THE BEST MUSIC MARKETING CAMPAIGNS OF NIKOO SADR HEAD OF TRAINING & CAMPAIGNS MUSIC ALLY (UNITED KINGDOM)

Transcription

1 & THE BEST MUSIC MARKETING CAMPAIGNS OF NIKOO SADR HEAD OF TRAINING & CAMPAIGNS MUSIC ALLY (UNITED KINGDOM)

2 BACKGROUND As part of our training and editorial services Music Ally need to constantly keep in touch with labels, managers and artists and their latest digital campaigns. This paper outlines some of those case studies, giving an overview of the most interesting digital marketing campaigns of 2015/2016. The examples will be across industry genres, platforms and range from modest to big budgets. This paper highlights how they were created, the results they achieved and key learnings. The campaigns are listed in alphabetical order and cover everything from massive stars all the way to independent artists. The results and additional information regarding the campaigns are shared by the team behind them but Music Ally has summed up key learnings and our own opinion at the end of each campaign.

3 BEST CAMPAIGNS OF 2015/ ANIMAL COLLECTIVE 2. GWEN STEFANI 3. LUDOVICO EINAUDI 4. MANS ZELMERLOW 5. MOONES 6. TOVE LO 7. TROYE SIVAN 8. YACHT

4 ANIMAL COLLECTIVE PAINTING WITH

5 ANIMAL COLLECTIVE THE SET-UP Domino Records and Animal Collective created a new app, Painting With, to promote the band s single, Lying In The Grass. The track plays exclusively in the background as fans can paint together with anyone in the world (or alone) to create some trippy looking paintings. The painting can then be turned into a photo or video and shared to Instagram and Twitter. The Animal Collective app is making strong use of video - creating an album/single cover that almost comes to life.

6 THE MUSIC ALLY OPINION Finding a way to additionally bring an album alive through turning music into visual images and creating a sharing experience with other people can prove very useful for, in particular, heavily visual bands. The Animal Collective app is a nice spin on creating live visuals that encourages engagement. Premiering a track only through the app should have proven incentive enough for fans to download the app but note that no results were available for this campaign.

7 GWEN STEFANI MAKE ME LIKE YOU

8 GWEN STEFANI THE SET-UP Unlike other any other live streamed event Gwen Stefani provided a first ever live music video for her new single Make Me Like You made during this years Grammy s. Gwen Stefani teamed up with Target and showed the singer performing live on stage in her music video during a commercial break. Through various sets and costume changes (many of them Target branded, inevitably) and even included some roller-skating. The video was after the initial premiere available on Stefani s Vevo channel. Target also organised additional material for Facebook, Snapchat and Periscope as well as bringing YouTubers Todrick Hall and Meg DeAngelis along to shoot behind-thescenes content and perform cameos in the video.

9 GWEN STEFANI- RESULTS The event got highly publicised and talked about worldwide, both in magazines and social media. The video got 2m views in a week. Target got over 3bn media impressions in 7 days. Pre-orders at Target outperformed the overall expectations, according to Interscope Records - and the album landed Stefani s first solo no.1 on Billboard.

10 THE MUSIC ALLY OPINION Gwen Stefani found a way to make the most of a live streaming event a first ever live filmed music video. A great brand (and influencers) partnership with Target that proved fruitful and beneficial for all parties both in exposure as well as sales.

11 LUDOVICO EINAUDI - NIGHT

12 LUDOVICO EINAUDI THE SET-UP For the launch of the single, Night, Decca Records created a dedicated website together with the Touch Pianist app. Fans could go on to the site and guess what the single would sound like by playing it themselves. The music video launched after 24 hours so fans then could hear what it would sound like. This was then accompanied by an additional interactive advertising campaign on Spotify where fans could play the music directly from within the browser.

13 LUDOVICO EINAUDI THE SET-UP There were also coordinates disguised as Morse code within the music video. For the fans that were curious enough about the code, they would find it pinpointing a river and bridge near Ludovico s birth place in Google Maps. Typing the location into a password box on the dedicated website revealed a phone number which fans could use to hear Ludovico s answerphone message (and fans could leave their own messages).

