Sandbox CAMPAIGNS OF THE YEAR 2013 Issue 99 | 18th December 2013 Here are 25 of the best and most interesting digital music campaigns of the year, presented in alphabetial order by artist / event name. They cover the bells-and-whistles big-budget productions as well as those run on a shoestring. They also range from cutting-edge new artists to the jewels of the catalogue business, taking in a variety of genres and niches along the way. Here we get the people behind them to explain how they did things, why they did things and what the results were. Issue 99 | 18th December 2013 | Page 2 Anjunabeats: Above & Beyond Overview: Pre-event activity • Fans entered by creating ABGT050 photo and video content on Instagram and Campaign budget: 1) Countdown Concept & context tagging their entries with the hashtag £2,001 - £5,000 • ABGT050 was the landmark 50th episode • Countdown via www.aboveandbeyond.nu #MYABGT050 of Above & Beyond’s weekly radio show, and social networks from 50 days to go – Audience demographics: Group Therapy (otherwise known as in the form of countdown banners and key In-event activity Gender: 70% male / 30% female ABGT), which has 30m listeners worldwide ABGT milestones which were posted on 1) Online hub Age: 54% 18-24, 28% 25-34, 10% 13-17, 8% 35 social networks every five days • The event was a live radio show and & older • Designed and developed in partnership headline event, Above & Beyond’s biggest 2) Interactive initiative – #MYABGT050 with LessThan3 and hosted at http://www. Location: Worldwide show of 2013 and the biggest Group competition & Google+ Hangout aboveandbeyond.nu/abgt050. The hub Therapy show to date Team members involved: • We ran a #MYABGT050 competition to win broadcast the live radio show, and also • It was a sold-out 10,000 capacity event at displayed pages containing the following Lucy Blair – digital marketing manager a Google+ Hangout with Above & Beyond Gareth Jones – radio & promotions manager Alexandra Palace content: (their first ever Google+ Hangout) Corentin Kerisit – head of digital » Instagram photos tagged with Leena Lewis – Involved Management #ABGT050 Giuliana Hilton – Involved Management Laura Bruneau – label executive » Tweets tagged with #ABGT050 Dom Donnelly – digital marketing executive Ari Evans & Bryant Williams from LessThan3 » Live chat functionality (designed and developed the online hub) » Exclusive messages from Above & Beyond to fans Links: http://www.aboveandbeyond.nu/abgt050/ » Live photos from Alexandra Palace http://www.aboveandbeyond.nu/myabgt050/ » Artist pages http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ERYMSP7 » Anjunastore page Wxc&feature=share https://soundcloud.com/aboveandbeyond » Skype message page Post-event activity 1) Content • iTunes podcasts of each artist’s set went live the day after the show Issue 99 | 18th December 2013 | Page 3 continued… • Two days after the show we launched an Results: Above & Beyond SoundCloud partner profile at the same time as uploading the Pre-event results A&B ABGT050 set, containing 16 brand #MYABGT050 competition new and exclusive tracks • Over 800 #MYABGT050 competition • Official photo album uploaded to entries Facebook Google+ Hangout • Fan photo booth album uploaded to Facebook, where fans were encouraged to • Over 500 concurrent viewers tuned in live tag themselves to the Google+ Hangout • New Above & Beyond track, ‘Mariana • Hangout has had 15k views on Above & Trench’, which had its first play at Beyond’s YouTube since transmission ABGT050, was uploaded to YouTube on 1st • Above & Beyond’s Google+ following grew November after premiering on ABGT by 3k • ABGT050 artist interviews (there were YouTube five supporting artists who DJed on the night as well as Above & Beyond) were put • Hangout drove a spike in YouTube subscribers of 190%, and a spike of 160% live on YouTube straight after the show • Above & Beyond’s in minutes watched (vs. 2013 average) ended and promoted on social networks ABGT050 set has had throughout the following two weeks Instagram over 110k plays since • Still to come: official aftermovie 28th October and drove a • Above & Beyond’s Instagram growth MOM huge spike in SoundCloud October 201 vs September 2013: followers 2) Promotion of upcoming album listens, with over 15k plays +657%, likes +45%, comments +53% in the first 24 hours alone • Video of Above & Beyond’s acoustic • The ABGT050 set also version of ‘Sun & Moon’ being played In-event results drove huge listening at ABGT050 – a track taken from their Online hub spikes on other Above forthcoming Acoustic album – was & Beyond SoundCloud uploaded to Facebook at the end of the • Generated over 30k visits from over 130 content on the same day show, then YouTube two days after the countries, over 20k chat messages, 3.5k show tweets, 2.5k FB shares, 150k image / photo impressions Issue 99 | 18th December 2013 | Page 4 Parlophone: Gabrielle Aplin Overview: Campaign budget: Gabrielle Aplin secured the coveted John [£5,001 – £10,000] Lewis