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DECEMBER 20 2017 sandboxMUSIC MARKETING FOR THE DIGITAL ERA ISSUE 194

THE YEAR’S BEST MUSIC MARKETING CAMPAIGNS SPONSOR PAGE

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UK Catalogue STREAMING CAMPAIGN thE year’s best music marketing campaigns elcome to sandbox’s massive 16 ... DUA LIPA 28 ... BRUNO MAJOR 42 ... ED SHEERAN run down of the best, the Contents 03 ... ALT-J 17 ... FOO FIGHTERS 29 ... MAROON 5 43 ... SIGRID Wmost innovative and the most 04 ... ARCADE FIRE 18 ... HAIM 30 ... MURA MASA 44 ... SAM SMITH exciting music marketing campaigns 05 ... THE BEATLES 19 ... IMAGINE DRAGONS 31 ... TOKIO MYERS 45 ... SPARKS of the past 12 months. As usual, 06 ... BIG SHAQ 20 ... IMAGINE FESTIVAL 32 ... NOTHING BUT THIEVES 46 ... SUNDARA KARMA all campaigns are listed in non- 07 ... BLOSSOMS 21 ... ELTON JOHN 33 ... OH WONDER 47 ... TAYLOR SWIFT partisan alphabetical order. But, for 08 ... NICK CAVE 22 ... KASABIAN 34 ... OTHERKIN 48 ... VERA LYNN the first time, we have pinpointed 09 ... THE CHAINSMOKERS 23 ... HARNAAM KAUR, 35 ... LIAM PAYNE 49 ... CARLOS VIVES the campaigns that have impressed 10 ... CHARLI XCX THE BEARDED DAME AND 36 ... P!NK 50 ... LEWIS WATSON us most to give them special 11 ... THE CRIBS SAMMY K, JEWISH RAPPER 37 ... PVRIS 51 ... THE WEEKND commendations. It has been a great 12 ... DEF LEPPARD 24 ... KESHA 38 ... RISE AGAINST 52 ... YELLOW LOUNGE year for music and an equally great 13 ... DEUCE 25 ... ALICIA KEYS 39 ... ROYAL BLOOD year for music marketing. Here is the 14 ... DISCO DONNIE PRESENTS 26 ... KOVE 40 ... ROBIN SCHULZ cream of the crop. 15 ... DIZZEE RASCAL 27 ... LITTLE MIX 41 ... SHAKIRA 2 | sandbox | ISSUE 194 | 20.12.17 SANDBOX 2017 SURVEY ALT–J INFECTIOUS MUSIC/BMG

Photo: Mads Perch TEAM MEMBERS INVOLVED

Jo Power – senior marketing manager, BMG CAMPAIGN BREAKDOWN Sam Hill – director of digital marketing, BMG CAMPAIGN BUDGET £10,000–£15,000 Will Cooper – director of digital retail, BMG Dan Robinson – product manager, BMG AUDIENCE DEMOGRAPHIC Stephen Taverner – East City Management AGE: 18–24, 24–34 Patrick Perring – web designer, Another Kind FEMALE: 56% OVERVIEW OF CAMPAIGN MALE: 44% LOCATION: Global For alt-J’s third album, Relaxer, the artist’s creative was based on the 1998 videogame, LSD Dream Emulator – a cult Japanese game an alt-J super room, featuring an interview with the band – one of envisaged as one of the first videogame art the first times such a feature had run. Spotify supported through projects and based on its developer’s “dream playlists, mobile marquee and an outdoor advertising campaign; they journal”. With this strong concept, we licensed also ran homepage takeovers in various territories using animated imagery from the game and worked with visuals from the ‘In Cold Blood’ video. Spotify created boutique visual artists to create unique teaser content content, including a “gamified” Facebook canvas marketing plan. on social media. Alongside this, snippets of historical code languages were used on socials KEY LEARNINGS for fans to decipher ‘in video’ content and in the source code of altjband.com. The fanbase The momentum gained from prioritising streaming on the was hugely engaged, creating microcosms of campaigns for the band’s first two albums has helped generate fan conversation – reaching almost triple the Thanks to BMG’s in-house advertising nearly 2bn streams to date and meant they had already grown a existing social following organically over the system, wide targets and engaged fans from loyal and engaged fanbase on streaming platforms, who were ready teaser and announcement campaign. previous album campaigns were segmented and waiting for the new album. This has helped Relaxer already race Working with design agency Another rewarding engaged fans and capturing out to push awareness content or early past 100m streams on Spotify alone and has established the band Kind, we replicated an entire level of them for specific retargeting. We also pre-orders to specific fan groups. Each group as one of the biggest independent UK streaming artists. LSD Dream Emulator on altjband.com to used media partners to reflect this was monitored and optimised on a day-by- • Over 100m Spotify album streams of Relaxer create an interactive visual experience to creative style; for example, an exclusive day basis and all data remains within BMG. • Over 2bn artist streams to date flesh out the design concept and create video launch with WeTransfer to their Our sales team engaged with leading • Top 10 charting album an atmospheric world. Entirely mobile network of creatives, showcasing the digital retailers and streaming services as • Organically reached over 250% of the social following around focused, fans could navigate around the video, but also offering an in-depth early as possible to set up features and announce site to find bonus content, teasers, stems interview with the band on their creative editorial support on a global basis, with a • Identified super-fans and different consumer markets early on to and sound effects from unreleased songs, video commissioning process. focus on key markets. Apple Music created retarget later

3 | sandbox | ISSUE 194 | 20.12.17 SANDBOX 2017 SURVEY ARCADE FIRE COLUMBIA RECORDS UK

TEAM MEMBERS INVOLVED

Simon Rollison CAMPAIGN BREAKDOWN Charlie Shawcross CAMPAIGN BUDGET £25,000+ Claire Higgins Paula Hanley AUDIENCE DEMOGRAPHIC Neato AGE: 18-24, 24-34, 34-44 Terence Summerbell FEMALE: 48% OVERVIEW OF CAMPAIGN MALE: 52% LOCATION: Worldwide The overall concept of the campaign stemmed from the music itself, which was a comment on consumption culture and corporate greed in an increasingly connected world. The narrative constructed had the around all the unusual marketing activity another and we seeded our hero article with band forced to sign their rights away to the – co-opting third-party content, rumour, a media campaign that mimicked clickbait fictional corporation called Everything Now memes etc. ads. Once we saw pick up among fans, press that then took control of all aspects of the Each track on the album had an associated and influencers (some taking the articles at campaign, allowing us to engage with social product – e.g. a track called ‘Chemistry’ face value, some playing along), we began to media, content creation and all aspects of was also an energy drink. Fake adverts reference them on the socials. marketing in ways that would never have were created for several of the products, been possible before. with content created around each “product KEY LEARNINGS To launch, we created a 12-hour live launch” being used across social media, stream from Death Valley, California, where both organically and in promoted posts. The Earned media for the satirical articles via the album was written. This ended to reveal announcement of fake fidget spinner USBs pick up in a national newspaper in Canada, the new album title and artwork as the band (which had been teased previously) created included widespread coverage in music and took to the stage at Primavera Sound to play a huge amount of traffic and widespread lifestyle press – Dazed, NME, Stereogum, the new album for the first time. coverage during release week. SPIN and Vice - as well as from celebrities All communication channels were Underpinning the whole campaign was Terry Gilliam and Lorde. The fidget spinners controlled throughout by a fictional social the use of satirical news articles. These were covered by Billboard, Mashable, The media intern from the corporation, a all played into the ridiculous nature of the Verge and The Next Web among others. character who would be slowly revealed over campaign, the band’s involvement with Over 425k albums were sold worldwide in the campaign. One key event was an Ask Me the corporation and ironic takes on music release week. Everything Now was the best- Anything on Reddit, carried out in character journalism, product placement and today’s selling album in six countries that week, and fans delighted in playing up to the furore news cycle. All the articles were linked to one including the UK, US and Canada.

4 | sandbox | ISSUE 194 | 20.12.17 SANDBOX 2017 SURVEY BEST ANNIVERSARY CAMPAIGN THE BEATLES APPLE CORPS/UMC

share their love for the album. Highlights included over 60k authors using the Sgt. Pepper Twitter stickers, 25k Facebook profile frame additions and over three minutes CAMPAIGN BREAKDOWN on average dwell time exploring the story CAMPAIGN BUDGET £25,000+ behind the artwork. Access to Giles Martin for a Facebook Live Q&A and playback of AUDIENCE DEMOGRAPHIC the 2017 mixes drove over 140k views as AGE: 14-18, 18-24, 24-34, 34-44, 44-60 well as questions from loyal and casual fans FEMALE: 41% worldwide. MALE: 59% Facebook is the biggest social platform LOCATION: UK for The Beatles, with over 41m fans worldwide, but Instagram continues to be the fastest growing. Branding organic content with Sgt. KEY LEARNINGS TEAM MEMBERS define the overarching campaign objectives Pepper frames created INVOLVED – to preserve the legacy of The Beatles and a dedicated campaign We took a mobile-first approach to all this album, whilst providing a new, younger narrative within the of the campaign creative. This meant Katie Alley – UMC audience an entry point to discover or feed and the use of real repurposing and refreshing existing Lee Jenson – UMC rediscover it. time stories around key content for social environments. YouTube Olly Walsh – UMG International In addition to the release date itself, we moments has helped to instream ads achieved a 31% higher Jack Thomson – UMG International created a secondary impact moment in drive the growth of under- view through rate than UMG’s current Leda Chang – Ume #SgtPepperDay (1st June) and maximised 24s following the profile benchmarks and complimented native Jeff Jones – Apple Corps partnerships with the City Of Liverpool, to over 40%. social feed uploads. An energetic Spotify homepage takeover Jeremy Neech – Apple Corps/Motherlode Abbey Road Studios and Chiswick House A series of impactful vertical Snapchat achieved 12.5m unique sessions and drove almost 5m clicks, was Media to globalise regional activity surrounding ads also helped us to target a potential new supported on the service further by a Beatles takeover of the Lisa Salem – Motherlode Media this iconic anniversary. Keen to encourage audience and reach beyond the hard core platform-owned #ThrowbackThursday playlist (1.4m+ followers) and Orla Lee-Fisher – UMG International a sense of communal listening and mass and lapsed fanbase on a platform that the pre-save mechanic. This activity resulted in an uplift of 33% streams Guy Hayden – UMG International celebration, the #LetsPlayPepper map was band previously had no presence on. This in The Beatles’ catalogue overall. Richard Hinkley – UMC developed to encourage fans to plot their was enhanced by the use of interactive Sequential Facebook marketing was essential to isolate the loyal Mickey Tropeano – Fused, Universal Music UK location when listening and filter by track Snapcodes on outdoor advertising and a and engaged fans and direct them through a funnel to conversion. Russell Archer – Fused, Universal Music UK or country to explore worldwide streams – dedicated geo-filter around Abbey Road on Whilst a combination of captivating Snapchat and YouTube ads, something that resonated with thousands impact date. strategic Instagram content and Twitter tools, positioned this album OVERVIEW OF CAMPAIGN of fans across over 25 countries. Across the multiple physical products, front and centre for a potential new audience. A series of Sgt. Pepper We created a suite of accessible social download and streaming, the campaign Twitter stickers were used over 70k times during release week, We worked closely with Apple Corps to tools that enabled all fans to show and delivered a #1 album in the UK. including by Ringo Starr himself.

5 | sandbox | ISSUE 194 | 20.12.17 SANDBOX 2017 SURVEY BEST USE OF AN INFLUENCER BIG SHAQ ISLAND RECORDS

went viral immediately, clocking at least 100 shares within an hour. To date, it has had more than 2,000 shares on Facebook since its video release date on 10th November CAMPAIGN BREAKDOWN 2017. CAMPAIGN BUDGET £2,000–£5,000 To date, the video post on Preetipls’ Facebook has reached more than 399,000 AUDIENCE DEMOGRAPHIC people, with 144,119 views of the video, AGE: 14-18, 18-24, 24-34 more than 2,000 shares and garnered 8,936 FEMALE: 40% reactions in less than two weeks. MALE: 60% For Twitter, her tweet received 363,746 LOCATION: Singapore impressions and media views of more than

TEAM MEMBERS INVOLVED KEY LEARNINGS Aidil Yusof Nikki Tan i. Singaporeans truly engage with humorous content that is relatable Shafiqa Amira to them. In this instance, wearing a thick jacket in Singapore weather Bryan Wong and claiming it is not hot.

OVERVIEW OF CAMPAIGN ii. Engaging the correct influencer for the correct content.

Our artist, Big Shaq, released a single, ‘Man’s iii. Knowing the best time to create awareness of the song and to Not Hot’, in late September that went viral take advantage of the virality hype online online with its cheeky lyrics. Our primary objective was to create awareness of the iv. Using a third-party platform (e.g. an influencer’s socials) to create song among the local audience who loves awareness of the song helps to not restrict activity and awareness humour and memes. exclusively to our own socials. Riding on the hype of the song, we engaged a local influencer – Preetipls – who the post as content on our social media 280,000. Total engagement goes beyond is known for her humorous interpretation platforms. The messaging that accompanies 186,500. about life in Singapore. From there, the the video includes the call to action of For Instagram, her impressions were team agreed on the idea of her video parody, purchasing the single through iTunes and 13,510 and reached about 9,564 people. ‘Gal’s Not Hot’. The video was placed on her streaming the single on both Apple Music With the main focus on her Facebook, the Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. Universal and Spotify. song entered the Spotify chart on Singapore Music Singapore re-shared it and boosted Upon release, Preetipls’ ‘Gal’s Not Hot’ Top 50.

6 | sandbox | ISSUE 194 | 20.12.17 SANDBOX 2017 SURVEY BLOSSOMS VIRGIN EMI

KEY LEARNINGS

We gained over 3k new sign-ups to our email database, achieved 427k reach on Facebook and 20.1k reactions/shares across the campaign, as well as a +7.3% increase in Spotify streams over the reactions/shares across the campaign, as period of our advent calendar. TEAM MEMBERS incentivising fans to get into the Christmas well as a +7.3% increase in Spotify streams We gained 500 new sign-ups to our database, 1.2m reach on INVOLVED spirit and create heat about Blossoms online, over the period. Facebook across the campaign and a 35.4% increase in Spotify Betsy Chadbourn – digital campaign alongside promotion for their eponymous Just a month later, Blossoms were streams during our Brits campaign. manager, Virgin EMI debut #1 album. For 24 days throughout nominated for the Best British Breakthrough Connie Meade – senior product manager, December, a door was opened and a unique Act at the Brits, inspiring us to run an original Virgin EMI prize released, encouraging fans to sign up and fun voting campaign in true Blossoms Anique Cox – marketing, Virgin EMI with their email address to be entered into style. Guitarist Josh Dewhurst became the Conrad Murray – management, SJM the sweepstakes. lovable face of the campaign – the “working CAMPAIGN BREAKDOWN Dave Salmon – management, SJM Prizes included a personal Christmas video class hero”. We created our very own political Sean Bullingham – lead designer, Pretty from the band, tickets to sold-out shows, a campaign, including badges, rosettes and CAMPAIGN BUDGET £1,000–£2,000 Good Digital Christmas card handwritten by the band and campaign posters – even pushing out a Samantha Neville – designer, Pretty Good signed bundles. We also created bespoke political broadcast on Facebook in the week AUDIENCE DEMOGRAPHIC Digital Christmas-themed assets to run on social running up to the awards. The support AGE: 18–24 Al Petfield – designer, Pretty Good Digital media on each day of the activation, giving was incredible, including promotion from FEMALE: 52% people the chance to share these unique Stockport Council (where the band are from). MALE: 48% OVERVIEW OF CAMPAIGN opportunities with their friends. We gained We gained 500 new sign-ups to our database, LOCATION: UK In December 2016, we launched 24 Days over 3k new sign-ups to our email database, 1.2m reach on Facebook across the campaign Of Blossmas, a digital advent calendar achieved 427k reach on Facebook and 20.1k and a 35.4% increase in Spotify streams.

