As this was Olly’s fifth album, we wanted to demonstrate a real statement of intent and create another impactful launch, positioning this record as his biggest and best yet.
We focused on re-engaging his existing social fanbase, as well as converting young chart streamers into Olly fans.
As his fanbase is mainly female, with the 13-17 and 18-24 age demographics dominating, we created a Facebook Messenger chatbot which we called The Ollybot. The main idea behind this initiative is that Olly’s fans can ask the bot anything they want. By asking the right questions, fans could access Olly’s music, playlists, tickets, and exclusive content instantly. Most of the responses are personalised and designed to initiate a conversation, based on Olly’s tone of voice, current trends and consumer behaviours. Our objective was to maximise social engagement as well as driving album pre-orders, catalogue streams and video views. We also added bespoke responses for key international markets with exclusive content and details about upcoming shows.
Our flagship digital initiative was the interactive album teaser which we launched 10 days prior to release. The website allowed fans to engage with a video while listening to exclusive snippets from the album. Fans were able to watch the aftermath of a house party as default, but could hold down and ’turn back time’ to see what happened the night before. The video ties into the album’s 24 HRS title and theme. The sampler featured six tracks from the album, giving fans an opportunity to hear music ahead of its release.
Olly has a big social following, so it was our job to capitalise on this and make sure he had a strong presence online, delivering another #1 album.
In terms of results, the interactive video had more than 230k views in the first 24 hours, with an average dwell time of 2m 30s, resulting in a 30% increase of album pre-orders on that day. The users were then retargeted through paid digital campaigns, driving deluxe album pre-orders.
The Ollybot has 10,000 active conversations to date, with more than 450k messages received. It has 500 bespoke responses, containing 150 exclusive photos and videos. We believe it’s the first truly engaging messenger bot for a UK artist and showcases our ambition for best-in-class execution in the market.
We also rallied his fanbase around a few distinct digital initiatives that ran alongside all digital and traditional campaign elements: a stream-to-unlock initiative resulting in 10k additional UK streams on the latest single; a collection initiative that drove 5k new Spotify followers in 24 hours and a musical. ly competition with more than 58k entries.
Our key takeaway was centered around how to run an engaging campaign for a returning artist. By giving fans access to initiatives they wouldn’t necessarily expect from Olly Murs, we realised these were our most effective digital marketing assets. These initiatives significantly increased our reach and engagement, helping us migrate Olly’s young audience (under 17) away from YouTube and towards paid streaming services. They also allowed our paid campaign around the album to become highly targeted by focusing on non-fans that had already interacted with our content.
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