Christmas ad soundtrack (2012) with her cover of ‘The Power Of Love’. As a result Audience demographics: of its success, we pushed the release plans of her own material back by a few months. Gender: Female skewed Working towards the album coming out in Age: 79% 13-24 May, we needed to find a way to reignite that Location: Bath/London initial interest and get people to fall in love with her in her own right. Team members involved: Gabrielle already had a sizeable YouTube Jude Stone – digital marketing following – she had 8m official content plays Alex Eden-Smith – marketing on YouTube and 44,000 subscribers with Will Nichols – digital creative 10,000+ daily plays. We chose YouTube as Will Beardmore – digital creative production the key platform digitally to push the English James Barnes – management Rain release and looked at a creative way for SMV Group – digital advertising her to engage with her fanbase and connect To ‘Hot Leads’, we supplied an 18-minute • Socials were actively maintained daily with a wider prospective audience. sampler of the album, an unreleased album by Gabrielle herself, interacting with fans Links: We were the first advertiser on YouTube track and an exclusive acoustic version of her across each network. http://gabrielleaplin.co.uk to make use of the ability to segment the biggest single, followed by a personalised http://youtube.com/gabrielleaplin • The campaign included a promotion audience by their relationship with the film message from Gabrielle. ‘Warm Leads’ http://twitter.com/gabrielleaplin around Gabrielle’s headline tour. We content, rather than by demographics or received the entry-level content of official launched an optimised platform that http://facebook.com/gabrielleaplin keyword targeting. We separated ‘Hot Leads’ videos and a cover version of the song encouraged fans to upload songs and (fans who had liked or shared Gabrielle’s ‘Dreams’ with Bastille. pick a tour date that they would like to videos or who had watched less-viewed Alongside the YouTube campaign we support on Gabrielle’s tour. Fans and content) from ‘Warm Leads’ (people who engaged and explored all other platforms. friends were able to use Facebook and had only watched one video or entry level Twitter to promote the competition and material like covers of other artists). We then • Dedicated tools were built for Panic Cord various performances. Gabrielle picked retargeted them with a sequence of specially http://www.gabrielleaplin.co.uk/paniccord/ the winners herself and these winning developed video content in YouTube in- & English Rain: http://www.gabrielleaplin. fans won the opportunity to perform stream. co.uk/englishrain/. on her tour at each respective live date. Issue 99 | 18th December 2013 | Page 5 continued… Sessions were performed for the iTunes In just one month on the tour support • The people who were exposed to our single/album/tour/international and is still Festival, Spotify, Shazam and others and mechanic, we received over 2k video entries advertising went on to explore her in place and ongoing. was supported across all of her channels. and over 250k votes. channel – deepening their interest with • A cohesive campaign that was informed 275k incremental views. For the YouTube campaign, we were by all areas of our marketing team, Results: rewarded with engagement rates, which artist/manager, A&R, digital, marketing, Key learnings: The album entered the chart at #2 with sales surpassed anything we had ever seen. creative, A/V, radio, online, print, live, TV, to date topping 120k with a healthy digital • Confirmed the importance of a hyper- advertising, brands, sync and, of course, • We drove 595k interactions with 15% of share of over 50%. targeted remarketing strategy across the the fans. our audience watching the 18-minute label. YouTube plays jumped from 8m to over 40m album sampler in its entirety. official content plays and saw subscribers • YouTube as a platform proves that a long- • Our audience took to Twitter in droves increase from just 44k to an impressive 267k. term plan is as valuable as short bursts to tell their friends about how much they around releases. Gabrielle signed with 29k Facebook fans and loved our advertising, taking photos of 11k Twitter fans. Facebook climbed 635% to the pre-rolls and creating the hashtag • A long-term campaign is not just about 213k and Twitter from 1.2k% to 137k. #notskipping. singles; ours was a continual strategy of Issue 99 | 18th December 2013 | Page 6 XL Recordings: Atoms For Peace Overview: and tech-savvy fanbase. Using Thom and the We then set about bringing the aesthetic to band’s social networks to hint what we had life in the real world in a way that fans could Campaign budget: Christopher Leckie, our digital creative done helped people get excited about Atoms directly engage with. To celebrate the band’s [£25,000 +] director, worked closely with Stanley For Peace as a new band.” three-night residency at the Roundhouse in Donwood to bring his artwork to life.