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TEAM MEMBERS who may have only heard of the INVOLVED band in passing or heard the odd song via a sync, for example. This Didier Dehauteur – marketing worked incredibly well. CAMPAIGN BREAKDOWN director, BMG It was also backed up by a CAMPAIGN BUDGET N/A Matt Dixon – label manager, BMG promotional campaign covering Thomas Cerha – marketing national and regional UK PR and AUDIENCE DEMOGRAPHIC assistant, BMG national radio, which garnered AGE: 35–44 Press – Sarah Lowe, Fifth Avenue key tracks hitting higher rotation FEMALE: 35% Online PR – Nathalie Quesnel, across key stations and rave MALE: 65% Yes Please reviews across the board. LOCATION: UK National radio – Caroline Poulton and Nicki Kefalas, Out Promotion Regional radio – Rob Kerford, Sonic containing rare and unseen archive footage. Lovely Creatures is available in four physical OVERVIEW OF CAMPAIGN formats, all featuring personal and rare photographs of the band (standard CD, triple Lovely Creatures is the most comprehensive LP, deluxe 3CD with DVD and the super- overview of the recorded work of Nick Cave deluxe limited-edition package) along with & The Bad Seeds to date. Spanning 30 years regular and deluxe digital releases. of music from their debut album, From Marketing for the campaign included TV Her To Eternity, through to Push The Sky advertising (for the first time in the band’s Away, their 15th studio album, the collection history – with voiceover from Kylie Minogue), KEY LEARNINGS navigates one of the most exhilarating, cinema, outdoor (including an early teaser idiosyncratic and inventive bodies of work campaign of the symbols from the artwork Lovely Creatures, despite containing no UK created in contemporary music. in key cities across the UK. This was mirrored top 10 hit singles and only one top 20 hit, The album was compiled by Nick Cave with a teaser campaign via the band’s social gave the band a top 10 album, their second and founding member Mick Harvey, with networks), radio, and online (using the TV in the space of a few months, following help from the current Bad Seeds. Band ad and pushing images of the amazing Skeleton Tree, and their fifth overall – a feat Despite the lack of any new music, fans embraced all formats, members past and present raided their product itself). The online campaign not replicated in Australia and Germany. It was with the super-deluxe boxset particularly popular, and the double personal archives to provide previously only targeted fans of the band and similar rapturously received by fans and media alike, CD appealing to the more latent fan. From day one, BMG was unseen photos and memorabilia, which have acts, but also fans of relevant literature, TV and has recently made the top 10 of Uncut’s committed to make this a long-term campaign. We stick to our initial been collected into a beautiful hardcover shows, and films in an effort to not only Archive Releases for 2017, picked up the vision and are still working since the release in May, this campaign book, along with a series of original essays. garner the support of the hardcore fan, who prestigious AIM award for Special Catalogue re-boosted by perfectly timed dates this autumn and with the aim The book is available as part of the limited- would already own most of, if not all, of the Release Of The Year and was nominated to regain more visibility around the holiday season. We believe this edition, super-deluxe album collection music on the compilation (there was no new for a 2018 Grammy Award in the Boxed Or is a remarkable achievement in these days and age of short-term which also comes with a two-hour DVD or unreleased music involved), but also those Special Limited Edition Package category. exploitation cycle.

8 | sandbox | ISSUE 194 | 20.12.17 SANDBOX 2017 SURVEY THE CHAINSMOKERS RCA RECORDS UK

CAMPAIGN BREAKDOWN CAMPAIGN BUDGET £25,000+

AUDIENCE DEMOGRAPHIC AGE: 18–24 FEMALE: 45% MALE: 55% LOCATION: UK

transparent PNG lyric photo ads and an album canvas ad, which reached more than 100,000 UK fans during our pre-order phase. TEAM MEMBERS an estimated audience size of 2.5m people On average users spent 45 seconds inside the canvas, viewing INVOLVED which – at the time – was 25% of the total 93% of its components – making it the most successful canvas ad Snapchat UK audience. for RCA Records. Nick Antoniou – senior digital marketing The national ad campaign went live As part of our album campaign, we also launched an AR campaign manager, Sony Music UK straight after their live performance with Shazam. Scanning the Shazam code on our outdoor creative Martin Harris – senior marketing manager, and ran for 24 hours, reaching more brought the artwork to life and users were able to watch an exclusive Sony Music UK than 2m UK users. This felt like the video in AR and buy the album. The national campaign ran for Jon Davies – director of music partnerships, perfect opportunity for us to test a Snap two weeks around the album release. This was a UK first for both Shazam UK Ad campaign on the app, as Snapchat Shazam UK and Sony Music UK. Miles Byrd – account manager, Ralph LDN had the perfect demographic for The Chainsmokers and there was a natural KEY LEARNINGS OVERVIEW OF CAMPAIGN momentum around the Brits to capitalise on. Following their performance, The As a result of our digital campaign, we managed to capitalise on To support The Chainsmokers’ Brits Chainsmokers were trending on Twitter in the buzz around The Chainsmokers last year and their #1 single, performance with Coldplay and the the UK with more than 25,000 tweets in reaching more than 4m people in the UK with our digital and release of ‘Something Just Like This’, we the first 10 minutes, while ‘Something Just social campaign, delivering a top 3 UK album, two platinum and ran a focused digital campaign around Like This’ shot up to #1 on iTunes. two double-platinum singles. Delivering bespoke creative for the the performance across their socials. As A few weeks later, we partnered with UK market and partnering with key digital platforms while having part of the digital activity, we launched Ralph to deliver bespoke digital creative the duo in our market, were two key elements to our campaign the first Sony UK Snapchat ad campaign, for the Memories… Do Not Open album – resulting in one of the most successful campaigns for RCA targeting pop music fans aged 13-34 with campaign. Our ad creative included Records this year.

9 | sandbox | ISSUE 194 | 20.12.17 SANDBOX 2017 SURVEY CHARLI XCX ATLANTIC RECORDS UK

TEAM MEMBERS INVOLVED

Nick Long CAMPAIGN BREAKDOWN Jamie Ahye CAMPAIGN BUDGET £15,000+ Domenico Bartolo Sean Ward AUDIENCE DEMOGRAPHIC Tom Peacock – Beautiful Digital AGE: 13–24 Timothy Luke – freelance designer FEMALE: 65% Chloe Sheppard – freelance designer MALE: 35% boys and then followed up to LOCATION: UK and global OVERVIEW OF users who had engaged with CAMPAIGN “matched” creatives of Charli and the boys With the launch of Charli’s single • We ran video advertising with • The artist worked alongside the developers InConversation to ‘Boys’, we had a fantastic video Grindr whereby users of the free script out a whole messenger tree that asked fans questions about directed by Charli XCX alongside version of the app could get more “Who the most fanciable boy was” and “What’s the best piece of Sarah McColgan and produced in “matches” by watching 30 seconds boy advice?” results of these polls could be seen in real time. house by Atlantic Records UK. It of the ‘Boys’ video. featured an epic cast of over 60 • We enlisted the help of Social KEY LEARNINGS actors, musicians and internet Chain to create and push out celebrities, including Joe Jonas, memes relating to the track Video launch campaign Charlie Puth, Cameron Dallas, Riz Ahmed, video scratched out. on their spread of student- and youth- • Video was trending worldwide on Twitter and hit #2 trending Khalid, will.i.am, Wiz Khalifa, The Vamps and • To harness the talent and artists in the focused community social media accounts. video on YouTube globally in first 24 hours of launch. more. We therefore wanted to create a real video for launch, we gave them a package • Alongside our SnapChat online moment on launch and then continue of assets including, exclusive BTS photo, lens featuring 30 seconds Creative advertising this momentum through the summer. individual short video clip and individual gif of the song, we used a • The advertising on Grindr generated thousands Below are some of the key online parts of • Charli then also shared BTS photos and service called FanBytes of additional impressions through users sharing the single campaign. text message conversation of her and the to run a small influencer screengrabs of the advert about how great it was. various boys in the video, giving fans great campaign with Snapchat • Fanbytes campaign generated over 300k+ additional Video launch campaign insight into how the video came together micro influencers. views and our Social Chain memes were engaged with • Teasing for the video started two weeks over 1m times. before with Charli tweeting lyrics from the Creative Advertising Messenger bot song, we then followed this with Nineties- • We ran Facebook and Instagram ad • A month after the initial Angel Chat FB Messenger inspired collages of her favourite “boys”. carousels with the boy images, mimicking launch of the track, we put • On launch we added over 9k fans to this app on The final stage was series of Instagram Tinder profiles. Running these sequentially her Angel Chat live on her messenger and had a huge amount of interaction stories with the faces of the boys in the we started with a selection of different Facebook page. from fans.

10 | sandbox | ISSUE 194 | 20.12.17 SANDBOX 2017 SURVEY BEST WORKAROUND WHEN SWEARING CAUSED PROBLEMS THE CRIBS SONIC BLEW/THE ORCHARD

Photo: Steve Gullick TEAM MEMBERS from our in-house design team. The site INVOLVED showcased various retail options linking through to the band’s D2C store (provided by Dan Griffiths – director of interactive Townsend Music) and skinned in the band’s CAMPAIGN BREAKDOWN marketing, The Orchard aesthetic. CAMPAIGN BUDGET £1,000–£2,000 James Moodie – director of artist marketing, A Vevo series which the band had filmed The Orchard prior was aired at this time, helping build AUDIENCE DEMOGRAPHIC Airene Resurreccion – associate art director, remarketing pools of video viewers. Content AGE: 0-14, 14-18, 18-24, 24-34, 34-44 The Orchard included a three-track live session and FEMALE: 40% Nick Scott – The Cribs’ designer at Narcsville 30-minute documentary featuring the one MALE: 60% and only Gordon Burns. LOCATION: UK OVERVIEW OF CAMPAIGN We drove as much traffic to the band’s website or a Genius Link User Choice For The Cribs’ seventh studio album, 24-7 Landing Page as we knew that this would Rock Star Shit, we were tasked with driving not only allow us to showcase all retail pre-orders within a window of only two- options seamlessly but also allowed us and-a-half weeks. This was a record that to create pools of highly engaged fans was very much for the fans. The band that could continue to be remarketed to recorded the album in a five-day session throughout release week with different with producer Steve Albini (Nirvana, PJ creatives and offers. Harvey etc.) that was originally intended as a Creatives and offers were refreshed session for an EP. the album’s title (but had no mention of on a daily basis, as we did not want the In advance of social hype being built, The Cribs) were placed throughout London messaging or communication to become we added remarketing pixels to The and shared via the band’s socials using stale. These included a lottery for a signed Cribs website, D2C store, YouTube, Vevo the domain 247rockstarshit.com, which test pressing, a £5 download album (via their new CMS tool) and converted redirected to the clock on the band’s incentive and geo-targeted in-store tour ads audience pools were determined using Facebook’s ability to build their Instagram account to an Instagram website. that focused on fan and lookalike audiences page engagement Custom Audiences and Google’s video viewer Business Profile so we could retarget fans Doing this allowed us to grow pools of within 80km of towns on the tour. audiences via AdWords, this was only amplified by the coverage who engaged on the platform. We knew the highly engaged fans that could then be offered by the band’s video series with Vevo. setup of this was crucial as we had such a retargeted over the coming weeks. During KEY LEARNINGS Although we intended to run digital advertising from five limited period to capture fans’ attention. the short pre-order period leading into platforms, we ended up being banned from two (Twitter and Amazon In an effort to make the news of an release week, over 8,000 website visitors Enabling Instagram Business Profile allowed Marketing Services) due to the profanity in the album’s title! impending announcement more obvious, were cookied (with separate audience for us to segment part of the band’s fanbase Although we avoided using any bad language on the actual ads, our in-house design team built a website D2C). to determine those that were engaged and, Twitter revokes advertiser access for any account that is seen to be featuring a clock that counted down to what On release week the website was flipped therefore, more likely to support the album’s using too much profanity, while Amazon’s platform pulls in product would be the album announcement. During to a layout that Nick Scott had designed release, which when you are seven albums details directly from their store. When the album’s title features the this time, stencils and posters featuring which was built by Airene Resurreccion into your career, is pretty invaluable. Similar word “Sh★t” this get rather hard to avoid!

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TEAM MEMBERS INVOLVED

Leslie Gilotti – senior digital manager, UMC CAMPAIGN BREAKDOWN James Meadows – campaign manager, UMC CAMPAIGN BUDGET £15,000–£25,000 Lewy Lytton – creative content assistant, UMC AUDIENCE DEMOGRAPHIC Steffan Hughes – marketing director, USM AGE: 24-34, 34-44, 44-60, 60+ Jeremy Sponder – marketing director, UME FEMALE: 42% Doug Barasch – senior digital director, UME MALE: 57% Mike Kobayashi – artist manager, CSM LOCATION: UK and US Management Robert Dippold – partner, Primary Wave Entertainment Alisha Franxman – digital marketing guitarist Phil Collen created by US label Universal Music Enterprises; specialist, Primary Wave Entertainment and a series of Hysteria 30 shout-out videos from celebrity fans, including Queen, AC/DC, Aerosmith, Megadeth and Mötley Crüe. OVERVIEW OF CAMPAIGN Anthony. The event was streamed live on superfans alike to create a personalised Facebook from London’s Gibson Guitars Hysteria album cover with their photo KEY LEARNINGS Def Leppard celebrated the 30th anniversary showrooms in front of an audience of media and name written in the Def Leppard font, of their seminal album Hysteria with a and 50 competition winners selected via sharing it using #Hysteria30 for a chance to A mix of low-barrier-to-entry activations, bitesize video content seven-disc expanded edition, prepared with media partner Planet Rock. The 1.5-hour live win a boxset. There were over 25k visits to and premium money-can’t-buy experiences was key to engaging Def Leppard frontman Joe Elliott acting as stream reached over 1m people. the generator and 10k images were shared superfans and teeing up a more casual userbase for future Def executive producer. The Def Leppard album cover generator in the UK. Although the primary aim was Leppard activities. The challenge was to engage superfans, was a simple tool that allowed casual and awareness rather than data collection, The Facebook live stream reached over 1m people, while the to whom the boxset appeals, and more we achieved a 40% increase in mailing album cover generator received over 25k visits and was used to casual fans, where our objective was to grow list signups on the already extensive Def create over 10k images in the UK alone, increasing the Def Leppard sales of existing formats such as vinyl and Leppard database. UK mailing list by 40%. The mechanic has since been repurposed and CD. As the band’s catalogue is not available In a nod to Def Leppard’s 1980s roots, translated for use in European and Asian markets. digitally, our objective was to translate fan we also created a Pac-Man-inspired Def The Def Leppard Pac-Man game received over 40k plays and experiences into physical sales. Leppard game, which allowed players to increased the Def Leppard mailing list a further 10% for an overall Fans “joined the Hysteria” via a series choose their characters from the 1987 lineup 50% increase. The bespoke video of promotions designed to bridge the gap of the band. content has received over 1.5m views between the digital and physical worlds. All of this was rounded out with video on Facebook and over 200k views For the super-engaged fans, we held An content filmed with the band: a YouTube on YouTube. The boxset hit the UK Evening With Joe Elliott, featuring the singer mini-documentary created by in-house midweeks at #2 – no small feat for a in conversation with Planet Rock DJ Paul brand, uDiscover; guitar tutorials with premium priced physical-only format!

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CAMPAIGN BREAKDOWN CAMPAIGN BUDGET N/A

AUDIENCE DEMOGRAPHIC AGE: N/A FEMALE: N/A MALE: N/A LOCATION: N/A

TEAM MEMBERS samples of tracks that could be a single in order to get them sharing INVOLVED and talking about Deuce’s return. We made another social post across his platforms, just saying “Which song first? Text me”, along with Ben Lifson the number in order to further encourage fans to opt into our text Omar Ranaway community. Mary Thayer Phase 4: Deuce texted the album cover to fans, exclaiming that this Maddie Brady happening/going to happen socials or emails. image needed to be shared with #deuceinvibcible in as many places as with the second record. possible in order for the first single to be released. OVERVIEW OF CAMPAIGN This hiatus lasted years, Phase 1: Break the social Phase 5: In the middle of this sharing frenzy, we re-skinned his socials with fans wondering what media blackout by posting with new imagery, and dropped the first single and the preorder, which When Deuce left Hollywood Undead, he had happened to their only a phone number and the ultimately got the entire fanbase back onboard the Invincible train. started his own solo project and released a favorite artist. words “text me. need all your successful debut album (with sales of over Though Deuce and help soon”. KEY LEARNINGS 100,000 units). Better Noise Records were Phase 2: Once enough His extremely loyal following was on good terms, fans began fans texted in, Deuce sent Amongst other important data, including streams and in-depth anxiously awaiting his second solo to blame our label for not releasing the record them a short, personalised text message demographic information, the most important metric is the album – Invincible – which was recorded and a genuine hate for Better Noise Records exclaiming that, in order for the second thousands of phone numbers accrued that are now a part of our and had rollout/release dates, but never began to form. record to finally be released, he would system. came to fruition. We decided to capitalise on and play into need their support. He would need help Texts sent out have an open rate of above 90%, which is Right before it was planned to go out, this distaste for the label, using a cryptic proving to the label that everyone still exponentially better than the mailing list – which had just under Deuce decided to go on a musical hiatus, marketing campaign backed by Superphone, cared and didn’t forget about Invincible. a 3% open rate. This gives Deuce a lifelong street team that with radio silence via his online socials, and a software that focuses on reaching fans Phase 3: Deuce texted fans a SoundCloud link will actually see any new content/updates the artist has to no official announcement on what was through text messages, instead of through that had four, intentionally raw 20-second announce.

