American Express

‘Unstaged’ was an original series in partnership with VEVO and YouTube, that saw five concerts live-streamed during 2011 that allowed complete interaction with viewers around the globe.

American Express gathered an impressive collection of bands – Arcade Fire, The Roots, The National – along with some brilliant directors, including Terry Gilliam and Spike Lee, to create these fully immersive concerts.

Viewers could choose their own view of the concert, tweet the bands directly, vote for the encore songs and engage with other users.

Blackberry

The Blackberry sponsored Channel 4 show Live and Lost saw rising UK artists, like Rizzle Kicks and Example, dumped in the middle of nowhere, with nothing but a Blackberry handset and their fans’ texts and social media interactions to guide them towards a secret gig location.

This is Example. Possibly lost, but more likely waiting for a runner to bring him a bacon sandwich.

The series ran for a couple of seasons and did provide a rare opportunity to see quite sweet-natured interaction between artists and fans, even if it felt slightly staged at times.

TalkTalk

TalkTalk, the ubiquitous sponsor of The X-Factor for five years running, continues to build an online relationship with the show.

This year, TalkTalk unveiled TV Time:

This is an app available for iOS and Android, that offers various games and opportunities to win tickets to The X-Factor live shows and other prizes.

Aloft

The hotel brand launched a competition called Play & Stay last year, which gave a platform for up and coming unsigned musicians.

Bands can submit a video or demo to Aloft, then the winner gets to write and record a track with a major label band in a specially constructed studio in London.

The digital spin comes from fans being able to interact with the winning band all the way through the songwriting and recording process via social media channels.

Aloft roped in self-proclaimed ‘the biggest band in the world briefly’ We are Scientists to oversee proceedings.

Here’s the promotional video that proves the band are becoming more and more of a comedy duo as the years march on.

Avon 

Avon Voices was an online talent search for female vocalists to celebrate 125 years of the company.

The competition received 6,000 online video submissions last year, accumulating over 2.5m votes. It certainly pays to offer the general public an opportunity to pit themselves against each other in vocal battle. It will be the final lingering legacy of Simon Cowell.

I’ll leave you with the Lithuanian winner of 2011’s competition, E. Anusaukaitė, and her stirring rendition of ‘I Will Always Love You’.

Check out the PRS for Music report, UK Brand Spend in Music, for more details.