Reverse Engineering Travis Scott's Fortnite Concert
It was insane...
From April 23 to April 25, rapper Travis Scott hosted a concert on the video game Fortnite.
I think most people missed the insanity of this event. It was incredible — I spent most of the concert staring at my screen in disbelief and muttering to myself, “That’s so wild. That’s so insane. That’s so awesome.” Travis Scott x Fortnite present ‘Astronomical’ was held over three days across several timezones. There were 12 million concurrent live viewers, which is similar to the audience size of NFL’s Monday Night Football. If you consider this a ‘concert,’ it’s the biggest concert Travis Scott has ever hosted and the operational costs were definitely lower.
He has redefined what a concert can be and also built an incredibly sophisticated marketing campaign.
But what else should you expect? As described by Dan Runcie from the newsletter Trapital, Travis Scott is the ‘Growth Hacker’ of Hip Hop. Immediately after the launch of his 2018 album Astroworld, Travis had a different 24-hour merch drop every day for the following nine days in order to cross-promote merch, tickets, and grow digital downloads.
He has his own record label Cactus Jack Records and a shoe line with Nike. In 2018, he started his own festival called Astroworld that sold out 50,000 tickets before its lineup was even announced. In 2019, Travis played at the Superbowl halftime show and released a documentary on Netflix called Travis Scott: Look Mom, I Can Fly. Momentum has been building for this rapper who just ten years ago was practically homeless and cut off financially by his parents.
Travis Scott is also known for having pretty insane live concerts. Often controversially, the crowds at his concerts have sometimes been described as unsafe. In his Netflix documentary you can see he was arrested by police for ‘inciting a riot’ at his concert in Arkansas.
What’s very important to understand is the Travis Scott aesthetic. Both his music and visual brand are colorful, overwhelming, multi-sensory experiences. Listen to his songs and you’ll hear rapid beat switches. Watch his music videos and you’ll feel like you are on an acid trip:
He has an above average level of visual art baked into his music. So that makes 28-year-old Travis Scott the perfect person to host a concert on Fortnite.
For those of you who have never played Fortnite, let me break down how the concert worked:
This is the setting. You are a Fortnite player wandering around a beachside town that has a concert stage setup on the water.
Scene 1 - Ominous music starts playing as a floating planet crash lands into the water. A giant version of Travis Scott emerges from the wreckage and begins stomping around like Godzilla while his hit song ‘Sicko Mode’ starts playing.
Scene 2 - After a few minutes, fire starts raining down from the sky and the lava burns the skin off Giant Travis as he’s revealed to be a cyborg. He dances around as the song ‘Stargazing’ plays.
Scene 3 - Giant Cyborg Travis now turns neon as a rollercoaster filled with pulsating lights starts expanding around the world. The song ‘Goosebumps’ is playing.
Scene 4 - Out of nowhere, we are transported to some underwater world as Giant Travis is now wearing a steampunk diving suit. All of the players are swimming around him and the song ‘Highest in the Room’ is playing.
Scene 5 - We revert back to ‘Sicko Mode,’ and the sky fills up with what looks like the kind of laser pointers you would see on a Planetarium ceiling.
Scene 6 - We are now floating in outer space as the song ‘The Scotts” starts playing. Giant Travis is walking on a revolving earth that begins to explode. We start rapidly flying towards the horizon.
We have gone through the full ‘Astronomical’ journey and the concert is now over. Five-ish songs. Under ten minutes of content. An unforgettable memory.
It’s worth watching the concert yourself on Youtube.
Let’s take a step back and view this from a business lens. Travis Scott is primarily a musician but considers himself enough of an entertainment brand to have several other business interests like fashion.
Travis Scott was the headline act for Coachella Music Festival, which was supposed to take place last month but got pushed back because of the Coronavirus. Because of Covid-19, no one knows the next time Travis will be able to host a live concert again. Putting myself in the shoes of Travis Scott and his team, they needed a brand new way to market to his audience and in preparation for Coachella, they already probably had plans elaborate art exhibits or concert visual effects.
I don’t know who approached who, but Fortnite and Travis Scott eventually came together and they make a great pair. I’ve reverse engineered part of his marketing campaign for the concert from the perspective of an actual fan.
I first heard about the concert through this TikTok ad:
Clicking on the TikTok Ad brought me to this dedicated website:
It’s clear from just the structure of this website that Travis Scott is one of the most forward thinking musicians when it comes to commercial sense and marketing sophistication.
Travis thinks internationally. He made a specific effort to broadcast the concert across multiple timezones. It doesn’t take much effort but it’s very considerate for his international fanbase. Some fans likely tuned into the concert from countries where Travis Scott has never hosted a physical concert.
Do you recognise the logo on the third pink button on the left hand side? It’s the logo of VKontakte, better known as VK, the biggest social network in Russia. I haven’t seen a VK logo on any other musician’s website, ever. Including a connection to VK is pretty unique, expands his international reach, and might hint at Travis having true insight on where his fans live around the world.