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microsite asking fans to nominate their friends who inspire them with their selfless and friendly acts of kindness. The campaign expanded beyond digital, with on-site video CAMPAIGN BREAKDOWN booths available at two of their summer CAMPAIGN BUDGET $10,000 festivals for attendees to nominate their friends’ good deeds. We expanded on the AUDIENCE DEMOGRAPHIC traditional festival aftermovie by creating AGE: 18–29 special Celebrate Together(ness) videos as FEMALE: N/A well, highlighting on-site stories and sharing MALE: N/A them across channels. LOCATION: US After over 500 qualified entries, we promoted our favorite stories across social media with a voting mechanism in place to allow fans to choose their own favorite. One TEAM MEMBERS INVOLVED Diane Tamulavage – Fame House Matt Mannino – Fame House Evan Bailey – Disco Donnie Presents Donnie Estopinal – Disco Donnie Presents Michele Servais – Disco Donnie Presents Eric Sopp – Usibility Dynamics Nikki Kilpatrick – Usibility Dynamics Charles Rivers – Salvador Charlie Design GoPro to help us shoot one final video documenting their experience Jed Sawyer – Salvador Charlie Design By appealing to values which are core to the dance music scene (love, unity, acceptance) we saw a strong response from fans when OVERVIEW OF CAMPAIGN the campaign was launched.

Reflecting on a year of division, the Electronic KEY LEARNINGS Dance Music events company Disco Donnie Presents wanted to highlight the shared campaign, which featured fans who bring grand prize winner and a friend were chosen This appeal, coupled with a compelling prize, drove upwards of 500 love, respect, and passion that fans bring to these values from the festival out into to receive the ultimate VIP experience – nominations over the course of three months. Through a mix of their electronic music events. everyday life. In conjunction with Disco flights, hotels, a backstage tour, merchandise social promotion, advertising, and on-site activations, we reached an With this in mind, Fame House developed Donnie Presents, Salvador Charlie Design and dinner with Disco Donnie, the company’s estimated 300,000 fans, driving increased brand awareness for the and executed the Celebrate Together(ness) and Usability Dynamics we created a CEO and founder. We also gave these fans a campaign and Disco Donnie Presents.

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TEAM MEMBERS INVOLVED

Nicolas Detnon – management George Strong, Dickie Chaytor and the team at Lively Agency Ciara Hanley – marketing manager, Island Records Olivia Nunn – marketing director, Island Records Faye Williams – digital marketing manager, Island Records Alex Boateng – senior A&R manager, Island KEY LEARNINGS Records Raskit, Dizzee’s sixth studio album and first album in four years, was released in July after a covert outdoor-led teaser campaign. The aim OVERVIEW OF CAMPAIGN of this was to reassert Dizzee within the genre, re-engage his original new album, Raskit, before debuting snippets relationships were nurtured with exclusive fanbase as well as encourage engagement with potential fans. The The campaign kicked off when mysterious of the videos for his new tracks. The same content to share across their accounts, to back-to-roots sonics of the album was mirrored in the street level- outdoor posters began appearing around creative and roll out was used online with seed multiple creatives and content across led campaign. Bow, East London, in May. They continued to video teasers mirroring the poster campaign various platforms at the same time. By The teaser campaign reignited engagement across Dizzee’s spread around London and the UK labelled in real time. enabling fans to share content on socials socials, seeing Facebook and Twitter posts increase tenfold on the with “727548”, causing fans’ imaginations On the day of the album announcement, and facilitating discussion, we sustained build-up to the album announcement. This use of the countdown to run wild and message boards to ignite. 727548.co.uk was rebranded to raskit.co.uk open engagement in the weeks leading up helped fuel speculation and fan anticipation both offline and online. This spilled onto social media as people confirming the online speculation about to album release. tried to figure out the meaning of the cryptic the sequence of numbers; 727548 spells The extensive outdoor campaign message, with some fans coming up with out Raskit when typed onto a phone pad. expanded into LU, nationwide billboard and elaborate connections to the numerical All socials were rebranded and directed projections on key London landmarks. The CAMPAIGN BREAKDOWN sequence. to Raskit.co.uk, where the teaser reveal album also garnered key support on release After weeks of rumours, 727548.co.uk visuals were played on loop alongside from all streaming partners, including CAMPAIGN BUDGET £25,000+ was launched with a series of mysterious pre-order messaging. The campaign was sponsored outdoor campaigns from Amazon audio clips with a countdown, followed by elevated from its covert beginnings with and Spotify, as well as full-album playback AUDIENCE DEMOGRAPHIC CCTV footage from various East London full media support and coverage for the on 1Xtra to bolster digital and traditional AGE: 18-24, 24-34 locations. After a week of teasing, all announcement, as well as working with a marketing. The album received impressive FEMALE: 39% conspiracy theories were put to rest with a loyal group of influential figureheads who reviews and support from grime blogs to MALE: 61% livestream video revealing Dizzee holed up in supported across socials. We also identified broadsheets, all reaffirming Dizzee’s “return LOCATION: UK a bunker in Bow, writing down what turned superfans who supported Dizzee on social to form”, which helped achieve a Top 10 out to be the track listing for his forthcoming media who had significant audiences. These chart position.

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KEY LEARNINGS A string of press front covers, high profile TV performances and a fan-focused, social-first marketing campaign has delivered huge album success, an enormously engaged fanbase and one of the most in-demand artists of the moment.

• 1.2m global album sales • 8m singles sales • 10m followers on socials • Two Gold singles and two Platinum singles in the UK • The first female artist to have a UK #1 since Adele with ‘Hello’ TEAM MEMBERS • Over 1bn YouTube views stream; she could sell tickets, stream and • Over 1bn Spotify streams INVOLVED sell physical product. The goal was to make Warner Bros Records her creatively ahead of the competition and Glastonbury, where Dua’s show was one of TaP Management not compromise at any stage. the busiest tents of the weekend. Purple PR Her first single, ‘New Love’, firmly We wanted to make sure that the CAMPAIGN BREAKDOWN This Is Fine Company established Dua as a credible artist, campaign put fans first, giving them content Arke Digital adored by the blogs. ‘Hotter Than Hell’ before anybody else and reacting to what CAMPAIGN BUDGET £25,000+ and ‘Blow Your Mind (Mwah)’ delivered they were doing and saying online. For OVERVIEW OF CAMPAIGN a first taste of success, ‘Be The One’ example, fans were the first people to hear AUDIENCE DEMOGRAPHIC became Dua’s first globally successful the album in full at events at YouTube studio AGE: 0-14, 14-18, 18-24, 24-34, 34-44 Dua Lipa was a brand-new pop artist in single and ‘New Rules’ her first UK #1 and spaces across different territories and after FEMALE: 65% an incredibly competitive and challenging international smash. we saw so many fan interpretations of the MALE: 35% market. We needed to position her as a The single releases were accompanied ‘New Rules’ video, we created a bespoke fan LOCATION: UK credible and aspirational artist, as well as an by a clever weaving of live shows and video with all of the footage, which had over artist who wasn’t pigeonholed to one sales festival slots, including a key turning point at 1m views.

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TEAM MEMBERS INVOLVED

Manos Xanthogeorgis CAMPAIGN BREAKDOWN Maria Westergaard CAMPAIGN BUDGET $15,000 Tarek Al-Hamdouni Scott Pollack AUDIENCE DEMOGRAPHIC OVERVIEW OF CAMPAIGN AGE: 18-24, 25-34, 35-44, 45-54 FEMALE: 36% MALE: 64% This is an interactive site that contains LOCATION: Global personal gems from the band and lets fans create their very own personalised Spotify playlist built through our own playlist algorithm. The campaign was developed for both mobile and desktop This site idea was conceived at the end of and users must connect via Spotify to be able to access the full 2016 as the band began announcing shows younger demographic. Overall, we would be Main page/the room: The smart playlist functionality of the site. throughout 2017. We wanted to find a way building a platform that would allow us to generator is visualised like a room from the to engage and excite current Foo Fighters showcase new music when the band was 1980s (with a Stranger Things feel to it). If KEY LEARNINGS fans and get them familiar with streaming ready while capturing data and optimise our you click around, you will notice there is a while introducing the band’s catalogue to a marketing and CRM efforts. lot of interactive functionality and Easter Challenges and goals overview: eggs: the globe spins, the TV turns on, the • We wanted to introduce the Foo Fighters’ audience to streaming. speakers make sounds and so on. The fans • Capture as much data as possible. are navigated to different parts of the room Emails for future communication. where they are asked to make selections Retargeting data for future ad between band photo Polaroids and posters campaigns that project different Foo Fighters moments • Create a Foo Fighters streaming community which will be utilised throughout their career and moods. We during the later phases of the album campaign. built a special algorithm that, based on each user’s selections, creates personalised How we utilised the generator throughout the Concrete & Gold playlists. For example, if a fan picked the album campaign: romantic vibe Polaroid and the poster from the 1990s, they’d get a slow playlist filled • One day before the release of the first single, ‘Run’, a teaser was with the band’s earlier songs. ingested on Spotify as a dummy track and was inserted to the top of The user can name the playlist, and all user’s mixtapes to create organic chatter and excitement. it is automatically stored in their Spotify • As new tracks were releasing they were being added to all user collection. playlists

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TEAM MEMBERS list data and putting out Instagram Stories filmed with actress Brie Larson. We also INVOLVED of them surprising fans with invites to jumped quickly on viral digital moments, their intimate launch show, as well as a such as the media and fan pickup on the Tom Hoare – senior digital marketing Spotify playlist Easter egg revealing the Paul band’s cover of Shania Twain’s ‘That Don’t CAMPAIGN BREAKDOWN manager, Polydor Thomas Anderson connection to ‘Right Now’. Impress Me Much’. Data capture was key CAMPAIGN BUDGET £25,000+ Stephen Hallowes – head of marketing, Partner support was crucial. We had throughout, and the Haim mailing list Polydor major looks with each key partner, including doubled in size over a six-month period. AUDIENCE DEMOGRAPHIC Brent Freaney – digital strategy & design, an AAA campaign from Apple Music that AGE: 14-18, 18-24, 24-34, 34-44 Special Offer included a London gig and original content, KEY LEARNINGS FEMALE: 61% a global outdoor and digital activation from MALE: 39% OVERVIEW OF CAMPAIGN Spotify and Spotify Singles campaign, Vevo The campaign was a smashing success by LOCATION: Global Track Of The Week promotion for ‘Want numerous measures. The album, Something Launching the campaign was a studio You Back’. On Facebook we ran multiple To Tell You, debuted at #2 on the OCC album session video for an album track – ‘Right live streams (including one with director chart, recording 18,324 units in its opening Now’. The countdown to and reveal of this Paul Thomas Anderson around the release week; it has since gone on to cross over 50k on Haim’s Vevo were over 40m, whilst streaming platforms also first piece of content was key, involving of the ‘Valentine’ short film) and embraced units in its first six months. Consumption saw significant consumption with over 50m Spotify plays and 20m teasers of the band in the studio, rolled out video cross-posting, such as with the piece of the album across digital platforms Apple Music plays on the album. Tracks from the album recorded as video pieces both natively on Facebook of Funny Or Die original content the band outperformed expectations; video views over 250,000 Shazam tags. Growth across Haim’s social and eCRM and on YouTube, as well as social teases channels was also impressive; the band’s email list doubled in size of Haim billboards appearing in major to over 60,000 subscribers, and the band’s Facebook page added global cities and a website countdown. We just shy of 1m new likes throughout the course of the campaign. uploaded a video of a studio session of ‘Right Our social spend also delivered fantastic returns, with conversations Now’ on 27th April, almost a full week before 85% cheaper than our benchmark and engagement 171% higher any audio for the first single proper, ‘Want when targeting our custom audiences built from the ‘Right Now’ full You Back’, debuted on DSPs on 3rd May. This native clip. full native strategy also played a key role in building fresh audiences of “engaged” Haim fans (key after such a long break) – using the granularity of Facebook’s video engagement metrics and custom audiences to inform our paid-media strategy remarketing to these engaged fans with subsequent pieces of content and then, on release, to drive response. Other key buzz-building moments around the launch involved the band tracking down superfans in LA from mailing

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was special for the fans. To celebrate the band, we included special touches so fans could have the full Imagine Dragons fan experience at the event. From gifting the CAMPAIGN BREAKDOWN fans exclusive event badges to customising CAMPAIGN BUDGET £5,000–£10,000 the drinks sold at the club (“Believer” drink and “Thunder” drink). During the event, we AUDIENCE DEMOGRAPHIC also conducted exclusive giveaways of the AGE: 14-18, 18-24, 34-44 band’s merchandise and concert tickets. We FEMALE: 44% also had the band record a special message MALE: 56% for the fans which was played at intervals LOCATION: Singapore throughout the day. To execute the concept, we hired a local media partner to assist with promoting and organising the event. This media partner on all their platforms including a header takeover on their website, has a strong online presence in Singapore Facebook page and multiple social posts. The pop-up Arcade Day yielded great results. TEAM MEMBERS INVOLVED • One week before event: Evolve iTunes chart position within Top 10 Nikki Tan • Post event: Evolve iTunes chart position within Top 5. Peaked at Aidil Yusof #3 a day after event. Imagine Dragons’ songs also remained in the Shafiqa Amira top 5 one week after the event. Bryan Wong • Apart from Evolve, their previous album, Night Visions, also got back into the chart in iTunes at #34 OVERVIEW OF CAMPAIGN • 1,000 new sign-ups for the Imagine Dragons mailer database • Upon announcing the event, the RSVP link had a CTR of 1,000+. Inspired by an arcade takeover idea from the Imagine Dragons’ repertoire owner, we KEY LEARNINGS decided to re-create and adapt this concept locally. In October, we held a free-for-all, • Hiring a media partner/event company to execute the event was pop-up arcade called Imagine Dragons extremely helpful and alleviated a lot of work on our end. Tapping Evolve Arcade Day at an Eighties-themed into their strengths (social reach, reach from website etc.) really club called Cherry Discotheque. Key elements of the Evolve Arcade Day and is deemed as the local go-to website helped amplify the event. Would seek to do the same in future. The main objective for this event was to were the 12 vintage arcade consoles (Pac- for all things entertainment, thus we felt • Creative, interesting pop-up concepts are a great way for fan drive album sales, increase awareness about Man, Space Invaders, Street Fighter etc.), a that they would be perfect for our target engagement, even without the presence of the artists themselves. Imagine Dragons’ latest album (Evolve) and beer pong table and an air hockey table. audience. On top of organising the event, the • Creating hype and buzz with an artist-related event could be a create a distinct fan experience. We wanted to make sure that the event media partner offered us media coverage more effective, indirect method of promoting an album.

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TEAM MEMBERS INVOLVED

Madeleine Goodhand – Imagine Festival CAMPAIGN BREAKDOWN Glenn Goodhand – Imagine Festival CAMPAIGN BUDGET $1,000 Diane Tamulavage – Fame House Adam Rappoport – Fame House AUDIENCE DEMOGRAPHIC Carrie Paul – Fame House AGE: 18–34 Sara McDougall – Fame House FEMALE: 52% OVERVIEW OF CAMPAIGN MALE: 48% LOCATION: Atlanta, GA Imagine Festival, an aquatic-themed EDM music festival in Atlanta, released their headliners through a Snapchat geofilter scavenger hunt. This marks the first time a festival has utilised the Snapchat platform to “hide” and release their lineup via the geofilter tool. To execute this campaign, we designed several IMF-branded filters, each containing a different headliner name, and purchased geofilters around the city of Atlanta for a specific timeframe. To follow the aquatic theme, we released a Treasure Map across Imagine’s socials hinting at the date and locations to encourage local fans to “find” the “hidden treasures”. To spread this moment far and wide, fans who discovered the headliners were asked KEY LEARNINGS core, local Imagine demographic. Overall, to screenshot and share their Snapchat inviting and rewarding fans in the lineup photos on their own social channels for Asking fans to partake in the largest announcement drove loyalty to the those around the world to see. Finally, we marketing moment of a festival’s cycle independently owned, growing EDM rewarded fans who shared their Snapchat by using a platform that they already festival, showing our audience that the filters using a specified hashtag on Twitter typically use in their daily life, combined true value in any brand is just that – the and Instagram with VIP upgrades. with a unique strategy, rewarded the fans themselves.

