20M views as Apple Music’s Taylor Swift ad goes viral

The memorable Apple Music ad featuring Taylor Swift falling off the treadmill while listening to Drake and Future’s Jumpman, has notched up 20 million views on Instagram and Faceboook since it launched on April 1.

Swift’s tweet of the ad racked up 66,960 retweets and 119,000 likes.

Sporting the company’s Beats Electronics Powerbeats2 Wireless earphones, she picks a curated “Gymflow” playlist from Apple Music and chooses the Drake/Famous track.(That in itself saw #gymflow plays leap 325%, making it the No. 5 playlist of the week.

The perfectly coiffured Swift starts rapping to the track along with her signature gawky dance moves as she works out. Of course unleashing her inner rap goddess inevitably ends up in disaster, and she tumbles off the treadmill, continuing to rap as she does so.

Apple Music has not released numbers on how many streams and subscriptions were generated as a result of the ad. But its Head of Content, Larry Jackson, told Ad News, “To really get an idea that was simple, informative and funny with hooks is really like writing a song. 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.”

As a result of the ad, Jumpman enjoyed a 431% rise in global sales on iTunes. In the US, where it went platinum, the track had gone to #1 on Billboard’s US Rhythmic, #3 on the US Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs and #12 on its Hot 100.

Its director Anthony Mandler explained, “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. When you match that with Taylor’s stance of dancing like nobody’s watching, I think it was a very effortless flow.”

The relationship between Swift and Apple has not always been amicable. Last June she lashed out at the company’s decision for not paying artists as part of its three-month free trial launch.

She wrote: “These are not the complaints of a spoiled, petulant child. These are the echoed sentiments of every artist, writer and producer in my social circles who are afraid to speak up publicly because we admire and respect Apple so much. We simply do not respect this particular call.”

Apple soon changed its mind and Swift referred to it as “distractingly good.” By October, she and Apple were talking about the documentary of her 1989 world tour as an exclusive to Apple Music for December.

In November, after an Apple Music ad starring country star Kenny Chesney launched at the Country Music Awards, Swift’s peeps began talking about her fronting a campaign.

The treadmill ad will run as a 60-second TVC on America’s ESPN, CBS, NBC, ABC and Fox. She will do more ads in the next few weeks, and then feature in a larger campaign with other musicians in time for Apple Music’s first anniversary on June 30. Reports are that it will be prime time enough to take on its major rival Spotify (30 million subscribers compared to its 11 million) and other streaming services.