclusively via YouTube for the eighth consecutive year. Chelcee Grimes and Arielle Free hosted the stream, which achieved over 1.7 million viewers, a 60% increase on the figure from 2020. In the 48 hours following the event, the show’s performances have accumulated over 15 million views, with Dua Lipa’s ‘Future Nostalgia Medley’ attracting the most post-show views so far (4.5 million views).

During the show, activity on Twitter peaked at 20,000 tweets per minute with the most-engaged BRITs post being the news of Harry Styles winning British Single. In total, over 900,000 tweets were recorded around the event, up 300,000 from last year. The show accounts saw record levels of event night impressions, doubling the volume recorded in 2020. The BRIT Awards trended No. 1 globally on the night on Twitter, and took eight of the Top Ten hashtags in the UK during broadcast.

The BRITs’ Instagram account – which hosted exclusive backstage portraits of winners as taken by acclaimed portrait photographer Danny Kasyire – achieved 2 million likes of show content on the day, a 125% increase y-o-y, with their Instagram Stories reaching 12.9 million views, again over double the engagement from 2020’s show. 

On TikTok, the 2021 BRITs nominees have collectively amassed over 217 billion video views across 222 million video creations to date, with BRITs related hashtags performing as below:

#BRITs = 374 million views

#BRITsCovers = 21 million views

#BRITs2021 = 99 million views

#BRITsMOVER = 3 billion views

Overall the BRITs saw 250,000 new followers across all channels on show day, with the biggest increases seen on TikTok, YouTube and Instagram, following the all-encompassing coverage of the show which covered all angles with dedicated photography and social capture points feeding into live commentary.

Headline sponsor Mastercard led its digital-first campaign with the #BRITsMOVER Challenge on TikTok, working with street dancer and choreographer Ashley Banjo to encourage users to have a go, resulting in over 3 billion views.

And the innovation didn’t stop there – Mastercard newly created audio connected LED facemasks which react in real time to music to share with fans, influencers and press. BRITs host Jack Whitehall was the first to try out the new technology and share the news with his 2.5million followers. For UK and Ireland music lovers, the limited edition accessory will be available via Priceless.com on 20^th May.

As first to exclusively announce and congratulate the winners of Mastercard Album and the British Single with Mastercard, Mastercard’s social channels played an important role to drive support and engagement across key BRITs activity, exclusive red carpet content and artist interviews, resulting in a 135% year-on-year uplift in organic impressions and 101% year on year uplift in engagement. Priceless.com, also a key platform, hosted a virtual pre-show party for Mastercard cardholders, in addition to one lucky winner securing an exclusive Priceless surprise with a BRITs nominated artist next week.  Mastercard developed a BRITs-in-a-box experience to enable cardholders and customers to celebrate the show in style from home, including drinks, snacks and BRITs branded merchandise, which sold out on the platform within 2 hours.

Official Digital Music Partner for the BRITs 2021, Amazon Music, saw a spike in streams for the night's award winners in the 24 hours following the show. International Group award winners, HAIM, saw a leap of 158% following their win at London’s O2 arena. Additionally the streaming service saw a 105% increase in streams for Breakthrough Artist winner, Arlo Parks, who was also named at Amazon Music’s Breakthrough act in 2020. Listeners at home also turned to Amazon’s Alexa to help them enjoy the award winning music, with voice requests for BRITs Rising Star winner Griff jumping 230% following her reimagined performance of ‘Black Hole’ on Tuesday evening, which is now available to listen to and view exclusively in the Amazon Music app

Based on just two days consumption and with further increases likely, overall uplift across winners and performer physical and digital (all platform) album sales was +15.6%, while streams across tracks by performers increased by 18.7%. Arlo Parks and The Weeknd were the main beneficiaries with Arlo Parks’ album Collapsed in Sunbeams seeing a 93% sales increase, and The Weeknd’s After Hours album increasing sales by 41%.

Geoff Taylor, Chief Executive BPI & BRIT Awards said: “The significant increases in digital engagement across all BRITs channels confirm that the performances in front of invited key workers, and the live excitement of the night, really connected with the public. We are delighted at the success of this year’s digital campaign.”