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TEAM MEMBERS an appearance on Instagram, where we’ve launched a competition to INVOLVED create a new pair of glasses for him. Diamonds entered the UK charts at #5. Elton John’s music has Carl Butler – digital community manager, sustained 72% increase in daily UK streams and 35% daily increase Rocket Entertainment globally. Rachael Paley – senior artist manager, The Cut competition received entries from over 50 countries. The Rocket Entertainment winning videos have received 21m views on YouTube to date. Leslie Gilotti – senior digital manager, UMC The Elton John GIPHY bespoke animations and classic Elton John Mark Wood – marketing manager, UMC clips have received 33m impressions since launch. On Facebook, our Doug Barasch – senior director digital campaign video content reached 3.9m people and had 1.5m video marketing and strategy, Ume views. The Diamond Club and Battle of the Diamonds Polls reached Steffan Hughes – international marketing over 1m people. On Twitter, the #DiamondsDay stickers had over director, USM 40m impressions and 90k unique tweets.

OVERVIEW OF CAMPAIGN KEY LEARNINGS

For Diamonds, Elton John’s ultimate Our campaign activity began in early 2017 for a November release greatest hits collection, our campaign and this long view enabled us to engage established and casual highlighted Elton John’s universal appeal. Elton looks through his 50-year career and listeners on a meaningful level: from igniting a new generation of Whether a die-hard fan or a casual listener an unboxing video. a book to be presented to Elton. We used creators and fans alike with The Cut campaign and newly launched introduced via TV and film syncs, Elton John ITV’s broadcast of Elton John: Facebook’s polls feature to run a World’s (at the time of writing) Instagram design competition, to giving has soundtracked a moment (or many) in The Nation’s Favourite Song, Favourite Elton John Song series of knockout superfans a chance to tell their stories. just about everyone’s lives. featuring celebs sharing their round polls, allowing casual fans a low-effort Work on the campaign began in early Elton stories, was a key TV option to make their voices heard. 2017. Elton, supported by YouTube, ran The moment. Fans were able to Elton is synonymous with extravagant Cut – a global competition giving have their say in Elton’s eyewear. Therefore, on Twitter we created undiscovered talent the chance to Diamond Club via custom stickers of his most famous glasses CAMPAIGN BREAKDOWN create the official music videos for Facebook Groups for for users to try on for #DiamondsDay, three iconic Elton John and Bernie Pages, launched with our album release day. Other release day CAMPAIGN BUDGET £25,000+ Taupin songs – ‘Rocket Man’, ‘Tiny a video message from activities included a Spotify Listening Dancer’ and ‘Bennie & The Jets’. Elton encouraging party and chatroom, custom animations AUDIENCE DEMOGRAPHIC The Diamonds preorder fans to share from GIPHY studios delivered via Twitter, AGE: 24-34, 34-44, 44-60, 60+ launched alongside the their stories of Facebook and iMessage APIs, and bespoke FEMALE: 42.3% premiere of Kingsman 2, in Elton songs that video content such as a Behind The Artwork MALE: 57.7% which Elton appeared as soundtracked their piece with Elton’s design team and Behind LOCATION: UK, US himself, via a teaser campaign lives. A selection is The Costume series with Elton’s wardrobe of animated drawings of iconic to be published in designers. Elton’s glasses will again make

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SANDBOX 2017 SURVEY BEST USE OF SPOTIFY’S API KASABIAN COLUMBIA RECORDS UK

Photo: Alex Lake TEAM MEMBERS further promotion around the album INVOLVED announcement. Knowing that Facebook Live was going to be important on this Edd Blower – senior digital marketing campaign – we left Serge from the band CAMPAIGN BREAKDOWN manager to come up with an idea. He wanted to CAMPAIGN BUDGET £25,000+ Charlie Shawcross – senior marketing shoot a live video for their eight-minute manager track ‘Are You Looking For Action?’ and AUDIENCE DEMOGRAPHIC James Smith – channel manager so we partnered with LADbible to shoot AGE: N/A Laurence Warder – director and head of this during the album release week. It FEMALE: 40% production was simulcast across the Kasabian and MALE: 60% Dan Millar – video commissioner the LADbible Facebook pages, remaining LOCATION: UK Thom Wallis – CRM online for 24 hours before we published Hannah Emanuel - socials new music coming. It was to tease the it on the band’s Vevo channel. Serge and release prior to the album, tour and single Aitor (the director) were getting really excited OVERVIEW OF CAMPAIGN announcement. about the probability that things would go After the announcement, we had a short wrong. With that in mind, the video features Three years had passed since the band’s run to drive further awareness of the release a lot of extras, wearing fancy dress as fifth album, so over the entire campaign for beyond their core fans. From looking at the characters from previous video campaigns. the sixth album, For Crying Out Loud, we fanbase’s interests online we had a few Six weeks after the album was released, knew we had to reignite the core fans and verticals to work with that reached beyond and around the same time that the UK drive awareness in younger fans. Before music. Gaming was one of those verticals; football season ended, we launched a the announcement, we analysed what as a result, we worked with Amazon and Kasabian-branded fantasy football league the core fans engaged with the most on Twitch across two activations. The first was powered by Spotify data giving fans the the band’s social accounts – outside of big built around the band’s love of the FIFA chance to win a VIP experience at Reading & announcements. game and resulted in the band gaming live Leeds Festival. The league ran for six weeks Using that data, we made sure to capture on their own channel with two influential with the band’s catalogue representing photos and videos of the band in the studio, FIFA Twitchers. different positions on the pitch. After as well as, capture live footage from their During this live stream, the band selecting the tracks in your 4-4-2 formation, #1 album, knocking Ed Sheeran from the #1 spot after nine weeks. shows at the Sydney Opera House. In announced that they were going to stream they then selected their name and kit addition, on the video shoot for their single their entire show from Kentish Town design. This was intentionally placed • 27% increase in positive sentiment in 16-34 year olds during the ‘You’re In Love With a Psycho’, we partnered Forum in London on the same after the release to prolong the campaign. with LADBible who had exclusive behind- channel two days later. This long tail streaming of the • 5.5m views from the Instagram Stories takeover on LADBible, and the-scenes access on the set to highlight tied in perfectly with our goal music. reached 1.7m people and 462k views from live music video within a the cameos from Noel Fielding and Stephen to reach the younger fans. In 24-hour window Graham. Without giving too much away, addition, as Twitch is owned KEY LEARNINGS • 383k views across both Twitch activations, driving a 60% lift on the LADbible footage showed that there by Amazon, this enabled us Amazon pre-orders versus the previous week and a combined was something going on and there was to work with them to secure The band landed their fifth reach of 48m.

22 | sandbox | ISSUE 194 | 20.12.17 SANDBOX 2017 SURVEY BEST USE OF SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY Harnaam Kaur, The Bearded Dame and Sammy K, The Jewish Rapper

TEAM MEMBERS a result of the videos connecting emotionally with viewers, Harnaam INVOLVED Kaur, The Bearded Dame’s video achieved an astonishing 1.4m total views and 4.75m impressions across all social channels in the UK. Julia Herd – VP of global comms, Deezer Similarly, Sammy K’s video achieved 1.42m total views and 3.97m Deezer Global Social Team impressions within the US, which demonstrates how well the Attention Seekers agency campaign resonated with people from around the world who have their own personal connection to music. OVERVIEW OF CAMPAIGN The media and press worldwide were also engaged with the story, with top UK titles covering Harnaam’s story, such as Dare To Discover is a global campaign London Evening Standard, The Drum and The Metro and Atlanta delivered in the form of a digital content Jewish Times covering Sammy K’s experience, seen by over 147m series through which Deezer encourages readers and it is soon to be aired on a US TV channel as part of people worldwide to celebrate diversity its programme schedule. and change. It follows unique individuals around the world who share how music has KEY LEARNINGS inspired, motivated and, ultimately, changed their lives. From bullying and depression, to Shining a spotlight on personal stories and bringing them to life the after-effects of terrorism and violence, through short films has enabled Deezer to engage with people Dare To Discover aims to defy stereotypes across the globe in a way that had not been achieved before. and embrace individuality and diversity by From the success and feedback of the first two videos, Deezer taking viewers on an honest, personal music has realised the potential and impact this will have across other journey that shows how music is a universal regions with plans to build out more Dare To Discover content language for us all. across multiple countries. As people can often be grouped according to appearance and demographic, an important part of Dare To Discover is its specific focus on how “one size does not fit all”. By challenging the typical stereotypes CAMPAIGN BREAKDOWN of those involved in music and embracing CAMPAIGN BUDGET N/A change, Deezer’s campaign shines the spotlight on the Bearded Dame Harnaam AUDIENCE DEMOGRAPHIC Kaur, who has learned to love her body, to gain the confidence that she needed. Over The social reaction to the campaign has AGE: 14-18, 18-24, 24-34, 34-44. 44-60 including the excess facial hair that she has in the US, we meet Sammy K, an Orthodox been outstanding, with large amounts of FEMALE: N/A as a result of polycystic ovaries. We learn Jew who combines his love of Judaism and comments and interactions on Facebook, MALE: N/A that the journey to acceptance was not an rap to help him start an unexpected musical particularly around the importance of LOCATION: UK and US (but with global appeal) easy road for Harnaam and that the gritty journey inspired by the loss of a friend embracing our differences while showing and raw sounds of grime music helped her through a terrorist attack. admiration for Harnaam and Sammy K. As

23 | sandbox | ISSUE 194 | 20.12.17 SANDBOX 2017 SURVEY KESHA SONY RCA

TEAM MEMBERS INVOLVED

Beautiful Digital CAMPAIGN BREAKDOWN Vector Digital CAMPAIGN BUDGET £15,000–£25,000 Sony RCA Digital

OVERVIEW OF CAMPAIGN AUDIENCE DEMOGRAPHIC AGE: 0-14, 14-18, 18-24, 24-34 FEMALE: 66% Working as part of a large team, we helped MALE: 34% Kesha make her successful return to the LOCATION: Global very top of the charts. We helped steer the ship through leaks, a tirade of online abuse, Kesha’s lawsuit with Dr Luke and an industry unwilling to believe Kesha could make a serious record. We created a vibrant, colourful campaign that put the music and the fans at the centre and won over the listening public to achieve Kesha’s second US #1 album and the second-largest-selling week for a woman in 2017. Rainbow was a global smash, entering charts at #1 around the world. Lead single ‘Praying’ is still climbing the charts in the US and has currently hit well over 100m streams on Spotify. Kesha’s KEY visuals to accompany it. Kesha has an Instagram audience LEARNINGS incredible fanbase and we had to make hit over 2m during this sure they knew this was a victory too, campaign, while her Content is king. with regular incentives and shout outs. Facebook audience The focus of this Instagram proved its worth as a home for is about to break the campaign was an artist’s personal diary. 30m mark. music and vibrant

24 | sandbox | ISSUE 194 | 20.12.17 SANDBOX 2017 SURVEY ALICIA KEYS RCA

TEAM MEMBERS INVOLVED

Alicia Keys – Alicia Keys Worldwide CAMPAIGN BREAKDOWN Ana Lara – Alicia Keys Worldwide CAMPAIGN BUDGET $100 (advertising) Art Johnson – Alicia Keys Worldwide Kato Ceaser – Alicia Keys Worldwide AUDIENCE DEMOGRAPHIC Ramon Rivas – Alicia Keys Worldwide AGE: N/A Ann Mincieli – Jungle City Studios FEMALE: N/A Katonah Rafter – Fame House MALE: N/A Ryan Hall – Fame House LOCATION: Global Beth Ann Downey – Fame House Maggie McHale – Fame House Lawrence Yamoah – Fame House Carrie Paul – Fame House Later in the day, The Vault portal was “unlocked” for 24 hours only Matt Lee – By Matt Lee to give all of Alicia’s fans access to the post without having to sign Adryan Dillon – IDPR specific campaign up. This was pushed across Alicia’s channels, including to retargeting Leanna Balaban – IDPR since the relaunch. audiences of Facebook video viewers. We also worked closely with To commemorate the music teams at Facebook and Twitter to amplify this social OVERVIEW OF CAMPAIGN the anniversary content. Alicia’s third studio In April 2017, Alicia Keys Worldwide and album, Fame KEY LEARNINGS Fame House relaunched The Vault, the House collaborated official fan club for Alicia Keys, in conjunction with Alicia Keys Since The Vault relaunch, we have driven nearly 100k page views with the release of the brand new AliciaKeys. Worldwide and on key content. We have also re-engaged more than 5k super com. various platform fans, converting them to fanclub members and priming them for The core purpose of The Vault is to partners to roll out a engagement around key initiatives for Alicia. provide Alicia’s super fans with a trove of total site views and has amassed series of unreleased content from this era in The As I Am anniversary strategy, specifically, resulted in exclusive content for them to “get lost” in. thousands of subscribers through digital Alicia’s career in The Vault. 30x more page views in The Vault on the day of the campaign The aim was for all Vault subscribers to feel marketing efforts. Key content pieces On the day of the anniversary, a special launch as compared to the daily average. It also resulted in three that they are part of Alicia’s inner circle with have included behind-the-scenes looks post from Alicia was set live in The Vault, times more page views than our second-most-successful Vault exclusive privileges, content and access to at recent appearances for Alicia at featuring an unreleased track, never-before- campaign. Alicia. Content is also categorised by album events like We Day 2017 and Rock In Rio, seen videos and handwritten lyrics from the Total users on the site in the three days following the launch era and type (audio, video, diary) to promote along with highlighting song and album album period. When this content was made included 80% new visitors, showcasing the reach of the campaign exploration. anniversaries like the release of ‘Fallin’’ live, current Vault subscribers received an outside of Alicia’s core super fans. Since launching, page views in The and the 10-year anniversary of As I Am, email directing them to the portal and giving More than 20m impressions and 600k engagements on Vault encompass nearly 17% of Alicia’s which was the most successful Vault- them first access to this content. social posts.

25 | sandbox | ISSUE 194 | 20.12.17 SANDBOX 2017 SURVEY KOVE DRUM&BASSARENA

CAMPAIGN BREAKDOWN CAMPAIGN BUDGET £2,000–£3,000

AUDIENCE DEMOGRAPHIC AGE: 18–34 FEMALE: 19% by Chatfuel to then trigger the Facebook MALE: 81% Messenger bot. This then prompted sign ups LOCATION: UK, US to join the Drum&BassArena Family. With over 50k views, 1k reactions, 500 comments and 78 shares – the post resulted in a 60% acquisition rate to the bot. The bot • Streams: Added to the popular Massive Drum & Bass official sign ups were then messaged later with Spotify playlist, as well as over 40 sports playlists across Spotify links to the EP release. and Deezer. TEAM MEMBERS OVERVIEW OF CAMPAIGN • Sports Stadiums: ‘Ain’t No Love’ playlisted for football and other KEY LEARNINGS sports stadiums INVOLVED After a long absence, UK drum & bass legend • Sports Radio Successfully added to talkSPORT soundbeds with a James Cotterill – Drum&BassArena founder/ Kove returned to the scene with a brand • Data: successfully collected detailed potential reach of over 3m co-founder and head of music - AEI Group new EP, ‘In From The Cold’, with the lead demographic data of new members of the • Press: The several press premieres, interviews (YourEDM, Leanne Joseph – product manager, single ‘Ain’t No Love’, released on UK-based Drum&BassArena Family community Earmilk online, and cover printed features in DJ Times and FAZE AEI Group label Drum&BassArena, which has a 20-year • Unique engagement: through Facebook Magazine) and exclusive Beatport Studio Session. This included a Farhana Aboo – marketing manager, history of championing all things drum & messenger bot and #Family moments “In The Studio” livestream across the Facebook pages of Beatport AEI Group bass. The goal of the campaign was to raise was very impactful and had a tangible (1.6m followers), Kove and Drum&BassArena simultaneously. This Rupert Plumb – tech and innovation awareness of both the artist and label. commercial output reached over 20k views within 15 hours. manager, AEI Group The team utilised the latest Facebook • Charts: No. 10 in Shazam UK dance chart, • YouTube: making use of the close relationships with fellow bass Daniel Zahariev – lead developer, AEI Group functionality to drive people to Spotify #5 on the Radio 1 Dance Anthems chart, In channels like UKF and Skank & Bass, Kove’s return was amplified Sarah Stam – pr manager, AEI Group via an in-house early-access app, the BBC Radio 1 Specialist Dance Chart and and the release reached its core target audience. Maja Cicic – social media manager, Drum&BassArena Family, giving them early #8 on Music Week Cool Cuts chart • Successful: As an independent label with a modest budget for AEI Group access to the new release. The process • Radio: Over 80 key radio plays across the the release – the team achieved the goals set out by artist and the Toby Howieson – head of digital music was triggered by posting a teaser video of world including Radio 1 and particularly by label. operations, AEI Group the lead single on the Drum&BassArena tastemaker DJs such as Annie Mac, Danny Jack Springbett – art director, AEI Group Facebook, encouraging fans to comment on Howard, Pete Tong, and Mistajam Streams and sales figures are still coming in; however, in terms of the post to guess the artist. We then used • DSP Promo - great promotion across the hugely positive feedback from press, DJs, curators and fans alike, the ‘Acquire from Comments’ functionality Spotify, Apple Music and Beatport the campaign has been a resounding success.

