Brand USA Expands Creative Music Campaign to Showcase Endless Destination Experiences to Visitors Worldwide
Hear The Music, Experience The USA adds 10 Cities and 10 Artists to Its Campaign
Brand USA, the destination-marketing organization for the United States, announces the expansion of Hear The Music, Experience The USA, an integrated marketing campaign that uses the power of American music to promote U.S. destinations to international travelers. Building on the success of the initial 2018 campaign, Brand USA has worked with 10 incredibly talented artists whose hometown musical heritage has influenced their interpretation of two iconic American songs: “What I Like About You” by The Romantics and “Boogie Shoes” by KC and the Sunshine Band. Hear The Music captures the universal appeal of American music by forging authentic and compelling connections, which transcend boundaries, borders, and cultures.
The campaign uses one of America’s most important assets, music, to invite the world to discover the people and places behind the USA’s rich music history. Each U.S. city, state, and region has a different musical sound, which is influenced by its diversity of people and culture. As an extension of Hear The Music, Brand USA has created unique ways for its global audience to engage with the music, including customized playlists, artist recommended itineraries, and inspiring video content. The 10 artists and 10 cities and musical genres are as follows:
“What I Like About You”
- Dr JOE (Rock), Austin, Texas
- Lady Lark (Pop), Minneapolis, Minnesota
- The late Mike Ledbetter (Blues), Chicago, Illinois
- The Wooks (Blue Grass), Owensboro, Kentucky
- Xperimento (Latin Fusion), Miami, Florida
“Boogie Shoes”
- 2019 Grammy nominated artist Cedric Burnside (Blues), Jackson, Mississippi
- Kat Meoz (Rock and Roll), West Hollywood, California
- Omar Aragones (Hip Hop), Detroit, Michigan
- Robin Barnes (Jazz/Soul), New Orleans, Louisiana
- Frankie Moreno (Vintage Rock), Las Vegas, Nevada
“Music can inspire travel through the emotional bonds it creates. Combining the power of music with the immersive content of the Hear The Music, Experience The USA campaign, our global audience can continue to explore new destinations while seeing people and places they thought they knew through a new lens,” said Tom Garzilli, chief marketing officer, Brand USA. “The United States is and always has been a melting pot, and American music reflects the fusion of cultures, traditions, and ethnicities that travelers from around the world are invited to discover. We are thrilled to build on this successful campaign to bring our rich musical heritage to a global community of listeners.”
Brand USA will also expand its partnership with Spotify to create an additional five city-inspired playlists. The additional cities are Austin, Texas; West Hollywood, California; Owensboro, Kentucky; Las Vegas, Nevada; and Jackson, Mississippi.
The music landing page on VisitTheUSA.com offers immersive and captivating content and allows visitors to hear unique sounds from several noteworthy locations, learn more about the artists, listen to the Spotify playlists, view photos, access music videos, and explore artist suggested itineraries designed to peak interest and inspire travel to the USA. The content is also available via GoUSA TV, Brand USA’s streaming TV platform featuring authentic and on-demand video content about the experiences in the United States. Throughout the campaign the content will appear in the following markets: United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, India, France, Germany, Japan, South Korea, Brazil, and Mexico. The content will be available in English, French, German, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, and Spanish.
Hear The Music, Experience The USA is a collaboration between Brand USA and Mustache, the creative agency responsible for conceiving and producing the music-centric creative showing the unique power of American music as a cultural lens. Mediacom, Brand USA’s global media agency, provided the traveler insights and performance data underpinning the partnership.
Brand USA invites the global travel community to follow along using the hashtag #HearTheUSA on Facebook, on Instagram, or VisitTheUSA.com/Music.
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Editor’s Note
The videos are available for embedding on Brand USA’s consumer YouTube channel, Visit The USA. The featured artists' bios are available here at the bottom of each webpage.
About Mustache
Mustache is content — Scripted, Unscripted, Live Action, Animation, Short Form, Long Form, TV, Social Media, Commercial, Branded Content and beyond. Founded in 2010 and headquartered in Brooklyn, NY, Mustache is staffed with a passionate and diverse collection of multi-hyphenate creators and doers, and is uniquely calibrated to craft soup-to-nuts, visually-stunning, imaginative, thoughtful, hilarious content and campaigns for any platform. Born of an instinct to buck tradition and institutional bloat, Mustache's energized team is designed to contend with the biggest dinosaurs in the advertising, digital and entertainment industries.
In 2019, Mustache was acquired by Cognizant Interactive -- a powerful digital experience agency, recognized by AdAge as the #1 digital agency network in the U.S. and the #3 in the world. Learn more about Mustache at www.MustacheAgency.com.
About MediaCom
MediaCom is "The Content + Connections Agency," working on behalf of its clients to leverage their brands' entire system of communications across paid, owned and earned channels to deliver a step change in their business outcomes. MediaCom is one of the world's leading media communications specialists, with billings of US$33 billion (Source: RECMA June 2017), employing 7,000 people in 125 offices across 100 countries. Its global client roster includes: Dell, Coca-Cola (TCCC), Mars, NBC Universal, P&G, PSA, Sony, Shell and Richemont. The agency was recently named Global Agency of the Year at the 2017 M&M Awards, an accolade it has been awarded 7 times in the past 9 years and FOM Global Agency Network of the Year in 2017, winning an unprecedented 18 awards.
MediaCom is a member of WPP, the world's largest marketing communications services group, and part of GroupM, WPP's consolidated media investment management arm.
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About Brand USA
Brand USA, the destination marketing organization for the United States, was established by the Travel Promotion Act as the nation’s first public-private partnership to promote the United States as a premier travel destination and to communicate U.S. travel policies and procedures to worldwide travelers. The organization’s mission is to increase international visitation to the United States in order to fuel the U.S. economy and enhance the image of the United States worldwide. Formed as the Corporation for Travel Promotion in 2010, the public-private entity began operations in May 2011 and does business as Brand USA. According to studies by Oxford Economics, over the past ten years Brand USA's marketing initiatives have helped welcome 8 million incremental visitors to the United States, benefiting the U.S. economy with more than $58 billion in total economic impact and supporting, on average, more than 37,000 incremental jobs a year.
For industry or partner information about Brand USA, visit TheBrandUSA.com or follow us on Facebook, LinkedIn, and X/Twitter. To discover more about the USA and the boundless diversity of American travel experiences and authentic, rich culture, please visit Brand USA's consumer website VisitTheUSA.com; follow Visit The USA on Facebook, TikTok, and Instagram; and watch travel shows on GoUSATV.