BROUGHT TO YOU COURTESY OF IN ASSOCIATION WITH DECEMBER 20 2017 sandboxMUSIC MARKETING FOR THE DIGITAL ERA ISSUE 194 THE YEAR’S BEST MUSIC MARKETING CAMPAIGNS SPONSOR PAGE 020-03_Ad_Billboard_AWAL_Launch_R5a_A4.indd 1 4/5/17 7:54 PM SANDBOX 2017 SURVEY 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 COLUMBIA RECORDS UK ARCADE FIRE 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%.