26 | sandbox | ISSUE 194 | 20.12.17

SANDBOX 2017 SURVEY BEST USE OF SHAZAM LITTLE MIX SYCO MUSIC

TEAM MEMBERS Tekken, Japanese screens to give the INVOLVED anime and emojis. 20,000 fans the We also worked first ever listen Anya Du Sauzay in partnership to ‘Is Your Love CAMPAIGN BREAKDOWN Kelly Murray with Twitter Enough’. There CAMPAIGN BUDGET £25,000+ Allie Lester on a promoted was a clear call Alice Frost sticker to action that AUDIENCE DEMOGRAPHIC Ralph & Co (content agency) campaign – new music was AGE: 0-14, 14-18, 18-24, 24-34 creating a series about to play FEMALE: 80% OVERVIEW OF CAMPAIGN of motorbike and prompted MALE: 20% patch-style everyone to get LOCATION: Global Little Mix’s sizable global online fanbase stickers featuring their phones out and constantly need to be fed with new, each of the girls and Shazam it. When the exciting and engaging social assets, so Stormzy. track played, they were we ensured that we had a content-heavy In line with the release driven to an album pre-order streamed girl band on Spotify and are approaching 3bn Vevo strategy at the heart of our campaign. of the album repack (Glory Days: The splash page where they were able to video views. Around the release of the single ‘Power’, Platinum Edition), which featured three re-watch the clip and share. we created a content series that brand new songs, we wanted to make We did a similar activation with KEY LEARNINGS highlighted the strong identities that sure as many people heard the new another new track, ‘Dear Lover’, at the girls showcased in the music video, tracks as possible: and what better way the Glasgow SSE Hyrdo arena and emphasising their individual “super to do that than to premier them at the further incentivised fans by embedding powers” in fun and engaging ways. girls sold out 38-date Glory Days UK an unseen clip from the Glory Days As part of this, we created a series of arena tour? documentary on the splash page. Power Move social hack videos for each We partnered with Shazam using their From a digital perspective, Little Mix girl that brought their characters to life new geotechnology and kicked it off by are collectively the most-followed girl with a unique power, which included geo-fencing the O2 arena; before Little band on social media with over 47m references to arcade video games like Mix came on stage, we used the tour combined followers. They are the most-

The always-on marketing and content strategy, in line with our unexpected track features and ever-evolving release strategy has helped us keep the Glory Days alive over the past 12 months.

27 | sandbox | ISSUE 194 | 20.12.17 SANDBOX 2017 SURVEY BRUNO MAJOR KOBALT/AWAL

Photo: Katie Silvester

TEAM MEMBERS Mean A Thing’, was taken to the Spotify the pieces together. Spotify then worked Bruno playing a 40-minute set and meeting fans afterwards. INVOLVED team in August 2016 and found fans with Shuttz to take this vision and place it on amongst Spotify’s editorial team. The track billboards across London and online. KEY LEARNINGS Bruno Major – artist was added to a number of playlists in both Once Bruno had the huge success with Sam Bailey – manager the US and UK and started an artist story his streaming, the next challenge was to Independent artist with all rights retained, self-released through Andy Vincent – artist and management, that would run for the next 12 months and translate the streaming audience into a his own label, July Records, and distributed by Kobalt. Sold-out Spotify continues to grow. live audience. Partnering again with Spotify performances in the US, UK and across Europe. 45m total streams on Robert Shuttz – illustrator Bruno’s next 11 releases went from for a pre-sale, Bruno announced shows in Spotify with an average of 1.5m monthly listeners. Jack Stephens – artist and fan development, strength to strength each month and, in New York, LA, Berlin, Amsterdam, Paris and Spotify April 2017, he passed 10m streams. Since London, which all went on to sell out, some Will Hope – artist marketing, Spotify that point, one track, ‘Easily’, has surpassed close to selling out on Spotify pre-sale alone. Jamie Glydon – artist marketing, Spotify 10m streams on its own and is now edging A special year required a special closer to 20m. Bruno’s total performance – so, once CAMPAIGN BREAKDOWN OVERVIEW OF CAMPAIGN streams on the platform again taking the moon as an have also gone past 40m. influence, the whole team CAMPAIGN BUDGET £15,000–£25,000 In early 2016, after recording an album Throughout the campaign, worked together to create he was proud of, Bruno Major was sadly Bruno’s team partnered a performance in London’s AUDIENCE DEMOGRAPHIC dropped from his major label home. A with Amsterdam-based Royal Observatory for 70 of AGE: 14-18, 18-24, 24-34, 34-44 proficient and prolific songwriter, Bruno illustrator Robert Shuttz Bruno’s biggest listeners FEMALE: 63% decided to write, record and self-release a to create a visual language on Spotify – arriving at the MALE: 37% song a month under the title A Song based around the cycle of Planetarium, the fans were LOCATION: UK and US (plus global) For Every Moon. the moon that, on the final given a full Planetarium The first song of that series, ‘Wouldn’t release, served to pull all of show accompanied by

28 | sandbox | ISSUE 194 | 20.12.17 SANDBOX 2017 SURVEY MAROON 5 INTERSCOPE

TEAM MEMBERS INVOLVED

Freddie Morris – CAM Management CAMPAIGN BREAKDOWN Chris Mortimer – Interscope Records CAMPAIGN BUDGET N/A Carrie Paul – Fame House Brittany Choplin – Fame House AUDIENCE DEMOGRAPHIC Gabe Coffey – Fame House AGE: 24-34 Marisa Velazquez-Rivas – Fame House FEMALE: 70% Development – UMG MALE: 30% Dan Conway – Fame House LOCATION: Global Lauren Altman – Fame House Sam Huntington – Fame House

OVERVIEW OF CAMPAIGN

In anticipation of Maroon 5’s new album, Red Pill Blues, Fame House executed several unique and custom digital activations to spread the word. The first big moment around the album centered around its first single, ‘What Lovers Do’ feat. SZA. To celebrate the single, Fame House created a custom image generator landing page (https://whatloversdo. maroon5.com/) where fans could complete the sentence “______is what lovers do” and then share their responses to their social KEY LEARNINGS media via an image generated with their answer. Fan responses with the hashtag These unique campaigns around key #WhatLoversDo were then displayed on a moments throughout the album helped fan wall on the landing page. included unique product bundles, including to maximise awareness around the album Next, Fame House launched a new a custom Red Pill Blues lithograph where and tour. The ‘What Lovers Do’ landing page microsite (https://redpillbluestour. fans could upload a photo of themselves to garnered over 100k views and the band’s maroon5.com/), announcing the album’s be printed directly on the lithograph next to video announcing the tour garnered around accompanying upcoming tour. This coincided photos of the band (https://shop.maroon5. 750k views. with the launch of the album pre-order that com/designer.html).

29 | sandbox | ISSUE 194 | 20.12.17 SANDBOX 2017 SURVEY MURA MASA POLYDOR RECORDS / ANCHOR POINT

TEAM MEMBERS To showcase this, a documentary series INVOLVED was commissioned to capture footage of him in the studio and on tour, with fans Fiona McAuley – senior digital marketing and collaborators. This has been rolling out CAMPAIGN BREAKDOWN manager as a series on Vevo and, in part, natively on CAMPAIGN BUDGET £25,000+ Ben Skerritt – marketing manager socials. Oliver Hunter – digital media planner Mura Masa’s content posted across AUDIENCE DEMOGRAPHIC Sam Stubbings – Native Management socials and beyond uses a very inimitable AGE: 18–24, 24–34 aesthetic; his gif/stereo image style FEMALE: 39% OVERVIEW OF CAMPAIGN content became a USP with leverageable MALE: 61% cut-through. We utilised this across our LOCATION: London Mura Masa’s debut album was packed full of digital ad spend strategy, most notably artist features from several different lanes – via a Facebook canvas ad. There was an a major selling point for the record. To reveal interactive hub filled with content from each feature, the album was announced via across the campaign, emulating the style of a unique Facebook Live stream. Individual Mura Masa’s Instagram profile and allowing billboards for each artist were placed in fans to dive deep into this world. We their hometowns – from Guernsey (Mura remarketed to fans who interacted with this Masa), through Harlem (A$AP Rocky), format with a buy message. Nantes (Christine & The Queens) and more. audience consume music via streaming, we Video footage of each billboard was stitched also launched a Spotify pre-save mechanic KEY LEARNINGS together and live streamed from the for access to the album launch party. Boiler Facebook page. Room live streamed the event, creating Content is key; there was a consistency and Mura Masa had also produced some noise online the night before album release. strength of quality across all content used, underground tracks that were less A pop-up event in Peckham was set with a specific aesthetic and tone of voice commercial and suited to diehard fans. up across release weekend, with exclusive that resonated with his audience and helped To utilise these most effectively during merchandise on sale, DJ sets and a to create a unique digital world for fans to building a funnel to guide audiences through stages of intent is the album campaign, the Wave/Soul M8s performance. Access could be gained only feel invested in. crucial. By driving awareness and engagement using the Facebook EP was released via a data capture free by signing up to the official mailing list, and Segment audiences for better results; canvas ad (55k engagements @ £0.03p CPE), we harnessed a download mechanic. An elusive URL was Mura Masa’s intimate set was live streamed by targeting our ads to distinct “tribes” pool of engaged fans and progressed them through the funnel by posted on socials, consisting of a sign-up on his Facebook page on release day. reflecting the album’s eclectic flavour and remarketing to them with a sales message. field, which then revealed a gif of the EP Such an essential part features – cultural tastemakers Live streaming should be a vital component of each campaign artwork. When fans clicked on the artwork, of Mura’s artist proposition, (Christine & The Queens), hip- tent pole; this is the most effective way to cut through social noise tracks downloaded. and something that sets him hop heads (A$AP) and cool pop and reach a digital audience. We then launched a pre-order for UK apart from artists in the same (Charli XCX) – our ad spend was Email marketing is not dead. Clever data capture incentives tour pre-sale access via the official UK genre, is that he is an incredibly much more effective. helped triple the mailing list to 14k subscribers in time for out now store. Knowing that the vast majority of this talented multi-instrumentalist. Remarketing is essential; messaging.

30 | sandbox | ISSUE 194 | 20.12.17 SANDBOX 2017 SURVEY TOKIO MYERS SYCO MUSIC

TEAM MEMBERS INVOLVED

Lisa Johnson – senior digital marketing CAMPAIGN BREAKDOWN manager CAMPAIGN BUDGET £25,000+ Sam Spencer – marketing manager Seri Kohli – marketing assistant AUDIENCE DEMOGRAPHIC Beautiful Digital – social media agency AGE: 18-24, 24-34, 34-44 Gupta – media agency FEMALE: 64% OVERVIEW OF CAMPAIGN MALE: 36% LOCATION: UK Tokio Myers won Britain’s Got Talent earlier in the year and was returning with the release of his debut album, Our Generation. Tokio performed several tracks from his album to commuters and The campaign aim was to engage with the this was live streamed across the TFL, Yamaha and Tokio’s social existing fanbase who knew of him from channels. Britain’s Got Talent whilst raising awareness The roll out continued post release with exclusive content created and exposing a new audience to his music. for Amazon music, a Distiller session and a YouTube Session. We kicked off the campaign with a Debut chart position #4. content-led strategy in place to try and get as much of Tokio’s personality and KEY LEARNINGS talent across to his fans and those who might be discovering him for the first time. • Social growth and engagement increased significantly and Interesting, engaging visuals and content continues to grow as new fans discover the music. would lead his online properties, with more • Very targeted spend and ad format selection worked really well for exclusive content held back for the mailer great numbers and gave us fantastic ROI. accompany it with a heavy focus on his us and helped drive pre-orders whilst giving an amazing ROI. database to encourage sign ups. This new For each instant grat track that was unique and enthralling live set up. • The live stream allowed us to see fan reactions and give us good look and feel would roll out across all areas released, a corresponding clip of one-minute An amazing X Factor performance of insight into where new fans are tapping in from and what tracks of the campaign. visuals were placed online to capture the ‘Angel’ and a Unilad Instagram and Snapchat they were responding to. To launch the month-long pre-order sentiment of the track and give fans a sneak takeover from the studio on the day further phase of Our Generation, we offered fans a peek into Tokio’s world. We also fed the helped bolster sales taking the total number D2C bundle and instant grat track. The D2C fanbase content that captured his recording of pre-orders to 11.5k. bundle allowed fans to order a signed copy process and exclusive behind-the-scenes A partnership with Yamaha was secured and be eligible for tour pre-sale access. We footage. For every announcement and and, as part of the deal, Tokio launched a ran Facebook Offer ads to support this and moment in the campaign, we ensured there piano at Tottenham Court Road station in saw huge success. The ad format drove was some form of audio visual content to conjunction with Transport For London.

31 | sandbox | ISSUE 194 | 20.12.17 SANDBOX 2017 SURVEY NOTHING BUT THIEVES RCA RECORDS UK

CAMPAIGN BREAKDOWN CAMPAIGN BUDGET £2,000–£5,000

AUDIENCE DEMOGRAPHIC AGE: 18–24 FEMALE: 58% MALE: 42% LOCATION: UK, Europe

The campaign ran for four weeks leading up website and it received 14,000 visits in 24 to the single launch. hours, being the ninth-most-visited Sony UK TEAM MEMBERS We started the campaign by sending 500 site that week. INVOLVED signed postcards to the band’s fans in the With the final Spotify teaser, we asked UK and around the world (cities included fans in Amsterdam to go to a secret location Nick Antoniou – senior digital marketing Amsterdam, Paris, Melbourne, Tokyo and for “something special”. Within an hour, fans manager, Sony Music UK Moscow). The postcards had a link to the across the Netherlands started travelling Mike Walmsley – digital channel manager, Spotify pre-save page. Based on the album to Amsterdam, many travelling 3+ hours by Sony Music UK creative (Kintsugi) and inspired by the trains, buses and boats. The first 30 fans Louise Woolsey – senior account manager, periodic table, we coded the album title, that arrived at the location in Amsterdam Sony Music UK leaving clues about it on the band’s official were escorted into the venue for an pre-saves (8,000 in the first four weeks), ending up being the Jessie Duffy – international marketing Spotify playlist. Every week, we updated the exclusive listen of the single and got tickets most successful album pre-save initiative for Sony UK. The manager, Sony Music UK pre-save page and playlist with more clues for the band’s gig in town. band’s official playlist gained 15,000 new followers, with the about the album title and a new audio teaser As a result, we managed to re-engage the three exclusive audio teasers receiving more than 20,000 OVERVIEW OF CAMPAIGN at the top of the playlist. social fanbase across all channels as well as streams. The social engagement during the campaign went up Two weeks before the ‘Amsterdam’ maximise the anticipation around the band’s 350%, with more than 300,000 people engaged across socials, To support Nothing But Thieves’ single release, we also launched an online return and their new album. with global reaction across the band’s socials, from Malaysia to ‘Amsterdam’ from their second album, typewriter game where fans had to guess the US. Broken Machine, we ran a Spotify album the secret code to unlock an exclusive KEY LEARNINGS It also helped make ‘Amsterdam’ one of the band’s most pre-save campaign aiming to re-engage the behind-the-scenes piece of code. The cipher successful singles, paving the way for their #2 UK album later a few fanbase and migrate them towards Spotify. code was hidden in the page source of the The campaign resulted in 10,000 album months later.

