A campaign that tried to re-engage Elvis Presley’s core fanbase, while also attracting young fans who may come to him through social media and streaming.
Note, the text below was supplied by the team behind the campaign.
Company
Sony CG
Team members involved
Heidi Boston – Senior Digital Marketing manager
Olivia Walker – Senior Marketing Manager
Kathleen Turner – Senior National Accounts Manager
Bekka Collins – Digital Assistant
Will Calligan – Digital Assistant
Campaign breakdown
Budget: £25k+
Audience demographic: 62% female / 38% male, age 55-75, UK
Overview of campaign
This campaign presented us with an opportunity to re-engage Elvis’ core fan base, whilst inspiring a new generation of younger fans with an all-encompassing digital campaign.
We implemented a music-first with an animated Kindle Wakescreen campaign, driving over 1 million Impressions, 3,000 purchases and an excellent ROI; with the resulting sales outperforming the amount invested.
Social advertising has been our biggest driver. Running across Elvis’ Facebook, Instagram and Twitter platforms, we delivered over 4 million Impressions and 80,000 clicks to retail, at an incredible 13p CPRC. Facebook yielded unprecedented results from the start, generating the lowest CPRC at 8p.
With a heavy focus on similar artist targeting and the creative refreshed regularly, we were able to keep the momentum going throughout.
Search quickly became one of the highest performing components, driving 30,000 DTR Clicks. On desktop we gained a 94.76% Search Impression share on “Elvis Presley”, ensuring our ad was shown to users almost every time they searched for his name.
A listening party the Elvis at the O2 Exhibition allowed us to capture invaluable footage of the fans listening to tracks for the first time. Uploading the footage natively to Facebook provoked a turning point in fan opinion and the community buzzed with excitement upon hearing fellow fans’ initial thoughts.
In support of the ‘Joanna Lumley: Elvis and Me’ ITV1 documentary, commissioned in support of the album, we ran a Promoted Tweet and a mobile TV syncing campaign to ensure all eyes were on the release during the show. This was supported organically on Twitter from @SonyLegacyUK resulting in #elvisandme becoming a trending topic.
Additional organic social support from the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and Michael Bublé (who featured on the record with a posthumous duet) helped to widen our reach across new audiences, using quote and lyric imagery from Priscilla Presley to help bring the messaging to life.
Results and key learnings
• Secured Elvis’ 12th UK No.1 album for 2 weeks running, lifting him to second in the all-time list
• The album sold 79,053 in its first week of release, increasing to 89k in its second week and went PLATINUM (300k+) in just 4 weeks
• Elvis is now the longest chart-topper in UK history with a staggering 59 years between this and his very first UK No.1 album
• Elvis is now the only solo artist to have a No.1 album in five different decades
• Social engagement on our ad campaign across Facebook, Instagram and Twitter was the best we’ve seen to date. We have never seen a Direct to Retail ad react so successfully
• By continuing to update social ad creative on a regular basis throughout the campaign, ensured that we never once lost momentum, kept our CPRC as low as possible and maintained optimum fan engagement, which via an ad format is tricky to achieve over a long period
• This audience is traditionally a market that buys physically in store, so seeing the album reach No.1 on iTunes – leaping head of the Adele pre-order, which has broken records in its first week of sales – demonstrates that we successfully reached our younger audience.
Links and extra info
Website – http://www.elvisthemusic.com/
Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/elvis / https://www.facebook.com/Elvisthemusic
Twitter – https://twitter.com/elvispresley
Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/elvis/
Spotify – https://open.spotify.com/album/3BYCjGZjrTkilIY7U25fNt
YouTube – https://www.youtube.com/user/elvis
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