14 LUDOVICO EINAUDI - CAMPAIGN DETAILS Label Decca Records Campaign budget Demographics targeting - Gender Female 55% / Male 45% Audience demographics targeting - Age Audience demographic targeting - Location UK, Italy, US

15 LUDOVICO EINAUDI - RESULTS Website landing page had 8k visitors on launch day. Average dwell-time on site was 2 minutes - according to the Decca team. a fantastic result, Large amount of return visitors once video was launched after 24 hours.

16 THE MUSIC ALLY OPINION A classical artist can and should make use of the same tactics as pop acts. A well-executed and well-structured campaign, playing with new methods to reach a wider audience as well as serving to super-fans.

17 MANS ZELMERLOW SHOULD VE GONE HOME

18 MANS ZELMERLOW THE SET-UP The aim was to set up a competition in which fans from all over the world could enter. Fans could, by working together, unlock the music video (hosted on YouTube) to Should ve Gone Home. The more streams Should ve Gone Home got on Spotify, the faster the video would unlock. If fans could unlock it early, Måns would host an extra Q&A on Twitter. A percentage meter was viewable on a dedicated campaign site so everyone could follow the advancements. The landing page also contained the Twitter feed based on #unlockshgh and a map showing the locations of the hashtags.

19 MANS ZELMERLOW During the campaign period, between 9-21 st of September, the number of unique visitors increased by 16000% and visitors were coming in from all over the world. The video got 300k views in a week. The different hashtags being used during the campaign was spread times by fans from all over the world which resulted in a #1 worldwide trend on Twitter. The streams on Should ve Gone Home increased a lot after the campaign was over due to the support it got on both radio and Spotify editorially after the campaign period.

20 THE MUSIC ALLY OPINION A stream-to-unlock campaign that perfectly captured how Spotify and YouTube can be used in symbiosis and drive additional revenue for artists as well as creating a momentum for a video premiere. It was also a competition that worked perfectly for the target audience providing them with prizes they desired and giving them an incentive to spread the word about the campaign organically.

21 MOONES ZOOMES BY MOONES

22 MOONES THE SET-UP Just before the New Year, Moones found an inventive way to livestream and promote their latest album, Modern Music Moguls. The stream was featured on YouTube and included footage of a brick wall in London, with the band challenging fans to figure out where exactly it was located and then tweet the code hidden under a piece of chewing gum stuck to the wall in order to win 4,000 (initially their budget for a promo video). When certain milestones in views (5k, 10k, 40k) were reached the camera would reveal more of the brick wall and the surrounding area.

23 MOONES - RESULTS Extensive coverage in many newspapers extending far out of the usual press the band usually receives, which also contributed to bringing in new listeners for the released album. Because of the coverage the successful winner found the code within a day much faster than initially anticipated by the band.

24 THE MUSIC ALLY OPINION Moones managed to get maximum spread of their absolutely bonkers idea of a campaign. Simply brilliant idea that attracted fans and magazines to open up their eyes for the band far outside their initial fanbase.

25 TOVE LO - TIMEBOMB

26 TOVE LO THE SET-UP Making the most of the meaning behind the single Timebomb, a dedicated site was built where fans all over the world could log in to watch the new music video together with another fan from anywhere around the world. A live video feed was showing the fans that pressed play on the video at the same time. When the music video ended, a picture remained of the time the fans spent together. Occasionally Tove Lo herself would log in to watch the video together with fans. The video itself was played trough a YouTube player, which meant every view generated revenue back to the artist.

27 TOVE LO - CAMPAIGN DETAILS Label Creative Labs/Universal Music Sweden Campaign budget Demographics targeting - Gender Female 50% / Male 50% Audience demographics targeting - Age Audience demographic targeting - Location World wide with Sweden and USA in the top 2

28 TOVE LO - RESULTS In the first 48 hours, 2900 Timebomb pictures where shared all over the web. Average time on the site was over 6 minutes, a lot longer than the music video it self. Participants from all over the world with over 160 countries logging in.