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TEAM MEMBERS INVOLVED

Angela Grech – marketing manager, Island CAMPAIGN BREAKDOWN Records CAMPAIGN BUDGET £15,000–£25,000 Glenn Cooper – strategic marketing director, Island Records AUDIENCE DEMOGRAPHIC Rob Slade – digital manager, Island Records AGE: 18–24, 24–34 Matt Johnson – Redlight Management FEMALE: 62% Steve Ambler – SB Management MALE: 38% OVERVIEW OF CAMPAIGN LOCATION: UK and global

With Ultralife, we wanted to make sure that fans got insight into the “album” following. With a regular mailer strategy in line with weekly content process which was created at home, dropping, we were able to engage and strengthen the band’s existing written, produced and mixed by the band modest-sized mailing list and also look to secure new database sign- themselves – and so the band captured ups with exclusive content and the promise of regular comms from the whole process and created their own slate of over 2.5m UK impressions for engagement throughout release week. the band via the mailing list, which enabled us to more than double documentary detailing the journey. We the long-form documentary content with We also wanted to provide artists the band’s database in just four months. We also set up a new set up an Album First Listen event in Vevo and created a bespoke edit to roll out and industry with their own unique and Facebook Messenger bot for the band which was used to exclusively partnership with Everyman’s Cinema, with exclusively with Apple Music as well as part immersive listening experience to the album announce their huge 72-date world tour creating a new social the band themselves hosting album launch of a wider partner campaign. at Island Record’s inaugural Osea Island channel for the band to communicate to their global fanbase. We festivities for their fans on the eve of album Some 55% of album 1 sales have been event. Alongside MelodyVR & the band, we were also able to create a fantastically varied remarketing always- release, introducing and watching their derived from streaming, so we needed to created a virtual world for each track which on spend strategy across socials and programmatic advertising, album documentary before listening to the ensure that we catered to our “streaming” listeners could engage with whilst listening presenting new content and imagery/tailored pre-roll creative to an album in full just ahead of public release. audience. In tandem with the launch of to the new music for the first time. engaged audience through discovery to ultimately purchase as we This was a one-of-a-kind first event Spotify’s Spotify Codes, we created OW With weekly content dropping got closer to album release. where the cinema provided the somewhat six-foot structures stickered up with a throughout campaign, we were able to utilise untraditional yet perfect backdrop for a Spotify Code scanning through to the this roll KEY LEARNINGS visual – album exclusive first listen with new album. The band took the structures out to perfect sound surroundings, mesmerising around town with them to listen to the really The First Listen event sold out in under big-screen visuals and comfort only album with fans on album release day. As engage 20 minutes once announced and we had a a cinema setting can offer. We were part of our guerrilla activity, we also had and packed room of fans join the band for the subsequently able to repurpose this key a multitude of additional code stickers expand event – a great result for a novel concept content outside of the fanbase with other placed around the areas visited which the with Oh Wonder to be the first act to launch partners and also secured a fantastic promo helped generate further footfall and band’s this new concept.

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Two of the band members were “inked” with Otherkin-related tattoos, including lead singer/guitarist Luke, who had the album title OK tattooed on his wrist, which was used as the album artwork. Fans were offered the design as free “fake tattoos” at Otherkin gigs. During their 60-date tour across 17 countries on the Otherkin OK Album tour, fans could track the band and stay up to date with their antics on Polar Steps.

KEY LEARNINGS

TEAM MEMBERS live shows, which accumulated in a 60-date We worked with local brands to help The album entered the Irish chart at #2. Engagement on Facebook INVOLVED album tour across 17 different countries. promote the album launch, including increased by 500%, Twitter followers went up by 25% and they added Niall Muckian – director, Rubyworks Ahead of the OK album release, the band Rascal’s Brewing Company, a local beer, who 27% more followers on Instagram. Roger Quail – label manager, Rubyworks launched their newsletter campaign. To launched the Otherkin OK Beer alongside the It was interesting to note that keeping the exclusivity of Eoin Aherne – junior label manager, encourage sign-ups, fans who subscribed to album release. Hard Working Class Heroes, Otherkin’s shows and activities generated hype around the album Rubyworks the newsletter received exclusive details of a a music festival and conference, offered and a great hub of dedicated fans – The Kinship – was established, Shauna Watson – label assistant, private Otherkin House Party. This was held discounted tickets to those who could prove more than what there would have been if there was a generic Rubyworks in an abandoned house outside the city and they had purchased the Otherkin album. campaign of free gigs and basic marketing. Ceri Dixon – streaming and partnerships only those signed up to the newsletter were They also partnered with Safe Gigs For manager, Rubyworks sent their “golden ticket” to gain access. Women during their European tour and took Brian Bradley – Brassneck Management On the eve of the album release date, The a stand against sexual assault, which was Otherkin – Luke O’Reilly, Rob Summons, Feel Its (an Otherkin tribute band) were to covered by the Daily Mail as well as NME. CAMPAIGN BREAKDOWN Conor Wynne, David Anthony play a free midnight show in a Dublin venue Otherkin played in-stores, did Instagram with a capacity of 100 people. We started takeovers and live stories on Reading & CAMPAIGN BUDGET £0–£500 OVERVIEW OF CAMPAIGN a rumour that this was actually a secret Leeds, Electric Picnic and Hard Working Class Otherkin gig to launch their album and word Heroes Instagram accounts. We ran a Day In AUDIENCE DEMOGRAPHIC For this campaign, we focused on guerilla excitedly spread in hushed tones to keep The Life campaign on Otherkin’s social media AGE: 14-18, 18-24, 24-34 marketing activities that stood apart from it exclusive to the “true fans” in the know. accounts whereby, one day a week in the run FEMALE: 35% similar bands’ album campaigns. We offered At midnight, we sold albums contributing up to their album launch, each band member MALE: 65% direct-to-fan exclusives, showcased the towards their chart position. The band documented their day on Instagram stories, LOCATION: Ireland personalities of each band member and members did an Otherkin DJ set after the allowing fans to get to know more about each captured fans with Otherkin’s exhilarating sold-out show. member individually.

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TEAM MEMBERS INVOLVED

Maddy Smith – Capitol UK CAMPAIGN BREAKDOWN Becky Thomas – Capitol UK CAMPAIGN BUDGET £15,000–£25,000 Simon Bush – WMA Lara Dowd – WMA AUDIENCE DEMOGRAPHIC Adam Kelly – Doyen Global AGE: 14–18, 18–24 Traci Maddock – Doyen Global FEMALE: 83% OVERVIEW OF CAMPAIGN MALE: 17% LOCATION: UK, US, Europe For the launch of ‘Strip That Down’, the debut solo single from One Direction’s Liam Payne, we knew that the huge fanbase and captive We held a simulcast livestream event at YouTube Studios in London audience he had garnered as part of and New York, where fans were invited to a Q&A event with the boyband was the biggest tool at Liam and host Marvin Humes. During the event, the ‘Strip That our disposal. Down’ video was also premiered mid-way through broadcast As such, we focused heavily to both fans in the room and those watching online at home. on digital and the various social The video was then immediately delivered to go live on Liam’s platforms where Liam already had YouTube channel. The show had 250k unique viewers. The millions of followers to kickstart our ‘Strip That Down’ video itself has had 211m views to date. campaign and build anticipation YouTube heavily promoted the event on its socials and we for the release. We kicked off the were also lucky enough to get a YouTube homepage masthead. campaign a week before release with a pre-save tool that gained a KEY LEARNINGS total of 35k saves, a record at that time for Liam was also one of the first artists to #StripThatDown hashtag and piece together a UMG artist. We would later go on to use use the Facebook Live with feature, which the song. This had huge and immediate To us, it was crucial that we focused first on the existing fanbase and the Spotify data captured here for extensive allows users to invite guests into a two-way reach, with 200k uses of the filters within 24 cater heavily to their anticipation and appetite for a Liam solo career. retargeting in our online advertising. stream. This was also highly successful with hours and #1 worldwide trend on Twitter. That is why so much of our initial planning and ideas were reliant on Our teaser campaign continued with a 565k viewers during the stream and VOD. Continuing our collaboration with Twitter, fan engagement and participation, making sure we catered to users livestream on Facebook where we revealed On the Wednesday pre-release, we Liam’s largest social platform, we created on every key social network. This was highly effective in kickstarting the title and release of the single. To date launched a Snapchat filter lyric reveal, a Twitter emoji (1.7m uses) and a set of a globally successful launch. The initial buzz translated quickly into this video has had 500k views and reached where we placed 24 Snapchat filters in Twitter stickers for their camera app (265k wider awareness and excitement. One of the key learnings is that, for 2.2m people. We continued to tease the locations globally each revealing a different uses) to ensure prevalence on the platform. an audience like Liam’s, there is never too much content or too much track via mobile-optimised video content line of lyrics from the song. Fans were Our largest partnership event was two you can do. Therefore, an always-on and digital-first strategy was throughout the week. After the launch, encouraged to then tweet the lyrics with a weeks after the single release with YouTube. and still is central to our campaign.

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TEAM MEMBERS INVOLVED

Julie Sandrin – head of digital marketing, CAMPAIGN BREAKDOWN Sony Commercial Group UK CAMPAIGN BUDGET £10,000–£15,000 Nick Antoniou – senior digital marketing manager, Sony Music UK AUDIENCE DEMOGRAPHIC Casandra Govor – digital account manager, AGE: 18-24, 24-34, 34-44 Sony Music UK FEMALE: 76% Louise Woolsey – senior account manager, MALE: 24% Sony Music UK LOCATION: UK OVERVIEW OF CAMPAIGN

Since the beginning of 2017, Sony UK Catalogue STREAMING CAMPAIGN Commercial Group has been working with frontline labels to maximise catalogue campaign we drove to two P!nk playlists retargeting people that engaged with our streams of returning artists. We do this in on both Spotify and Apple initial ads. In terms of creative, we tested an effort to keep fanbases engaged at all Music, featuring the new two different videos using P!nk’s biggest times and pave the way for new albums. single, ‘What About Us’, tracks as well as the new single. Influencing consumption of our alongside the catalogue. artist’s catalogue just before or after We ran the KEY LEARNINGS a new single drops means we can campaign in two drive more streams, but also start phases, going after As part of this effort and the wider conversations early with streaming a wider audience marketing mix, we saw an uplift of 90% partners. This can also influence algorithms first, and then in catalogue streams and 30% in streams to deliver new music to the right people as sequentially of ‘What About Us’ coming from these soon as it’s out as hits could help fans two playlists. On average, fans of similar rediscover their forgotten love for an artists watched a higher percentage of the artist. video than core fans. Nearly 30% of views RCA UK and Sony Commercial were played with the sound on, showing Group joined forces on this P!nk impressive engagement from our audiences. campaign and, for the first time, Across all platforms, the Spotify playlist both Apple and Spotify were accounted for 67% of traffic to retail. P!nk’s fully behind us, thanks to the fans outperformed all targeting segments dedication of our sales team. across the board and women in the 25-54 With our digital marketing age range contributed to the most link clicks.

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CAMPAIGN BREAKDOWN CAMPAIGN BUDGET £10,000–£15,000 April we began to tease the upcoming AUDIENCE DEMOGRAPHIC album announcement via Victorian-style AGE: 14–18, 18–24 funeral cards sent directly to fans through FEMALE: 58% the mail. The online buzz became a frenzy, MALE: 42% with fans speculating exactly what these LOCATION: UK teasers were about, and many a fan theory popped up online. We officially announced at the beginning of May, alongside the dropping of a brand new track, ‘Heaven,’ for the album. We have been fortunate enough to not just be on the which premiered on the Radio 1 Rock Show covers of rock magazines, but to straddle high-end fashion with Lynn with Daniel P Carter, meaning the campaign Gunn, indie titles and broadsheets. was set in full motion. The following singles, PVRIS’s live show continues to grow internationally, seeing the ‘What’s Wrong’ and ‘Winter’, received great band play alongside the likes of Muse and Thirty Seconds To Mars in support from Radio 1 and each saw the the US and play the main stage Reading & Leeds Festival in the UK TEAM MEMBERS band perform on Jimmy Kimmel, Carson band spend a number of weeks on the B-list, the weekend the album was released. The crowds they play to are INVOLVED Daily, BBC Radio 1 and grace numerous plus playing sessions for Clara Amfo, Annie continually growing and this autumn sees the band complete a sold- magazine covers worldwide, plus amass Mac and Daniel P Carter as part of the Radio out UK tour playing their biggest headline shows to date, finishing Clare Maxwell – product manager 60,000 album sales in the UK, granting White 1 Rock All Dayer. with Brixton Academy in London. Sam Hill – digital Noise silver status. PVRIS are a band with a beautiful visual Hayley Connelly – Little Press (BMG national The pressure was on when it came to aspect to their music and we have made KEY LEARNINGS PR) planning their highly anticipated second sure to carry that through with press from Rob Lynch – Airplayer TV (national radio) album – All We Know Of Heaven, All We White Noise into AWKOHAWKOH. This PVRIS are a great digital artist for us to work as the fanbase is so Claire Close – CCTV LIVE Need Of Hell. is reflected from the videos, to artwork, reactive, but also constantly growing. During the first album campaign, Mark Ngui – CAA The 2017 follow-up is named after a line merchandise, street marketing, posters, the record grew pretty quickly and we realised that it was key to in a poem by Emily Dickinson and deals teasers and live production. analyse as much data incoming as possible. This time around, we were OVERVIEW OF CAMPAIGN with the powerful duality between life and Our numerous magazine covers around able to jump start by going back to this data, seeing how the fans had death as well as love and hate – themes album launch were based around light and evolved and then present specific groups with the new content, having With the release of 2014’s White Noise, the which run deep through the 10 tracks of dark in the form of death cards, mirroring the already isolated different groups of fans and pushing it on Instagram Boston-based PVRIS arrived with a sound All We Know Of Heaven, All We Need Of reflection/water from the artwork or a more and Snapchat, whilst using Facebook advertising in a support role and vision all their own, which captured Hell. The campaigns imagery was driven muted stylised shoot. It was very intentional to drive clicks. When you can engage core fans like that, never audiences globally. The campaign saw the by singer Lynn Gunn herself and back in to have everything reflect the artists’ ideas underestimate the power of word of mouth to spread the word after.

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scavenger hunt app alongside Landmrk to KEY LEARNINGS incentivise UK fans to explore London for the chance to win tickets to the sold-out show at Our goal was to reengage nostalgic UK fans and to give them The Garage. something special to take part in whilst the band were in Fans were encouraged to sign up, before market, as well as to raise awareness of the new album in an TEAM MEMBERS being presented with a map of London, pin- international territory. We had 2.3k unique users and new INVOLVED pointed with iconic locations. They had to visit wsign-ups to our email database, as well as almost 10k visitors these hotspots to enter the geo-fence, each to the app. Betsy Chadbourn – digital campaign of which unlocked a multiple choice question manager, Virgin EMI about Rise Against and their history. The fan Louis Lloyd – product manager, Virgin EMI who completed all of the questions correctly Tom Nield – co-founder, Landmrk – and in the fastest time within the 48-hour Jamie Dolling – director, Landmrk window – won the tickets. CAMPAIGN BREAKDOWN Paul King – CTO, Landmrk To reward everyone who took part, in the John Billings – lead developer, Landmrk final hour of the promotion we released co- CAMPAIGN BUDGET £2,000–£5,000 Rob Hampson – head designer, Landmrk ordinates to Poet’s Corner in Hyde Park within Zac Smith – digital project manager, the app, instructing fans only to “be there”. AUDIENCE DEMOGRAPHIC Landmrk We surprised them with a secret acoustic set AGE: 18–24, 24–34 and the chance for all fans in attendance to FEMALE: 34% OVERVIEW OF CAMPAIGN meet and jam with the band. MALE: 65% We promoted the app using UK geo- LOCATION: US, Germany, Canada, UK To promote the release of their new album, targeted boosted posts, alongside video Wolves, we created the We Are The Wolves assets customised to the activation.

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TEAM MEMBERS culminating into album INVOLVED release. The band found out their second studio album Jennifer Ivory – VP of marketing, Warner hit #1 in the chart, whilst Bros. Records on the Pyramid stage at Sebastian Simone – head of digital strategy, Glastonbury, where they Warner Bros. Records played third from top on the Olivier Massey – social media manager, Friday to tens of thousands Warner Bros. Records of fans, and boasting A-list celeb fans side of stage such OVERVIEW OF CAMPAIGN as Brad Pitt, Bradley Cooper and Lars Ulrich. For Royal Blood’s returning second album, we needed to cement the band as the KEY LEARNINGS biggest global breakthrough rock duo. Our campaign started leading into the release of Showcasing the band’s friendship and humour through dynamic the first single and launch of the album pre- personality content pieces connected with a youth audience and order, where we dropped a time-lapse mural mobilised them to engage with the band, both socially and of the artwork being painted by two artists, in the streaming space. Furthermore, garnering two-way coming out with a bang by announcing the 360 show in a completely unique set up interaction through these social moments was impactful album title, How Did We Get So Dark?, the to launch Samsung’s new handset. The and had clear tangible commercial output, whilst also release date and showcasing the striking video’s use across Samsung’s and the acting as a tool to storytell the campaign journey. packshot in a bold way. The video reached band’s Facebook/YouTube streams racked over 1.6m users and was viewed 700,000 up over 4m views, exposing the band to an times. entirely new audience and bringing viewers The next day, we released a video of into the room, to experience the visceral live the band under a flickering light bulb, performance. CAMPAIGN BREAKDOWN signposting the first play and revealing the A further two pieces of music were single title, ‘Lights Out’, sending fans into dropped leading into album – ‘I Only Lie CAMPAIGN BUDGET £25,000+ a frenzy. All was subsequently revealed When I Love You’ and fan favourite, ‘Hook, with the launch of ‘Lights Out’ as both Line & Sinker’, both of which were launched AUDIENCE DEMOGRAPHIC Annie Mac’s Hottest Record and Zane with official videos and used as instant AGE: 18-24, 24-34 Lowe’s World Record, the first time both grat drivers to push the pre-order. The final FEMALE: 40% promotional looks have happened on a track week leading into release, we did a video MALE: 60% at the same time. countdown of fun personality pieces and LOCATION: Global Leading into release, we partnered with exciting live teasers, using hooks from the Samsung to do the first-ever live-streamed remaining album tracks yet to be revealed,

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Each single was released through short lyric teasers, giving fans just enough audio to “uncover” the theme of the album. Social copy was kept cryptic, hinting at but not quite revealing what was to come. We drove fans to a mysterious landing page, featuring just the album release date and an email signup form. The tracklist was then revealed through a countdown combination of “hidden messages” within tweets and scrambled letter graphics on Facebook, encouraging fans to “uncover” the song titles themselves. This culminated in a video “unscrambling” each of the letters to showcase the full tracklist. During release week, we cut behind-the-scenes footage and never-before-seen photographs paired with unreleased audio clips for a full seven-day video countdown to the album.