The BRIT Awards 2021 digital campaign was led by Kate Wyn Jones, Business Development Director at EMI Records and BPI Director of Digital Giuseppe De Cristofano who jointly co-chair The BRIT Awards 2021 Digital Committee  working with content agency Somethin’ Else led by Exec Producer Zosia Morris and Senior Producer Darren Struwig.

Kate Wyn Jones, Business Development Director at EMI Records:

“Our ambition for this year was one of inclusion, bringing audiences along with us on the road to The BRITs, most significantly, through the eyes of nominees and performers. Artists’ content played a pivotal role in building anticipation from nominations to show across their own social communities. This year’s results are a testament to the combined efforts of the BRITS digital committee, Remedy Inc and Somethin Else that resulted in some truly memorable moments ahead of the show. The extensive coverage captured on the day, culminated in a comprehensive cross platform activation, offering audiences unique access to the day’s proceedings and more opportunities than ever to engage with artists and feel part of the show!”

 Giuseppe De Cristofano, BPI Director of Digital said: “I am delighted with the social results from this year’s campaign. Despite a challenging on-site set-up, the Somethin’ Else team were able to provide our passionate audience with unprecedented real-time coverage. We have seen remarkable year-on-year growth in engagement, views and artist engagement with the BRITs. The success of our Red Carpet Show on all platforms coupled with the strong performance of our international YouTube stream demonstrates the continued global digital appeal of our channels and the strength of the BRITs brand. I’d like to thank my co-chair Kate Wyn Jones for all her help in leading and shaping this year’s event.”

BRITs Digital Highlights

Jack Whitehall takes you behind the scenes of The BRIT Awards 2021 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WB1xX39bHmE

The BRIT Awards 2021 in 3 minutes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jdjceO89lCA

Harry Styles’ official winner asset, our most engaged tweet https://twitter.com/BRITs/status/1392217018737336328

Taylor Swift accepting her BRITs Global Icon Award https://twitter.com/BRITs/status/1392224972639281156

Arlo Parks talking to Yasmin Evans on the Red Carpet about being a Swiftie and meeting Dua Lipa https://twitter.com/BRITs/status/1392178006861520898

Little Mix walking to the winner’s podium to collect their Award https://twitter.com/BRITs/status/1392199663130918913

AJ Tracey and Young T and Bugsey on the Red Carpet https://twitter.com/BRITs/status/1392167689293025285

Rina Sawayama arriving on the Red Carpet https://twitter.com/BRITs/status/1392191223952285696

Craig David reacting to HAIM fan-girling over him https://twitter.com/CraigDavid/status/1392193895115759619

Reese Witherspoon reacting to Taylor Swift’s speech https://twitter.com/ReeseW/status/1392858729133924352

Harry Styles’ winner speech, our most engaged post on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/p/COvxzIRHQy7/

Little Mix’s official winner portraits, photographed by Danny Kasyire https://www.instagram.com/p/COv1oJ5HLfp/

Elton John and Olly Alexander performance clip on Reels https://www.instagram.com/reel/COwAt5en_SG/?igshid=1xutxrn32kpt4

Dua Lipa behind the scenes with her official winner portrait https://www.instagram.com/p/CO0JMukH3QZ/

Griff’s official winner portraits

https://www.instagram.com/p/COv2223H9cJ/

Little Mix’s winners interview as history makers https://www.instagram.com/p/COxHy0zH0Ax/

Headie One performance clip

https://www.instagram.com/p/COvyVc_Hu2Z/

Jack Whitehall’s behind the scenes camera roll https://www.instagram.com/p/CO0g7F8H8E4/

Olivia Rodrigo performance clip, our most viewed TikTok https://www.tiktok.com/@brits/video/6961120082982423813

Griff arriving on the Red Carpet

https://www.tiktok.com/@brits/video/6961095015267372294

Headie One arriving on the Red Carpet https://www.tiktok.com/@brits/video/6961096496989129989

Young T and Bugsey on the Red Carpet https://www.tiktok.com/@brits/video/6961092579798699269

Four lads in jeans meme, plus Jack Whitehall https://www.tiktok.com/@brits/video/6961132971982130438

Headie One and AJ Tracey performance clip https://www.tiktok.com/@brits/video/6961139765450181893