In January, 2015, the iconic Canadian band Rush announced their R40 Live 40th Anniversary tour in addition to a 12 Months of Rush album reissue program from its past record releases from the Mercury Records era.
Seeing an opportunity to promote the tour and album releases with a global promotional program that the Indianapolis 500 could offer, Rush’s management was contacted to discuss opportunities.
Schmidt Peterson Motorsports Verizon IndyCar team had a very popular Canadian driver and host of his own radio show on SiriusXM. The “Canadian” connection between band and driver was identified as a selling point and presented to Rush’s management. They liked it.
SiriusXM came on board as a partner through the relationship with the driver. A program was then finalized after Amazon was brought in as a retail partner/featured destination to buy both Rush music and SiriusXM radios and accessories. A custom Amazon web landing page was designed for purchase opportunities for the Rush retail albums and SiriusXM hardware. Various Rush, SiriusXM, team, and driver content was featured on the site throughout the term of the promotion.
The program highlighted Rush’s incredible catalogue of music and Amazon as a leading retailer destination for the band’s music. In addition, the program also highlighted the relationship between SiriusXM and Amazon.
The whole program showed the power of connecting multiple properties’ assets and goals to form a program that worked for all.