KEY LEARNINGS

Capitalising on each moment of the album cycle with branded, thematic content drove awareness and excitement for Robin’s new album. Each moment fully engaged fans in the release, and was taken as a chance to drive pre-sales. During release week, ‘Uncovered’ charted in 75 territories, peaking 8x as #1, 32x in the Top 5, 45x Top 10 and 54x Top 25 in those respective charts! CAMPAIGN BREAKDOWN OVERVIEW OF CAMPAIGN CAMPAIGN BUDGET Cost of video work TEAM MEMBERS Gena Londa – Team Robin Schulz INVOLVED Shaw Miseyko – Atlantic Records German DJ/Producer Robin Schulz AUDIENCE DEMOGRAPHIC Diane Tamulavage – Fame House released his third studio album in AGE: 18–24 Lea Karasch – Warner Germany Ryan Hall – Fame House September 2017. Through a cohesive FEMALE: 35% Nadine Stellmacher – Warner Germany Emily Levy – Fame House strategy playing off of the album title, MALE: 65% Ellen Nordmann – Warner Germany Gabe Coffey – Fame House Uncovered, we drove engagement and fan LOCATION: Global Gregor Stoeckl – Warner Germany Lawrence Yamoah – Fame House participation for each of the moments of Marco Pantuso – Warner Germany Carrie Paul – Fame House the album marketing cycle.

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TEAM MEMBERS INVOLVED

Ricardo Chamberlain – digital marketing CAMPAIGN BREAKDOWN director, Sony Music US Latin CAMPAIGN BUDGET £25,000+ Diane McDermott – digital marketing coordinator, Sony Music US Latin AUDIENCE DEMOGRAPHIC Aileen Fernandez – digital marketing AGE: 14-18, 18-24, 24-34, 34-44 coordinator, Sony Music US Latin FEMALE: 37% Tom Nield – co-founder, Landmrk MALE: 63% Paul King – CTO, Landmrk LOCATION: Global John Billings – lead developer, Landmrk Rob Hampson – head designer, Landmrk Zac Smith – digital project manager, Landmrk Ed Howell – account manager, Landmrk Jamie Dolling – director, Landmrk Seth Jackson – CEO, Landmrk

OVERVIEW OF CAMPAIGN

Sony Music US Latin wanted to reach a global audience with an engaging and personalised experience, so turned to new content every day in the lead up to nearest content hotspots. location-based experiences platform album release. Desktop/laptop users were shown Landmrk. Landmrk allows brands to The Landmrk platform created an a world map which revealed all the place digital content in physical locations, immersive experience for fans over the different locations. Teaser posts and the anywhere in the world, accessible through course of the 14-day lead up to album #ShakiraElDorado hashtag were presented the mobile web. release, enabling them be the first to listen through the musician’s presence on social Content was selected by Shakira and to tracks from the new album. Hotspots media, which also served as the catalyst for was trending in three territories and fans were heading out to their her social team that they believed to be were created across 99 territories worldwide, the generation of significant amounts of nearest hotspot to discover what Shakira had left for them, before worthy of the activation (behind-the-scenes where fans unlocked new content every fan-created content and posts. posting it on their socials. footage, exclusive tracks, selfie filters etc). day, ranging from handwritten lyrics to Over the course of the campaign, we had over 30,000 uses of the This content would then be released one behind-the-scenes footage. The campaign KEY LEARNINGS hashtag across socials, reaching an estimated 622m. There were piece at a time, to nearly 1,000 hotspots was accessible at shakiraeldorado.com, over 250,000 sessions and total of 4,773 hours spent on the platform. across the world. Fans would be able to with mobile users accessing a branded map #ShakiraElDorado launched to a social media Shakira’s album went on to outsell any other Latin album for two travel to their nearest hotspot and unlock showing their location and those of the frenzy. Within the first hour, the hashtag years, hitting #1 in 31 countries within the first week.

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TEAM MEMBERS subscribers he has on his channel. INVOLVED • We had “go 20” posters up around Ed’s home county in Suffolk in reference to Callum Caulfield, Nick Long him getting ticked off by the local police CAMPAIGN BREAKDOWN Cameron Stanton, Sean Ward for his reference to “driving at 90” lyric CAMPAIGN BUDGET £25,000+ in ‘Castle On The Hill’ – this outdoor OVERVIEW OF CAMPAIGN quickly generated a lot of social media AUDIENCE DEMOGRAPHIC conversation, making it onto Twitter’s AGE: 0-14, 14-18, 18-24, 24-34, 34-44, 44-60 Having taken a year out of the public domain Moments homepage. FEMALE: 65% prior to this album we had to ensure Ed’s • We took Ed into HMV with no prior MALE: 35% return delivered maximum excitement and announcement and allowed him to serve LOCATION: Focus on UK with global impact then continued this momentum through fans and his security guard – this gave into the album. us the perfect video on release day to Below are some of the key online promote his album being out and use in moments of the campaign: our advertising. • Combined reach of activity across all channels during this teaser week totalled over 500m. Return to social media and Re-energising ‘Perfect’ • The two singles broke all day one streaming records on both Snap Lens Premiere • We started warming up the demand for Spotify and Apple Music. • Instead of “going dark”, we decided to “go ‘Perfect’ by releasing its own lyric video on Album release and album on YouTube blue” on the anniversary of his departure 22nd September. • Our video of Ed serving customers his own album was the from social media. This was timed to the of audio each with their own distinct avatar • We then put out a short clip of Ed second-most-viewed video on his Facebook page after his return exact minute and sparked a lot of interest to tease that there may be more than one serenading one of his cats and asked fans to social media on 1st January. and speculation from both fans and media. song coming. to then use the #Puurfect tag to post clips Re-energising ‘Perfect’ • The speculation continued with a cryptic • We then premiered 30 seconds of ‘Shape of their fans doing it. Ed then liked several • Week after the ‘Perfect’ official video was released, the track and simple video of Ed on 1st January Of You’ via a global SnapChat Lens on the of these posts which helped strengthen climbed to its highest position on the OCC since the album release. announcing new music was coming on Thursday before the two songs dropped. We the bond between his fans and the song. • The Instagram post featuring Ed’s cat is in his top 5 most-viewed Friday. The clip was kept short and utilised didn’t message this at all and had no call out on • The Christmassy official video was Instagram posts and we had over 9,000 fans engage with the text rather than audio so fans could get the the Lens itself, which amplified the excitement launched this week after Halloween on the #puurfect message without having to turn on audio fans had when they came across it. 9th November. This meant we got up just hashtag. in their feed. as the high-street retailers launched their • We continued the teasing by running Album release and album on YouTube Christmas campaign and strengthened the six-second ads on YouTube to a slowly • We took the decision to upload all album record’s Christmas pedigree. expanding group of fans, starting with the tracks in full to YouTube – the audio most engaged and broadening out to a would make it there in some form, so we KEY LEARNINGS wider audience. This was mirrored on his wanted it to be presented in a way that we own socials with animated lyrics of both could control the messaging around. This Return to social media and songs without audio and then short bursts was also a good way to reach the 23m+ Snap Lens Premiere

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Photos: Francesca Allen CAMPAIGN BREAKDOWN CAMPAIGN BUDGET £1,000–£2,000

AUDIENCE DEMOGRAPHIC AGE: 18–24 FEMALE: 50% MALE: 50% LOCATION: UK

visually, but include the track and link the two. We came up with a formula for the brief, which asked the talent on Instagram to share an Instagram Story with the track playing in the background. They were then asked to share a picture of TEAM MEMBERS themselves wearing a “Don’t Kill My Vibe” T-shirt from Sigrid’s merchandise range, which she also wears on her track artwork. INVOLVED We then asked the talent to post another Story featuring the Charlotte Birch – marketing manager, Island We worked with Tailify and Max Savard at It was important that we first track so that their followers could connect the dots between the Records Dialogue Management to pick out a custom identified talent who either had previously track and the visual. Charlie Drinkwater – creative manager, list of YouTubers and Instagram talent to demonstrated that they were fans of Sigrid, From the Tailify talent list, we saw 10 talents come on board Island Records approach to share the message for us. We or had a very similar “vibe” so that the with a combined following of 370,000 (our target was 250,000), who Faye Williams – senior digital marketing also reached out to a selection of influential responses from them were as positive as posted between them 20 stories and 16 photo posts on Instagram manager, Island Records followers of Sigrid’s Twitter and Instagram. possible, and the campaign was organic. (more than requested in the initial brief). Hypelab – social media agency The main aims were to amplify the After our initial Tailify messaging about the new track to build target list was fine- KEY LEARNINGS awareness of the artist and drive streams, tuned and we had OVERVIEW OF CAMPAIGN build up a “support crew” for Sigrid by a list of talent who We’re now aiming to continue developing these sourcing a variety of influencers/talent wanted to be involved, relationships, with a meet up planned at the YouTube Space To promote Sigrid’s new track, ‘Don’t Kill My form different “pools” to hit different we worked with Tailify around Sigrid’s next visit to London to create some content. Vibe’, we wanted to amplify the messaging audiences and encourage long term, organic to create a brief for The campaign also drove a lot of excitement around the around the track to more of her target relationships. We also wanted to drive the talent to follow, T-shirts, creating an air of exclusivity around them, and we audience (15-25, females), with her being a excitement for the upcoming merchandise which would not only sold around 130 units in the first week, using some of the fairly new artist. range. portray Sigrid’s style content from the campaign as part of the launch.

43 | sandbox | ISSUE 194 | 20.12.17 SANDBOX 2017 SURVEY SAM SMITH CAPITOL UK

CAMPAIGN BREAKDOWN CAMPAIGN BUDGET £15,000–£25,000

AUDIENCE DEMOGRAPHIC AGE: 18–24 FEMALE: 69% TEAM MEMBERS MALE: 31% INVOLVED LOCATION: UK, US, Europe, Australia Dave Rocco – Spotify to dominate this space. The result was our Eric Alexander – Spotify vertical video with Spotify. Although this Matt Ott – Spotify was not the first time Spotify had launched launch set the tone for the rest of the album campaign and reflected Will Hope – Spotify this type of content, it was the largest-scale our ambitions for Sam’s return. Jamie Glydon – Spotify launch in terms of territories and playlist Maddy Smith – Capitol UK inclusions. KEY LEARNINGS Tom Paul – Capitol UK Shot in the Capitol Studios in LA, the Murray Rose – Capitol UK video is a black and white one-shot take of We already knew how integral streaming was to our relaunch of Sam David Miller – Capitol US Sam singing ‘Too Good At Goodbyes’ direct as a global superstar, but the statement of the vertical video and its to camera. The treatment was specifically domination within Spotify generated a huge amount of interest that OVERVIEW OF CAMPAIGN optimised for the vertical frame, with far exceeded our expectations. close-up shots of Sam to make it as visually In collaboration with Spotify, we launched a striking as possible for mobile viewers. • Single debuted at #1 of the UK charts and held the spot for three vertical video for Sam Smith’s return single, On the Friday, one week before release, weeks. ‘Too Good At Goodbyes’. The track was the three out-of-home billboards went live in • Debuted at #3 on the Spotify global charts with 3.9m day-one first new music from Sam in nearly two London, New York and LA displaying Sam’s streams. years and was the kick off to his second name, Spotify branding and the single • Reached at #1 on the Global Spotify charts and exceeded 4.5m album campaign. The video was also the release date. Sam teased these on his daily streams at its peak. start of an extensive collaboration between Instagram, marking the start of the second • We are still in the Top 3 globally on Spotify two months after Sam and Spotify that has lasted through to album campaign. Friday playlists, Today’s Top Hits (the largest release. album release and beyond. The video went live at 5am on 8th playlist on Spotify) and This Is Sam Smith. • 253m streams to date on Spotify – Sam’s third-most-streamed As such, we were keen to make a large September on Spotify in line with the The video was also cleared for 49 countries track on Spotify. statement to mark his return, paired with standard single across all DSPs. It was and had extensive in-app promotion, social • eighth-most streamed artist on Spotify. the fact the streaming market had moved on available to view at the top of a host of key support and out of home billboards. • #1 album in the UK, US and eight other countries. significantly since his last record, we needed playlists, including all global New Music The vertical video and global scale of the • 1m albums sold globally in the first week of release.

44 | sandbox | ISSUE 194 | 20.12.17 SANDBOX 2017 SURVEY SPARKS BMG

Photo: Philippe Mazzoni CAMPAIGN BREAKDOWN CAMPAIGN BUDGET £5,000–£10,000

AUDIENCE DEMOGRAPHIC AGE: 34-44, 44-60, 60+ FEMALE: 40% MALE: 60% LOCATION: UK

To engage the older audience with streaming, a collaborative TEAM MEMBERS Spotify playlist was opened and fans were encouraged to add their favourite animal-themed songs – with Ron and Russell picking INVOLVED their favourites to form an official playlist. The playlist collected over Luke Gregory – marketing and product 10,000 tracks in 48 hours. manager, BMG were still relevant, so a headline slot at the BAFTA-nominated director Joseph Wallace The album was released to critical acclaim and the band appeared Sam Hill – director of digital marketing, BMG BBC 6 Music Festival seemed the perfect produced a stop-motion animated video on five prime-time TV spots, including The One Show, Newsnight Will Cooper – director of digital retail, BMG time to announce a new album. Pre-orders for ‘Edith Piaf’, with an animated 1930s and Front Row. Hippopotamus charted at #7 in the UK chart – their Sue Harris – manager/PR, Republic Media were launched with inventive physical and Parisian world created for puppet avatars highest chart position in 42 years. Miguel Morland, Russel Yates, Martin targeting online to the older demographic of the brothers. There were further videos Raviraj – radio, Cool Badge with a history with the band. produced by The Listeners Project – an KEY LEARNINGS Karen Williams – TV, Big Sister 6 Music were a massive supporter of the artistic collective who worked with the band band and using a vibrant and engaged social to produce four short films across four days. Unique artist voice can mobilise a smaller social media following OVERVIEW OF CAMPAIGN following, the relationship with the album Each film had a different director, but was for large engagement. Enthusiastic fans helped grow the audience developed from spot plays on early singles filmed in the same location – the abandoned considerably from announcement and provided great sentiment for Hippopotamus was a chance for BMG to into A-list support and the band taking Millennium Mills in London. Each appealed support at radio. capitalise on Sparks’ dedicated following over their own one-off show and playing to the band’s ever–growing social following. • Visual assets in tune with the artist can inspire a campaign from over 40 years of musically diverse sessions with Marc Riley. All of this played Fortunately, the brothers are very engaged of inventive creative. Starting with an eye-catching packshot, oddball eccentricity from the Mael brothers. into the narrative and added to the heritage with social media and provide a unique and it engaged independent artists to collaborate with the band on The challenge was to plot a campaign to of the band as iconic artists. charming online voice. The fanbase online unique projects. match the band’s creativity and capitalise Creatively, the band were paired with was utilised to create a fan video for the title • Older audience engaged by strong press reaction and critically the quality of a very special record. Part of artists, filmmakers and designers who track, which was shared between the Sparks acclaimed reviews. Limited and physical formats helped encourage this was to prove to audiences that the band could capture their visual flair. For instance, community. pre-orders for the demographic.