29 THE MUSIC ALLY OPINION A great way to encourage fans to keep watching a video and prolonging the life of a video premiere by providing a unique experience of the video. Not only great to spread the word about the new video but also helped increased revenue streams by applying the meaning of the song in a whole new way and connecting fans with each other.

30 TROYE SIVAN WHEN IN SWEDEN

31 TROYE SIVAN THE SET-UP Universal Music Denmark used top influencers in Denmark to gain attention and press there around Troye Sivan s sold-out show in Stockholm. None of the Danish newspapers or TV were picking up on doing interviews with Sivan (except for Ritzau, the Danish news agency), which led to the label s decision to bring YouTubers Rasmus and Julia Sofia, to interview Troye (himself also a YouTuber). The YouTubers had freedom to formulate the interviews themselves. They also posted about their trip across all their socials a purely organic move on their behalf.

32 TROYE SIVAN - RESULTS Julia Sofia s video had 52,730 views in six days while Rasmus had 46,419 views in just four days, which according to Universal Denmark is higher than some of the music video views for Universal Music Denmark s key local artists. The tracking link for the album in the videos contributed to 77.5% of the overall traffic, with peaks on video release days.

33 THE MUSIC ALLY OPINION Troye Sivan was the perfect artist with an audience fitting for this type of promotion; it resulted in both a wide reach as well as helping to build up Sivan s relatability. It was a campaign that made the most of YouTubers and influencers to connect with the right demographics. How come more artists are not connecting with fans through content they relate to and via the channels they actually use everyday?

34 YACHT L.A PLAYS ITSELF

35 YACHT THE SET-UP For the launch of the single, LA Plays Itself, the band related the launch directly to the city of L.A. Famous for its bad traffic, L.A played a significant part of the campaign. Every time traffic was bad the track would unlock. The traffic was monitored via the Uber app; when Uber prices surged 1.1x the normal rate the music video unlocked. When traffic was really bad, surge prices doubled 2x and a remix by Darq E Freaker played. Fans could follow the updates via Yacht s Twitter account for automatic updates.

36 YACHT - CAMPAIGN DETAILS Label Downtown Records/ BBDO NYC Campaign budget Demographics targeting - Gender Female 45% / Male 55% Audience demographics targeting - Age Audience demographic targeting - Location US, with large bases in LA, NY, San Francisco, Seattle, Portland and Austin

37 YACHT - RESULTS The campaign brought on expanded media coverage far beyond music blogs because of its wide appeal gaining significant coverage on Pitchfork, Buzzfeed, The Verge, Engadget, LA Times, Gizmodo and Stereogum, which resulted in more than 15m unpaid media impressions. Within two days, the video had exceeded 100k views and the site was shared more than 5,000 times across social media. Album pre-orders had increased by 23% by the end of the campaign week. Uber contacted the band after launch asking to collaborate.

38 THE MUSIC ALLY OPINION A great campaign that tapped into what everyone experiences when living in LA bad traffic which thus ensured proper impact for the music while reaching new fans. The band really managed to create a moment that was appealing beyond their existing fanbase. Plus this was just one part of a wider campaign that used tools like Google Maps, BuzzFeed and annotations on Genius.

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40 About Music Ally ABOUT THE AUTHOR At Music Ally we love music, and we love tech. We believe that these worlds should not be battling each other and so our mission for the past ten years has remained the same: to explore ways that the two worlds can work profitably together. Music Ally has been providing publications, consulting, research, events and training to the music and technology industries since About Nikoo Sadr Nikoo is responsible for training and campaigns at Music Ally. She is involved in the research and development of new materials based on best practice principles for the global music business; working directly with leading global companies and start-ups to develop methods that help support growth and development in the rapidly changing sector. Nikoo also writes for the Music Ally digital marketing publication, Sandbox, contributing editorial and insight into the developments in the changing market. This report is brought to you by MIDEM Midem is the leading international business event for the music ecosystem, bringing together more than 6,400 upper-level music professionals, cutting-edge technologies, brands, ad agencies and fresh artists. Midem is the place to boost your network, make new deals, source music content, innovate to engage with your audience and learn about the latest trends. Contact us: Visit MIDEM s website : Follow us : SHARE THIS REPORT ON AND