He used gamification, allowing people to unlock ‘free gear’ by completing Astronomical Challenges.
Of course, he showcased all the beautiful virtual skins and emotes you could buy for your Fortnite character and special items to unlock by attending the event.
The primary business model for the virtual concert is that Travis Scott sells digital skins on Fortnite. The Travis Scott skins were leaked in February and the official drop happened just a couple of days before the event.
You could buy each skin for about 1,500-2,000 Fortnite V-bucks ($15-20). No one knows the exact number of skins sold, but as per estimates from media analyst Matthew Ball, it’s reasonable to assume Travis has sold millions of virtual items (skins, emotes, and more).
Stuart Dredge from Music Ally calculated that “If just 1% of that first concert’s audience bought the Astronomical Bundle, that’d be $2.7M of gross revenues. If 10% bought just the Travis Scott skin individually that’d be nearly $18.5M.”
Don’t forget that the incremental unit cost of each skin is essentially zero, since it’s a digital product made from software. In contrast, it costs more money to physically print Travis Scott T-shirts or other offline merch.
I missed the concert when it was live, but watched it on Youtube afterwards. While watching the concert, I forgot the name of one of the songs playing so I pulled up the app Shazam.
After confirming the name of the song on Shazam, I noticed a featured pop-up ‘Travis Scott x Fortnite.’ By clicking on that, I was brought to an Apple Music sponsored playlist of the tracks from the Fortnite concert. This helps Travis drive more streams of the specific songs played at the concert.
Most people likely did not see event live on Fortnite, but watched the replay video on Youtube. If you watch the official Youtube video, you will be served a call-to-action at the end of the video to go buy products from his website.
And the concert itself involved digital product placement, as the giant Travis Scott character was wearing his own brand of Nike shoes.
Reaction videos from famous Youtubers helped boost awareness of the concert. The accumulated views just from reaction videos are in the tens of millions and each one is user-generated content that turns into free marketing for Travis Scott.
Travis Scott brought me through a complete marketing funnel.
1) Awareness = I was made aware of the event through TikTok Ads, the dedicated website, and the Shazam ads.
2) Consideration = Watching the concert itself on Youtube brought me closer to Travis Scott’s music and products, and watching authentic reaction videos made me like him even more.
3) Conversion = At the end of the videos, there was a call-to-action link that brought me to his website to buy merch.
Put this all together, and you start to see a truly modern marketing plan. This is something that should be on the front page of marketing trade press. Yet I haven’t seen articles in AdWeek, AdAge, or Digiday talking about this.
In 2018, DJ Marshmello was the first musician to host a concert on Fortnite. Diplo hosted a Fortnite concert two weekends ago, but it was more traditional, featuring Diplo DJing the entire time. You could also buy themed skins as part of a pack that cost $24. Last weekend of May 6th, Steve Aoki, Dillon Francis and Deadmau5 headlined a Fortnite concert that had them playing their own DJ sets.
Compared to these other examples, Travis Scott’s concert was a lot more ambitious and creative.
Travis has innovated on the virtual concert template and redefined what a concert could be. He has brought mainstream credibility to the idea that musicians can sell digital products like Fortnite skins. This goes above and beyond what any other major musician is doing right now.
And from the platform side of things, Fortnite has really flexed their muscles. They have broadened their creative canvas. I would imagine right now Fortnite is getting tons of inbound from other musicians suggesting they do their own immersive concerts, or sports teams proposing virtual worlds, or brands like Coca-Cola proposing themed amusement parks. Depending on their choice of business model, Fortnite could make a lot of money working with brands and entertainers.
Could this scale? From a technical perspective, yes. And there are also rival digital platforms who could put on their own version of immersive virtual concerts—Fortnite does not hold a monopoly on attention. Some obvious contenders are fellow video game rivals like Roblox, Minecraft and Animal Crossing. The quality of the product will increase over time and the digital creative canvas will expand.
You could see a world where the business model of virtual concerts changes. If the quality of the virtual experience increases, you could maybe start charging for tickets. I look forward to a world where the costs of creating virtual concerts decreases, so musicians from any level of fame could host their own virtual concertt and charge for admission. You could eventually get to a point where you experience a concert in VR. Video game platforms might start becoming virtual entertainment platforms beyond music.
And that’s the point. The idea that something is exclusively a ‘concert’ or ‘video game’ has lost meaning in 2020 because everything is increasingly converging. Travis understands this—he realises that being a modern musician can mean being a multi-faceted arts and entertainment Venn diagram. Travis has captured the 2020 zeitgeist and deserves an award for showing us what’s possible.
Right now, live physical events is not an option for anyone. We all need to explore new business models and new marketing paradigms. Virtual concerts are an imperfect and evolving medium, but they’re the most bold and daring examples of innovation. With a virtual experience, you can reach more people, sell more products, and have lower operational costs. This opportunity applies not just to Travis Scott, but every musician, entertainer, or brand.
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