Human Hershey’s Kiss Harry Styles

App downloads increased 94% globally the week the story went live, with worldwide revenue doubling week after. 

When meditation app Calm announced singer Harry Styles would be narrating one of the service’s “sleep stories” — audio recordings designed to lull listeners to sleep — the singer’s fans were anything but calm.

Data from Sensor Tower Inc., shared exclusively with Morning Consult, shows that during the week of July 5 — when Styles’ story was announced and went live — the Calm app was downloaded from the App Store and Google Play store 967,000 times globally, a 94 percent week-over-week increase, and downloaded 356,000 times in the United States, climbing 81 percent week-over-week.

Spending in the app also increased for the week of July 12: Global spending totaled $2.17 million, a 48 percent increase week-over-week, while U.S. spending was up 52 percent to $1.14 million.

[…] When “Dream with Me” went live July 8, the Calm app crashed, with some users experiencing outages when trying to access the recording. Styles’ name was also the top keyword in user reviews during the week of July 5, per Sensor Tower. Styles is an investor in Calm.

Celebrity partnerships are a common marketing tactic for Calm. They have previously released stories narrated by the actors Matthew McConaughey, Nick Offerman and Danai Gurira and the singer Kelly Rowland, among others. But none of those collaborations have generated the amount of interest or revenue that Styles’ has. For example, U.S. installs were down 32 percent week over week when McConaughey’s story premiered and 13 percent lower when Rowland’s debuted.

San Jose 7/11/2018

Photography by me, editing by @lithographarry​

San Jose 7/11/2018

Photography by me, editing by @lithographarry​