A mixture of beautifully-shot gig footage, animated packshot videos and curated Spotify playlists sees social stats grow at an impressive rate for former Gallows’ frontman’s latest band.
Company
International Death Cult / Kobalt
Team members involved
Sam Williams – digital strategy and marketing coordinator
David Emery – marketing director, UK
Karen Dagg – senior product manager
Matthew Greer – band management
Nikke Osterback – digital marketing consultant
Dean Richardson – band member
Frank Carter – band member
Campaign breakdown
Budget: £25k+
Audience demographic: 25% female / 75% male, age 18-24, UK
Overview of campaign
The former frontman of Gallows and Pure Love, Frank Carter returned to his punk roots with his new band – Frank Carter & The Rattlesnakes. Having officially formed just six months previously, debut album, Blossom, was released on 14th August 2015 and landed at #18 in the UK album chart and #1 in the UK vinyl chart.
The band’s social media profiles were used as a central hub for all campaign activity and became a forum for the band to personally interact with their fans. A mixture of beautifully shot gig footage, animated packshot videos and curated Spotify playlists saw socials grow at an impressive rate (512% increase) and complimented the ongoing live and radio activity.
There were several key online initiatives throughout the campaign that helped spread the word about The Rattlesnakes. The band designed and coded their take on the classic mobile phone game, Snake (aptly named Rattlesnake), which was reimagined to include an animated version of Frank himself set to an 8-bit recording of the single ‘Fangs’.
The game launched with a competition that gave players several opportunities to win a prize; this was through sharing the game itself, which generated a direct-to-Facebook post, by showing off your score or by hitting a top score on the scoreboard.
There were 11k unique page views, with users spending on average over six minutes on the page. The mailing list increased by 3k directly via website submissions. As opposed to simply partnering with a site for the album pre-stream, we decided to create an interactive visual experience to super-serve the growing fanbase.
The album packshot, featuring guitar amps on fire (painted by Frank), was re-created in a filmed piece featuring Frank burning the exact amps from the packshot.
Fans were asked to tune into the website where the footage was live streamed via YouTube with the album as the audio bed. Simultaneously Frank was online conducting a Twitter Q&A as the pre-stream video aired,which was embedded in the pre-stream viewing pane. Fans could submit their questions with the hashtag #frankhatesyou.
Results and key learnings
The key learning from this campaign was to focus on the fans discovering the band and make them feel personally connected to the band’s journey.
Frank and the band were incredibly engaged with their supporters, both online and in person. The live activity focused on intimate venues and included four in-store signings during release week and performances at various indie stores where the band met with fans.
In turn, the collective noise of the fan community helped strengthen our case at media, where there was both pre-existing support from Frank’s previous bands as well as new supporters coming to the table. Channels were updated regularly with top-level content and interesting initiatives, such as the Rattlesnake game, and the pre-stream event created a natural momentum that was amplified by the condensed timeline.
The personal tone of the campaign was driven directly by Frank and the band, who were heavily involved in all the aesthetic elements including the artwork, videos and marketing assets.
Several limited-edition, multi-coloured vinyl releases reflecting the different manufacture runs were put into production, including a very special
hyper-deluxe version that was limited to 100 copies (with unique covers hand-painted by Frank). This extensive and unique product offering took the vinyl version of the album to the top of the vinyl chart on week of release.
Links and extra info
Website: http://smarturl.it/FCTRS
Advertising splash page: http://smarturl.it/blossomsplash
Facebook: http://smarturl.it/FCTRSFacebook
Instagram: http://smarturl.it/FCTRSInstagram
Twitter: http://smarturl.it/FCTRSTwitter
YouTube: http://smarturl.it/FrankCarterSubscribe
Spotify: http://smarturl.it/FCTRSspotify
8-bit game: http://smarturl.it/rattlesnakegame
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