CLOSE FRIENDS - LIL YACHTY

On November 14th, 11.3 million people unknowingly found themselves inside one of the most exclusive clubs on the internet. Somehow, they’d made it into rap sensation Lil Yachty's Instagram Close Friends. 

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Bewildered and in awe, folks instantly took to the internet to ask why and created memes celebrating the occasion. Someone even went as far as emailing their professor, stating they’d miss class to revel in the moment.

This was no accident, though. This was a strategic, energy-driving stunt to launch Instagram’s expanded Close Friends product feature.

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What is Close Friends? It’s a curated, exclusive list of people users connect and share content with (without the rest of your following seeing it) on Instagram. Previously limited to Stories, the new Close Friends now allows users to create and connect through Carousels, Reels, Notes, and Feed posts. 

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To get Gen Z hyped about this massive update, we had Lil Yachty add all 11.3 million of his followers to his Close Friends. Then, he started posting authentically, like only his real close friends were watching.

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It started with one hilarious selfie, where he revealed he’d thrown up days earlier during his Camp Flog Gnaw performance. Then, Yachty dropped a series of explosive posts on the TL that flexed the revamped ways to connect through Close Friends. He premiered unreleased music in Reels, gave his friends a BTS look at tour life in a Carousel dump, and even previewed his never-before-been-seen Nike AF1s in feed.  

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Sure enough, the internet went berserk. 

Together, we made Close Friends one of the most talked about things in culture, not just the internet. 
- We generated 300M+ organic campaign impressions
- Close Friends and Yachty both became top trending topics on X and TikTok
- We increased Lil Yachty’s IG follower count by 700K+
- We grew conversation by 191% (IG Close Friends) & 5400% (Lil Yachty/IG Close Friends) within the first 2 weeks of the stunt
- We increased mentions of IG Close Friends by 2068% vs the same period in 2022
- Google searches for Close Friends increased 300% during launch week 
- We earned upwards of 68M + organic impressions across Yachty’s IG Close Friends posts

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We know the youth don’t like ads. So, we didn’t make any. By subtly leaning into Gen Z’s most important advertising tenets – authenticity, expression, and accessibility, we broke through in ways no one ever saw coming.