Taylor Swift’s Apple Music Ad Has Drake Swimming In Cash

Drake has reportedly seen an incredible upturn in sales following Taylor Swift’s Apple Music Ad. The advertisement featured Taylor Swift running on a treadmill, singing along loudly to the beat of Drake’s “Jumpman” before falling off the machine, still rapping along with the recording.

The result was not only excellent publicity for Apple Music and Taylor, but also for Drake, whose track single was turned into an overnight hit. Since the video launched a few days ago, sales for Drake’s “Jumpman” have risen 431 percent worldwide on iTunes, according to Fortune.

Apple Music is offering many new features in its attempts to keep up with other streaming services like Pandora and Spotify, and the ad highlighted the variety of playlists on the platform that are categorized by activity type.

In the video, right after stating that she hates cardio, Swift mentioned she’d be listening to the playlist #GymFlow, and the amount of listeners who have tuned into that playlist since has jumped 325 percent since before the launch. The playlist leaped to No. 5 on the playlist charts as of this week.

The video in entirety was posted to Taylor’s social media pages with the caption, “Based on true events.”

Since she posted the video and Apple Music publicly marketed the clip, it has received more than 20 million views on social media. It has also been retweeted almost 70,000 times with more than 120,000 likes.

Apple Music head Larry Jackson told AdWeek that they intentionally tapped into Swift’s incredible social media following in order to market their service to an even broader audience. In addition, they decided to go with something fresh and shareable in order to garner more social attention.

“To really get an idea that was simple, informative and funny with hooks is really like writing a song,” Jackson stated. “With an artist that’s got 73 million followers on Instagram, that’s bigger than NBC, CBS and Fox and the viewership of prime time combined.”

Even though Jackson said that Swift’s social pages beat out major news outlets, they’re still planning to run the feature in a 60-second commercial slot on ESPN, CBS, NBC, ABC, and Fox with more television slots coming in the future. Before long, their Taylor Swift-based ad campaign will have permeated social news feeds, media outlets, and email.

“We wanted to capture that feeling that music accompanies every element of your life, and the [Apple Music] service is the backbone of that concept,” director Anthony Mandler told Billboard. “When you match that with Taylor’s stance of dancing like nobody’s watching, I think it was a very effortless flow.”

This is all part of their branding initiative in which Apple Music is making an effort to strengthen their brand. Apple recognized the importance of a great logo and how people associate with such.

The Apple Music logo is slightly different than the single white apple you see with the rest of their products, and in order to get that motto clearly into people’s minds, they’ve developed an advertisement that focuses on a famous person in the music industry with some entertainment and comedy thrown in.

Now Taylor Swift, one of the most iconic people in music, will always be associated with Apple Music, as will Drake’s song “Jumpman.” It’s basically free advertising for the streaming service anytime someone who’s seen the commercial listens to either Drake or Taylor Swift.

“The idea that you kind of hear the reel like you’re in her head and you’re watching her like you’re part of the room—that sort of access and intimacy was paramount for us,” Mandler said. “What you’ll see in the other spots is a camera that sits back and watches things unfold.”

It’s interesting that Taylor would now be the “spokesperson” for Apple Music, particularly after such a rocky history with the streaming service. It was widely publicized when, last June, she wrote an open letter to Apple Music about their decision to not pay artists for the music offered during Apple Music’s free trial.

It didn’t take long for Apple to recant their decision, and now Swift and the streaming service seem to be thick as thieves. They began working together when Apple Music made an exclusive documentary about Taylor’s 1989 tour in October. From there, talks began about an ad campaign, and the rest is history.

Now, Apple Music has exclusive rights to some of Taylor’s music, including a new music video for her song “New Romantics.” Apple Music has exclusive rights to it as of now, but it may be released for publication on other media in the future.

Taylor Swift’s partnership with Apple Music seems to be highly lucrative for both herself and Drake, and there may be other artists who benefit as well.

[Image via Frederick M. Brown/Getty Images]