45 | sandbox | ISSUE 194 | 20.12.17 SANDBOX 2017 SURVEY BEST USE OF LIVESTREAMING SUNDARA KARMA CHESS CLUB RECORDS / RCA LABEL GROUP UK

which was serviced to Vevo for monetisation and further promotion. • The lean-in nature of the event enhanced the band’s lean-in music streams. For four weeks after the event, Sundara Karma received the most streams per lean- in listener (Spotify + Apple Music) across the entire TEAM MEMBERS and production, performance antics and the Sony Music UK roster. A INVOLVED setlist. Participants at the event contributed feat for a developing artist, Ariel Cohen – digital marketing manager to the feedback loop by voting during the with an album six months Sam Harris-Pachul – product manager show and tagging/encouraging their friends after release. Leah Stockford – VP, marketing to participate from home. core fans to consume further. The strategic Kara Mukerjee – head of digital The hour-long livestream event and all livestream partners (The Hook, 6m+ fans and James Bassett – director, Digital Creative interactive voting occurred on Facebook. The Dot To Dot, 30K fans) expanded viewership concept was based on Facebook livestream beyond the band’s fanbase, driving further OVERVIEW OF CAMPAIGN reaction polls, prevalent throughout the awareness of the band. 2016 US elections. The world’s first interactive livestreamed Taking learnings from highly engaged • 100k + streams with <£50 marketing performance... livestreamed content on Facebook, we spend (all other costs were AV production). established that user contributions on • 1,233% uplift on previous Sundara Sundara Karma’s single, ‘Explore’, reaction polls need to be fundamental to the Karma livestreams. 19% uplift on previous thematically explores the feedback loop editorial and content narrative. Therefore, livestream with The Hook. that occurs between artists and fans as we created a dynamic multi-cam setup • 1,000 hours combined viewing time CAMPAIGN BREAKDOWN an artist’s career develops. To complement and enabled live input from viewers and • 15k unique engagements the track, we partnered with The Hook and attendees to control the show in real time. CAMPAIGN BUDGET £2,000–£5,000 Dot To Dot Festival to create the perfect The event was streamed utilising Facebook’s This met our targets perfectly for the event “lean-in event”: the world’s first feedback Livestream API. and drive. AUDIENCE DEMOGRAPHIC loop interactive live-voted performance. The AGE: 14–18, 18–24 event was held in Manchester on 26th May KEY LEARNINGS • Facebook responded that the event FEMALE: 59% 2017. was one of the most innovative MALE: 41% During the event, we enabled viewers to All posts from the event directed viewers implementations of livestreaming. LOCATION: UK vote on different aspects of the show: from to the Youth Is Only Ever Fun In Retrospect • The show was repackaged into a regular band members’ outfits, to live stage visuals album streaming links, driving the band’s live performance video for single ‘Explore’,

46 | sandbox | ISSUE 194 | 20.12.17 BEST USE SANDBOX 2017 SURVEY OF A PHONEBOX SINCE SUPERMAN TAYLOR SWIFT Virgin EMI/Big Machine

TEAM MEMBERS Oliver Muoto – design lead, Metablocks sixth studio album, Reputation, we hid 13 INVOLVED Samantha Neville – designer, Pretty Good newspaper-wrapped phone boxes around Digital London, giving fans the chance to leave the Betsy Chadbourn – digital campaign old Taylor a voicemail in a sweepstakes to CAMPAIGN BREAKDOWN manager, Virgin EMI OVERVIEW OF CAMPAIGN win an exclusive Reputation prize. We worked CAMPAIGN BUDGET £5,000–£10,000 Louis Lloyd – product manager, Virgin EMI alongside Metablocks to create the voicemail Bianca Renzullo – marketing, Virgin EMI The old Taylor can’t come to the phone right service, using a soundbite from Taylor’s first AUDIENCE DEMOGRAPHIC Mauro Borges – content creator, Virgin EMI now… can you? Following the release of her single, ‘Look What You Made Me Do’, as the AGE: 18–24, 24–34 message on dial. FEMALE: 67% We used a bespoke video to promote MALE: 31% the campaign, targeting only engaged fans LOCATION: US, UK, Philippines in the London area – but that didn’t stop the rest of the Taylor Nation catching on. Fans went wild on social media, working together to find the locations using our campaign and saying what fun it had been for them. unique hashtag, #CallTaylor, with some On the second day of the promotion, we were forced to even travelling from locations outside open the lines nationwide due to unprecedented demand and of London and the UK to leave Taylor a excitement, allowing fans to #CallTaylor from their mobile phones message. We have photo evidence of wherever they were in people actually queuing outside the phone the country. boxes! We were inundated with photos, The best hand-selected messages will be displayed on a comments Reputation splash page and will be available to listen to at the close and calls from of the campaign, with the best message winning a once-in-a-lifetime grateful fans, selection of Taylor goodies. (The campaign is still ongoing at the praising the submission of this report.) In the first 24 hours, that single post received over 150k views, 600 shares, 10k reactions and 2k comments, with the hashtag getting 1.5m impressions and reaching 600k people on Twitter alone. In the first hour, we had close to 550 calls (which is still ongoing).

KEY LEARNINGS

We learned not to underestimate the amazing fandom that is the Taylor Nation. It was great to see so many people getting involved and enjoying the promotion.

47 | sandbox | ISSUE 194 | 20.12.17 SANDBOX 2017 SURVEY BEST USE OF A PROJECTION ONTO AN ICONIC LOCATION VERA LYNN DECCA RECORDS

TEAM MEMBERS INVOLVED

All of team Decca CAMPAIGN BREAKDOWN OVERVIEW OF CAMPAIGN CAMPAIGN BUDGET £5,000–£10,000 AUDIENCE DEMOGRAPHIC The original forces’ sweetheart, Dame Vera AGE: 60+ Lynn reached her 100th birthday on 20th FEMALE: 40% March and, as part of the celebrations, we MALE: 60% released an album of her original vocals LOCATION: South East UK set to new orchestrations with choir, guest artists and the RAF Squadronnaires, of which her husband was a founder member. There are plenty of Vera Lynn collections already available, and with documentaries on TV and radio about her life not focused on the new album, directing attention to the the photo and video quickly became the album was crucial throughout the campaign. go-to media to use when mentioning Vera We had a recording of ‘Sailing’ that had online. We’re not sure how many other been lost for over 30 years, which was a USP. 100-year-olds have trended on Twitter! All We made a nostalgic video that was a mix of the time this content was being shared it lyric, picture and storybook. The single was strengthened the link to our album. also playlisted on Radio 2. A website where We had further moments in the members of the public could leave birthday campaign beyond her birthday to work messages that we then repurposed into towards, with guest artist Alfie Boe singing video content as well as guest artist Vera medleys on Britain’s Got Talent and content worked well in owning the online also the Festival Of Remembrance to extend KEY LEARNINGS space. We also created a special back page the campaign. takeover of the Telegraph with a special The album went to #3 in the chart, Owning the conversation around the birthday was crucial Vera Lynn crossword and the RAF band onto the White Cliffs of Dover (a location making Vera the only person over 100 and making shareable, nostalgic content was key. As we’ve performed ‘Happy Birthday’ which we ran on strongly associated with her) and feed the to ever have a top 10 album. The album seen before, older audiences might not buy digitally, but they TV ad online. picture and video to media. so far has gone Gold and, at the time of are active digitally and, therefore, can still be engaged with Across the birthday weekend, we needed We had the image on front covers of two submission, Vera is the best-selling female appropriate content and the right tone. This was shown with the to try and focus the general awareness to national newspapers, shown on TV news, artist in the UK of 2017. We now have a hundreds of thousands of views of the various videos, sharing the album itself. We decided to project the mentioned on radio – both in the UK and special edition of the album released on the and comments across social media as well as almost 1,000 photo of Vera that is on our album cover across the world. On the day of her birthday, 1st December for Christmas. birthday messages left for Vera on our website.

48 | sandbox | ISSUE 194 | 20.12.17 SANDBOX 2017 SURVEY BEST USE OF A PHONE CALL CARLOS VIVES Sony Music US Latin

CAMPAIGN BREAKDOWN CAMPAIGN BUDGET £25,000+

AUDIENCE DEMOGRAPHIC AGE: 24-34, 34-44, 44-60 FEMALE: 54% MALE: 46% LOCATION: Global

The action went viral immediately. On the week of release, the official video for ‘Robarte un Beso’ generated more than 20m views, 1m views more than La Bicicleta’s official video during its first week. In just 12 hours, 204,484 fans from 83 countries were called by Carlos Vives, who talked to all of them for an amount of time equivalent to 61 days of uninterrupted communication. The website had 814,573 unique visits and there were 269,599 engagements on Instagram and 132,744 on Facebook. Media from all over the world showcased the initiative on TV, radio, newspapers and online, without an investment, adding an immeasurable value in advertising.

KEY LEARNINGS

TEAM MEMBERS was to carry out a unique and innovative in which Carlos Vives greeted the fan by The experience was extraordinary for the fans and the results INVOLVED marketing strategy to amaze fans in a name from the recording studio and called on social media were incredible. Thanks to this campaign, the brand-new way. To do so, we created an them by phone in real time to thank consumption of Carlos Vives’ music on digital platforms Sony US Latin digital marketing team opportunity for fans to connect with Carlos them for their constant support. increased significantly, accelerating the song’s Asombro Extremo Agency Vives by way of a phone call from the artist Before saying goodbye, Carlos traction across all platforms. The track as well as a personalised and autographed Vives autographed and wrote has generated over 3.6m streams per day since OVERVIEW OF CAMPAIGN photo of him. After entering the website the fan’s name on a photo the launch of the campaign, making ‘Robarte robarteunbeso.com, the fans were prompted and sent it via SMS, also un Beso’ the artist’s second-most watched Our goal for the release of Carlos Vives’ new to simply provide their names and phone inviting the fan to watch his video on his channel, with over 162m views in single and video clip, titled ‘Robarte un Beso’, numbers. With a click, a video started playing new video. only two months.

49 | sandbox | ISSUE 194 | 20.12.17 SANDBOX 2017 SURVEY LEWIS WATSON COOKING VINYL

CAMPAIGN BREAKDOWN CAMPAIGN BUDGET £1,000–£2,000

AUDIENCE DEMOGRAPHIC AGE: 18–24 FEMALE: 70% MALE: 30% LOCATION: Global

we did this by offering the fans a chance to attend an exclusive Lewis performance. The playlists with the top

Photo: Ami Ford follows were entered into a TEAM MEMBERS tracks on Spotify, as well as saving and draw and then one person INVOLVED sharing to help with any algorithmic was selected as our winner. playlists This meant fans were given Marcus Knight – marketing #2 Create an incentive for fans to share the the incentive to drive people Rachel Stoewer – digital marketing tracks with their friends, family and peers towards their playlist which, Matt Johnson – management #3 Develop a strategy that allows fans posted their playlist to Twitter with the in turn, helped spread the Lisa Ward – management/marketing to engage with Spotify in an innovative #lewiswatsonmidnight, our API would pull in word and further reinforced and interesting way, hopefully helping to the playlist automatically and assign it to a our campaign goals. OVERVIEW OF CAMPAIGN encourage support from the platform. random pixel. The great thing about this was that fans KEY LEARNINGS When approaching the Lewis Watson First we asked fans to create their own had to fully engage with the image in order campaign, we knew that streaming was playlist of music, in which they had to to find their pixel and playlist, a process We found this to be a very effective method of increasing plays going to be fundamental to our success, and include Lewis’s latest track release, ‘Little that they seemed to enjoy. Being able to and general engagement on Spotify. It definitely had a significant so we asked ourselves a question: how can Light’ (later we would go on to include other explore other fans’ playlists created a sense effect on the overall success of our campaign, with worldwide album we engage, utilise and maximise support new tracks). We built a custom website of discovery amongst the community, while streams now passing an impressive 30m. It also showed with the from both fans and Spotify? that featured the album cover for Lewis’s helping us to increase plays and saves. Next right idea, you can use the flexibility of platforms like Spotify to We identified our objectives: upcoming album, Midnight, the image was we tackled the question of how we expand benefit campaigns and create interesting and innovative ways for #1 Get fans to engage and stream key broken into pixels and when someone this beyond the dedicated fanbase, and fans to engage with an artist’s music.

50 | sandbox | ISSUE 194 | 20.12.17 SANDBOX 2017 SURVEY THE WEEKND UNIVERSAL MUSIC GROUP/REPUBLIC RECORDS

TEAM MEMBERS of the artist and photo onto our INVOLVED an increase in campaign page with streams/revenue. our in-built Starboy Phoebe Heng – marketing executive We rode on filter. We then chose CAMPAIGN BREAKDOWN Tee Tze Mien – senior marketing executive the insight that the two strongest entry CAMPAIGN BUDGET £0–£500 Nicholas Han – social media marketing young people within the week to post executive are all about on our socials. Fans of AUDIENCE DEMOGRAPHIC Tiffany Haruka Teh – marketing manager that “bragging our page got to vote by AGE: 14–18, 18–24 Bryan Wong – marketing director rights”. It’s all reacting to the photo. FEMALE: 40% about that Insta- Each week, the winner MALE: 60% OVERVIEW OF CAMPAIGN worthy picture. would go on to the next LOCATION: Malaysia So we launched a round to compete. For With The Weeknd’s new album, Starboy, and campaign called the final round, we did his brand-new hairstyle, many Malaysian The Ultimate a Facebook Live vote fans were still unaware of who The Weeknd Starboy Search, whereby fans could was, although the single ‘Starboy’ had some where we give the fans the power to become tune in to see the counter going up for each awareness already. We wanted to create a Starboy and to join and vote for their contestant. During the live vote, we also kept engagement and talk-ability in the hope that favourite Starboy. the song ‘Starboy’ on a loop so that everyone it would translate into further awareness Fans had to upload their most “swag” tuning in got to listen to the track. The whole campaign was purely promoted online – mainly through Facebook ads, Instagram and the use of a few influencers.

KEY LEARNINGS

From the campaign, we managed to gather 300+ entries and eCRM data for our future re-targeting. The campaign had a total reach of 445k, 10k various comments/reactions/shares and 8k clicks on our posts. The Weeknd’s Starboy album saw an increase of 15k Euro increase during and after campaign period, which is a fairly big amount considering that this was mainly generated from organic growth.

51 | sandbox | ISSUE 194 | 20.12.17 SANDBOX 2017 SURVEY YELLOW LOUNGE Deutsche Grammophon

TEAM MEMBERS Yellow Lounge events around INVOLVED the world, no country or city has succeeded in establishing YELLOW LOUNGE TEAM AT the events as part of the local DEUTSCHE GRAMMOPHON: scene other than Universal Dr. Clemens Trautmann – president Germany in Berlin. What to do? Nanja Maung Yin – product The goals of Deutsche manager/presenter at Yellow Grammophon: interviews in WELT accompanying the announcement to the Lounge • Significant growth of posts in the performing artists’ own channels as well as strong Stephan Steigleder – senior director outreach beyond the local general media channels with high outreach and special interest digital media event in Berlin publications. These attracted not only existing Yellow Lounge Rupert Wagg – senior manager • Reach out to international and (the performing) artist fans but a completely new audience. digital media markets and classical fans Christin Hofrichter – manager digital media from the international roster of Deutsche worldwide KEY LEARNINGS Anna Sita Zinn – manager digital media Grammophon, Decca and ECM records • grow the brand awareness of the Yellow making short live performances in vibrant Lounge The new live stream format of Yellow Lounge is a perfect OVERVIEW OF CAMPAIGN club settings, accompanied before, between • secure a conversion into commercial example of a 360-degree approach to the music business: live and after their sets by international DJs streams and downloads performance, album promotion, digital and physical sales, brand playing purely classical music, as well as and media partnership, fan involvement and, finally, content high-class VJs presenting a visual concept To reach these ambitious goals the concept creation are all combined. specific to the location. of the Yellow Lounge was enriched with Act locally, think globally is the overall approach for Deutsche Artists have included Anne-Sophie a significant digital component: Facebook Grammophon for the Yellow Lounge – from an analogue promo Mutter, Sting, Max Richter and Daniil live-stream. event in Berlin to a global digital entertainment experience. Trifonov, locations Berghain, Kater Blau, In addition to the German Universal Prince Charles, Ritter Butzke and Gretchen Music channels, including KlassikAkzente, and DJs including the Pet Shop Boys and which is an established brand in Rufus Wainwright! the German market, plus the strong CAMPAIGN BREAKDOWN However, there was a natural limit to international Deutsche Grammophon the outreach of a club event at around socials, an additional media partner was CAMPAIGN BUDGET £25,000+ 300-500 people. Taking into account that found in Axel Springer’s media outlet each event costs several thousand euros, WELT Online. After a successful test AUDIENCE DEMOGRAPHIC For more than 15 years now, the Yellow way more than the income generated case with Ludovico Einaudi’s Yellow AGE: 18-24, 24-34, 34-44, 44-60 Lounge has been a constant figure and from entrance fees, the Yellow Lounge Lounge performance in December 2015, FEMALE: 50% highlight in the ever-changing Berlin has so far been more about developing a Yellow Lounge started streaming live MALE: 50% underground club scene. The concept new audience for classical music whilst performances from 2016 with WELT as LOCATION: Germany for each Yellow Lounge foresees top promoting the artists performing. a media partner. The result was a broad classical music stars and new talents At the same time, despite many isolated and diverse media presence, ranging from

52 | sandbox | ISSUE 194 | 20.12.17 MUSICALLYPUBLICATIONS

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